ABSTRACT
This chapter argues how the idea of Brahmin becomes an original, and how attempts have been made by various reformers since the medieval period to recover the true meaning of the notional Brahmin. The articulations of the medieval reformers, that the empirical Brahmins are not true to the meaning of the ideal Brahmin, are read through the philosophy of translation and related with Sarukkai’s thesis of untranslatability of mathematics. We conclude that in the act of translating the ‘ideal’ Brahmin, the touch-un-ability of the ‘ideal’ Brahmin remains hidden or erased. Further, this chapter addresses the issue of how the subject-centric nature of touch-un-ability would not be translated either linguistically or socially. This chapter puts forth the argument that in the process of translation the objects for an un-touch sense of a subject are transformed into objects for the sense of touch of the subject. The object remains an object and cannot become an autonomous subject, in the act of translation. The conflict between Gandhi and Ambedkar is read through the untranslatability of the subject’s touch-un-ability.
