When Ambedkar Chose Fire: Manusmriti Dahan Divas and the Struggle for Equality
Today, we mark Manusmriti Dahan Divas—a turning point in the struggle for dignity and equality. On December 25, 1927, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar led the public burning of the Manusmriti in Mahad, Maharashtra. The act was deliberately symbolic: not merely a rejection of a single text, but a refusal of what it had come to stand for—an ideological scaffolding for caste hierarchy and the policing of human worth. The Manusmriti (Manava Dharma Shastra) has often been invoked as a cornerstone of Brahminical social order, used to rationalize graded inequality and the denial of basic rights to those pushed to the margins of caste. Its prescriptions also reflect and reinforce misogyny, narrowing women’s freedoms and positioning them as lesser. Ambedkar understood that oppression survives not only through force, but through ideas that get disguised as “tradition.” Burning the Manusmriti was a refusal to let inherited doctrine masquerade as moral law.
via themooknayak.com
This history also matters because the backlash against an egalitarian, rights-based India was immediate. Just days after the Constitution was adopted in 1949, the RSS’s English-language mouthpiece Organiser lamented that the Constitution did not draw from “ancient” Indian legal traditions, and pointed admiringly to Manu’s laws—a revealing glimpse of the ideological world Ambedkar was resisting. In 2025, Manusmriti Dahan Divas remains more than remembrance. It is a call to action. Caste and gender oppression still shape institutions, neighborhoods, families, and everyday life—sometimes openly, sometimes through quieter forms of exclusion. To commemorate this day honestly is to recommit: to challenge what normalizes inequality, to stand with those who bear its weight, and to build a public culture where dignity is non-negotiable. May we keep moving toward the world Ambedkar insisted was possible—one grounded not in inherited hierarchy, but in justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity.
To learn more about Manusmriti Dahan Divas and its significance, check out these resources: Why 25 December Is Celebrated as “Manusmriti Dahan Divas”? – DalitDesk and Why Manusmriti Dahan Divas Is Still Relevant Today | Feminism in India and Constitution vs Manusmriti: The Sangh owes it to India to clarify its position
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