Content Warning: This text contains intense criticisms of religious beliefs, specifically those in Hinduism. It also references social discrimination and systemic oppression.

Composing the Prologue, Ambedkar outlines the precise nature of the text at hand and how it came to be. Including numerous letters from others, as well as those he himself wrote and sent, the Prologue summarizes the circumstances in which the book was published after originally being written as a speech to be delivered.

The author originally received an invitation from the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal to act as the presider of a scheduled conference on reform of the Hindu caste system. Ambedkar agreed and wrote a speech he planned to deliver at the conference. Upon composing the speech he sent it to the organizers to read ahead of time, and finding the speech needlessly incendiary in certain places, they requested he revise it.

Ambedkar abjectly refused, stating the following objection to their proposal:

If any of you had even hinted to me that in exchange for the honour you were doing me by electing as President, I was to abjure my faith in my programme of conversion, I would have told you in quite plain terms that I cared more for my faith than for any honour from you (Prologue).