Ambedkar, Politics, and Theology
Y. T. Vinayaraj
(Article published in Theology for Our Times, Ecumenical Christian Center Bangalore, April 2014)
Any renewal of the political order
required a renewal of theology. John D. Caputo and Catherine Keller[1]
Introduction
Political thought, whether it is of the
‘West’ or the ‘Rest’ bears the signature of a theology. It was Giorgio Agamben who exposed the
Christian theological inheritance of the Western political thought. Agamben
theorizes the social location of the bare
life—people live outside of the territory of laws of immigration,
nationality and citizenship which reconfigure the notions of state, law and
justice.[2]
Agamben’s
political theory of ‘the state of exception’ signifies a radical turn in the Continental
political thought as it is being appropriated or even critically engaged by the
postcolonial political philosophers. Taking
the cue from those critical engagements with the Continental philosophical
thought, this study tries to analyze B. R. Ambedkar’s political thought in the
contemporary postmodern/ postcolonial context and explores its theological
implications for envisaging a subaltern political theology in Indian context.
As in the case of Agamben, the political thought
of Ambedkar which is termed as the subaltern political thought exposes the hegemonic
epistemological foundation of Indian socio-political order which excludes
certain sections of people in the account of the social practice—caste that is
legitimized by certain elitist epistemologies and theologies. As an interlocutor of colonial modernity,
Ambedkar’s political intention is to explore the possibility of democratizing
of the democracy on the basis of a social ethics which is rooted in Indian
materialist philosophical discourses.
Here Ambedkar’s political thought remains unique due to its non-Western
philosophical foundation while exploring the multiplex inhabitations within the
colonial modernity. This study tries to
re-read or re-locate Ambedkar in the philosophical discourses of the Indian
political thought while allowing him to interact with the other
post-Continental political thinkers as well. It is argued here that Ambedkar’s
political thought signifies a radical turn not only in the Indian political thought
but also in the Continental political philosophical tradition. Theological
engagement with Ambedkar’s political thought doesn’t mean just attaching
certain Christian categories like God, Christ, kingdom of God or liberation to
his political thought and argue that he is eligible to be called as a
liberation theologian; rather it is to explore deep into his epistemological
discontents with Christian theology and Christianity on his way to envisage
radical social democracy in India. This study
has four major sections: (1) Ambedkar’s epistemological itinerary; (2) The political
philosophy of Ambedkar; (3) Religion after Ambedkar; (4) A theological
engagement with Ambedkar’s political thought.
1.
Ambedkar’s Epistemological Itinerary
Despite of his academic training in
Deweyan pragmatism, Ambedkar appears to be a postcolonial interlocutor of the
colonial modernity.[3] Ambedkar takes a departure from the notion of
the universality of the Western enlightenment ideals such as liberty and
freedom, and initiates a deviation from the universal reason to social ethics or
morality which is founded on Indian materialistic philosophies and religious
traditions. It is here Ambedkar deviates from the Habermasian communicative theory
that presupposes the universality of reason, and locates himself in a
postcolonial theoretical location through which he appropriates or rejects the
colonial notions of liberal subjectivity. Of course, Ambedkar prefers the
scientific thinking and the enlightenment notions as it is in the Deweyan
pragmatism, but that is to challenge the irrational Brahmanic-Hindu knowledges
on social order and democracy which is inherently hegemonic and exclusive.[4]
In nut shell, Ambedkar’s subaltern political
thought opens up a dialogical epistemological space within colonial modernity
which appropriated with the indigenous knowledges of social morality and
politics.
