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Ambedkar's Political Philosophy: A Grammar of Public Life from the Social Margins

Online ISBN:
9780198925422
Print ISBN:
9780198925392
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Ambedkar's Political Philosophy: A Grammar of Public Life from the Social Margins

Valerian Rodrigues
Valerian Rodrigues

Former Professor

Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
, New Delhi,
India
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Published online:
25 June 2024
Published in print:
20 December 2024
Online ISBN:
9780198925422
Print ISBN:
9780198925392
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This study is organized around a set of key concepts that Ambedkar, the Indian thinker and leader of the socially marginalized, proposed to reconstruct public life, factoring in oppression and degradation. This framework conceived human beings as endowed with a distinct set of attributes entitling them to consideration as moral equals despite other differences among them. It also accorded a procedural priority to consciousness in human understanding. Ambedkar deployed this framework to contend against social institutions of caste, untouchability, and other forms of marginalities and to interrogate texts, traditions, and modes of social dominance. Ambedkar regards justice as foundational to modern societies. It called for ‘initial equality’ across its members while recognizing desert. All differential accomplishments, however, cannot be rewarded or compensated. Democracy is an essential requirement to resolve competing claims. As a self-governing mode of rule, democracy affords access to its members to multiple avenues of reach, learning, and enablement. Nationalism, a distinctive bond that precipitates with the entry of the masses into the political arena, is justiciable only if it has a definitive tilt towards democracy. Social relations, however, are caught in trappings of power across levels of a social ensemble. Control over state power is an indispensable condition to undermine dominance and enable the commons. The representational, constitutional, and institutional architecture of power must be geared to this end. Such a pursuit needs to be secured through an apt moral anchor shored up through religious sanctions. In Ambedkar’s view only Buddhism can measure up to this demand.

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