Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) was a radical thinker, economist, jurist, philosopher, and founder of a school of Buddhism. A prolific writer, he was the chief architect of the Indian Constitution and independent India's first law minister. In 1935, he publicly declared that though he was born a Hindu, he would not die as one. Ambedkar eventually embraced Buddhism a few months before his death in 1956.

Alex George, a philosophy graduate from Birkbeck College, London, is an editor with Navayana, an independent anticaste press.

S. Anand is the cofounder and publisher of Navayana. He is the coauthor of the graphic biography Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability (2011) and editor of the annotated edition of Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste (2014).

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, best known for Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture, and Political Economy, is a political thinker. His latest book is From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual: My Memoirs. He lives in Hyderabad.

Introduction: No Democracy Without Beef: Ambedkar, Identity, and Nationhood, by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
Fool's Errand: A Note on the Notes to and Selection from Ambedkar's The Untouchables, by S. Anand and Alex George
Selections from B.R Ambedkar's The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables?
Preface
Part IV: New theories of the origin of Untouchability.
9: Contempt for Buddhists as the root of Untouchability
10: Beef-eating as the root of Untouchability
Part V: The new theories and some hard questions
11: Did the Hindus never eat beef?
12: Why did non-Brahmins give up beef-eating?
13: What made the Brahmins become vegetarians?
14: Why should beef-eating make Broken Men Untouchable?
Part VI: Untouchability and the date of its birth
15: The Impure and the Untouchables
16: When did Broken Men become Untouchables?
The Broken Men theory: Beginnings of a Reading, by Alex George and S. Anand
References
Acknowledgments
Index