Another important discipline that
Ambedkar engages with is Marxism. In his 1961 Columbia essay, ‘Castes in India’
describes caste as an ‘enclosed class’. According to Ambedkar it is the
‘enclosure of caste’ which gives caste their social coherence. Ambedkar uses the word class as a collectivity
formed around shared interest and the experience of exploitation. Ambedkar’s use of the term Dalit varga (class) is to signify the
governmental category of depressed classes through which he meant for a Dalit
political subjectivity in the modern context. Ambedkar-Marxist dialogue intensified
during the formation of the Independent labor party on 15 August 1936. Ambedkar used the category labor as an
inclusive category of depressed classes. Society is classified into various classes and
the depressed classes constitute the excluded-the marginalized. They are
excluded from all kinds of ownership, management, and production due to their
caste location. Ambedkar brought caste as a crucial factor in defining the
category-labor which is nothing but Ambedkar’s “interwar engagement with Marxism”.[5]
While signifying Ambedkar’s emphasis on caste in Indian socio-political
context, Anupama Rao clearly analyzes the inadequacy of the Marxist definition
of the category-labor in India. Rao
contends, “labor was thus underspecified
and overdescribed: it was an organizational element in union activism, a
category on whose behalf the Communist Party spoke, and a key category of
governance and legal regulation shaped by the joint requirements of industrial
capital and the resistances of strike action.”[6]
Ambedkar-Marx engagement ultimately led
to a postcolonial translation of Marxism which differentiates themselves in
their notions of power, body, and capital. Ambedkar contradicts with the
Marxist theory of labor and argues that in Indian context the labor of the
untouchables has no ‘value’ or ‘count’ because it is already defined as defiled
and impure. According to Rao, in Ambedkar-Marx dialogue the problem that involves
the collision of two kinds of body history, of the body as value, and the body
as dispossessed and disposable.[7]
In the Brahmanic Hindu social knowledge, the history of labor was embedded in
the theory of duty, varnadsramadharma, the
labor of the shudra was seva-the service to the social body. Taking
the cue from the Vedic epistemology, Gandhi defined labor as a social
gift-sacrifice for the social order. For Gandhi service is a ‘giving without
return’.[8]
Gandhi’s political philosophy of
non-violence was in fact inherently violent. For Ambedkar, the primary step for
the untouchables is to challenge the stigma embodied on their bodies and to
become ‘valuable’ bodies before go for emancipation through labor as Marx
proposed.
Along with Marx, Ambedkar initiates a
lifelong interaction with Buddha. Unlike Nagarjuna who takes a mystic turn with
Buddhism, Ambedkar takes a secular-political turn with Buddhism.[9]
Ambedkar engages with Buddhism through Marx.
Differently said, Ambedkar envisages a new form of Buddhism with the help of
Marx. Ambedkar re-interpreted Buddhism
as a morality-centric Dhamma based on the materialistic philosophy. Buddhism,
in its original form, is a heterodox philosophy that denies the Vedic
philosophy of God, soul, and karma. Ambedkar denies the philosophy of Hinduism
which is impotent to offer an open and free subjectivity and social life based
on liberty and fraternity. As Kancha Illaiah
writes Ambedkar re-constitutes Buddhism by defining God as a political
philosopher and human self as futurist and becoming through political
engagements.[10] Gail
Omvedt clearly states that it is the question of commitment to an egalitarian
society that led Ambedkar to approach Buddhism which hails from an
anti-hegemonic epistemological standpoint.[11]
Thus in Ambedkar’s political thought religion takes a political turn and
becomes ‘religion after religion’.
While reading Ambedkar’s the Buddha and his Dhamma, Raosaheb
Kasbe rightly analyzes that Ambedkar’s Buddha is not just the traditional
Buddha; but a Marx-like Buddha.[12]
Buddha, for Ambedkar, is a political philosopher who stands for a democratic
form of governmentality as it is theorized by Marx. However,
Ambedkar-Marx-Buddha dialogue is internally complex and contested one. Ambedkar
asks “Could the Buddha answer Karl Marx?” Ambedkar wanted Buddha to answer the
questions raised by Marx. By critiquing Marx for the inadequacy of his economic
theory and the theory of historical materialism in Indian context, Ambedkar
looks into the social formation of the economic-political system that is
epistemologically located in the ‘pure materialistic’ philosophies like Lokayata. Ambedkar finds epistemological
validity to fulfill the Marxist vision of classless society in the Buddhist
Dhamma which further needed to be reconstructed to be a postcolonial political
philosophy of casteless society. In short, the epistemological itinerary of
Ambedkar’s political thought locates itself in a locus of Dewey-Marx-Buddha
which is internally complicated, contested and disputed.
2.
Political
Philosophy of Ambedkar
Ambedkar’s political philosophy is
analyzed here in three focuses: (1) social precedes political; (2) ethical and
religious contents of political philosophy; (3) constitutional democracy and
the agency of law.
a.
Social Precedes Political
Ambedkar becomes the most prominent
political philosopher in the Indian political thought, based on his political
theorization of the problem of exclusion. According to Ambedkar there is a
permanent inconsistency in the political knowledge of Indian social order. Some
sections of people are permanently excluded and their struggle to enter into
the political domain constitutes democracy in India inherently problematic. In
this contested political situation, Ambedkar comes up with a new slogan: the
social precedes political.[13]
According to Ambedkar, it is the social content of democracy that enhances the
excluded one’s struggles to reorganize the social-political order. It is not
just the lack of the political conscience, but lack of the moral conscience
that becomes important in the Indian context of caste exclusion. Here Ambedkar offers a radical ‘punch’ to the
political philosophy which is internally destabilized and re-defined in terms
of the social morality and social democracy.
