The analogy between Indian caste and American race – an analogy recognized by Martin Luther King, among others – is important for a number of reasons. Not least of these is that when you observe how a different society handles a similar problem, you can see how parochial your own society’s approach might have been.

I was struck by this point in reading the work of B.R. Ambedkar, the famous advocate for the rights of India’s lowest caste groups (formerly called “untouchables” and now called “scheduled caste” or SC, referred to by Ambedkar as Dalit or “oppressed”). The particular work of Ambedkar’s I was reading was a famous undelivered speech entitled Annihilation of Caste.