Kesava Kumar opines that the core of
the Ambedkarite political thought is constituted by two assumptions: ‘the
rights are protected not by law but by social and moral conscience of society,
and a democratic form of government presupposes a democratic form of society’.[14]
Unlike the Western tradition of democracy, in Ambedkar’s thought democracy is a
form of society, or a mode of associated living, and a social consciousness
which is founded on high values of morality. For Ambedkar the political
democracy presupposes a social democracy. Social democracy presupposes a
quality life based on social values of freedom, liberty, and justice. According
to Ambedkar, a democratic government means a democratic social structure that
brings revolution to the socio-political and economic life of the common people
without bloodshed. Here Ambedkar poses the potentiality to annihilate caste as
the major criteria to judge the fecundity of a political theory or practice in
Indian context.
b.
Ethical and Religious contents of the
Political Philosophy
Another significant specialty of the
Ambedkarite political thought is that is primarily ethical and religious.
According to Ambedkar, Indian social order which is fundamentally built on the
caste epistemology of the Vedic religiosity, is to be destabilized and denied on
the basis of the modern ideals of democracy, justice and liberty. The moral
standard of the Vedic religiosity is not at all acceptable due to its
exclusivist and enslaving theology. The authoritarian Hindu social order
delimits the freedom and enslaves the majority of the Indian polity. The
victims of the caste system are thrown out of the socio-political and economic
capitals of the society. Thus the social order is to be reconstituted on the
basis of equality, justice and the moral religiosity. Hinduism is not capable enough to provide an
ethical social life due to its caste epistemology. It is here Ambedkar brings
the question of religious conversion as political strategy for freedom and
social democracy.
Religion for Ambedkar is nothing but a
political community that gives a collective identity to the marginalized people
in India. Especially the modern Indian
context of nation-state necessitates a collective political identity that is
rooted in a religious identity. In the nation-state politics, it is the religious
collective identity that signifies the representation of plural sections of
people. Analyzing this consciously, Ambedkar argues for a religious identity
for the caste victims to be represented in the nation-state political power. Thus the notion of community becomes central
to Ambedkar’s political thought. For him, Hinduism is not qualified to be a
just community. Islam and Christianity, though they stand for egalitarianism,
are politically impotent to challenge the caste epistemology and its practices
in Indian context. For Ambedkar, Buddhism has the inherent potentiality to be a
moral community based on political reasoning and ethics.[15]
Buddhism, unlike Islam and Christianity, has had the history of challenging the
caste epistemology theologically and politically. Contrary to the Marxist
notion of class, Ambedkar’s ideal community is to be created through the moral
transformation of an individual from the caste status to the political
subjectivity. Ambedkar believes that Buddhism has the potential to initiate this
moral transformation because of its anti-casteist epistemological heritage and
the moral philosophy of political becoming through sangh.
c.
Constitutional Democracy and the Agency
of the Law
Ambedkar’s political philosophy is marked
by its basis on the constitutional democracy and the agency of the law. Ambedkar’s engagement with the British
government was to ensure the self –representability of the disadvantaged people
in the politic discourses of the state. If the untouchables are not represented
in the political process, that state becomes sectarian and exclusive. Here
Ambedkar exposes the assumption of the Western notion of state that it
represents all citizens irrespective of their social locations.[16]
The Western notion of the state always functions in the assumption that the
excluded are to be incorporated into the mainstream through its emancipatory
projects and thereby the state can become politically neutral. Contrary to the Western notion of the state,
Ambedkar destabilizes the notion of the neutrality of constitution of the state
and reconfigured it in terms of the multiple locations of its citizens on the
basis of a constitutional democracy and the agency of the law. Ambedkar focuses
on the political inclusion of the excluded through the constitutional spacing
and the agency of laws and thereby the very constitution of the notion of the
state itself can be re-imagined and re-configured. It is here Ambedkar
differentiates himself with the so called ‘nationalists’ and becomes an ‘anarchist’.
It is this ‘anarchist’ position of Ambedkar enforces the ‘nationalist wing’
like National Congress and Hindutua allies to call Ambedkar ‘anti-nationalist’.
In fact, in this position, the ‘nationalist wing’ becomes pro-colonial and
promoters of colonial modernity.
However, towards the end of his career
and political life, Ambedkar comes to the understanding that there is a
limitation to the fulfillment of the social democracy and the annihilation of
caste through the legal means. Ambedkar stated on All India Radio in 1954: “I
deem the place of law very low; because I am not confident to say that law
would certainly be of any help with regard to violation of liberty and
equality”.[17] Thus
Ambedkar moves towards the social role of religion in functioning of a social
democracy. J. Soske rightly says that ‘Ambedkar moved away from his expanded
ideal of state-driven transformation not because he rejected its
presuppositions: many of them reappeared in his advocacy of Buddhism as a civic
religion’.[18] Of
course, in the law’s place, he advocated the criterion of a new socio-cultural-political
community as the power capable of producing social consciousness and a shared
moral order. Conversion to Buddhism was a political agenda of Ambedkar to
envisage a political community, political practice and a political theology
that challenge the casteist social order and promote political subjectivity to
the disenfranchised in the Indian context.
d.
Ambedkar and the Continental Political Philosophy
Continental philosophy as a
post-enlightenment Western thought emerges out of the crisis of Western liberalism.
In the modern world dominated by Europe, liberalism has functioned to support
both economic capitalism and political democracy. The political democracy that
continues to support neoliberal capitalism encountered severe criticism from
the post-Continental philosophers for being authoritarian and sovereign.[19]
The concept of sovereignty embedded in the modern political democracy has been
severely criticized by Giorgio Agamben’s political theory of ‘state of
exception’. According to Agamben, there are some people who live in the ‘state
of exception’-‘the living dead’-that destabilizes the notion of the sovereignty
of the state. Interrogating the notion of sovereign state, Jacques Derrida
proposes the theory of ‘democracy to-come’ that invokes a constant
deconstruction of the political process in order to envisage an ever differing
meaning of democracy and political subjectivity. Hardt and Negri, on the other
hand, come up with the notion of ‘multitude’ that signifies the political power
of the common people as it is opposed to the notion of sovereignty in a post-liberal
and postcolonial democratic political process.
Following Foucault’s theory of
bio-politics, Agamben highlights the inability of the force of law to
deconstruct the social body from the discursive formulation of the sovereignty.
Here Agamben explains the crisis of the Western political philosophy as it
finds difficulty to reconfigure social order out of its liberal,
individualistic, rational and sovereign political epistemological framework. Gilles Deleuze tries to address this crisis
by fixing it with his theory of ‘event’. Deleuze talks about an unconscious
event through which we dream for the force of law beyond the law. The problem
with these Western political thoughts is that they are founded on certain
psychoanalytic ideas and literary aesthetics, rather than political engagements
of the marginalized people. It is here Ambedkar’s political philosophy remains
significant and different for a postcolonial political thought. Ambedkar’s
political thought is rooted in the political engagements of the excluded as
they take on the hegemonic notions of political power and social order. It is
located in the ethical and religious values rather than psychoanalytic ideas
and liberal values of capitalism. Unlike the Continental political philosophy,
Ambedkar’s political philosophy is located in the political becoming of the
subaltern subjectivity as they struggle to erupt a multiphonic democracy based
on the indigenous materialistic philosophies and the heterodox religious
traditions.
3.
Religion
after Ambedkar
Ambedkar differentiates the concept of religion
and Dhamma. Keeping Hinduism in mind, he defines religion as personal whereas
Dhamma is social. According to Ambedkar, Hinduism as a reformed Brahmanic
philosophy, is ritualistic and thus forms enslaving subjectivities. On the other hand, Dhamma stands for righteousness
which means right relationship with all. Dhamma necessitates relationship and
vice versa. Society cannot do without Dhamma. Dhamma leads to liberty and
justice. Dhamma consists of prajna
(reason) and karuna (compassion). It
is the understanding with compassion and ethics keeps our social life righteous
and democratic.[20]
Following Buddha, Ambedkar held the view
that religion is connected with revealing the beginning of things or the origin
of the world whereas Dhamma is to reconstruct the world. Dhamma is founded on
morality. The main content of religion consists of God, soul, prayers, worship,
rituals ceremonies, and sacrifices. Transcendence is foundational for religion
whereas Dhamma is built on immanence. The root of Dhamma is not rituals rather
it is morality. According to Ambedkar, morality comes in religion only human
comes in relationship fellow human. Religion asks us to be moral because we are
all connected to God. Be good to your neighbor because we are children of
God. In religion, morality is just an
attachment. For religion, morality is casual and occasional and thus it is a secondary
thing. On the other hand, Dhamma is
nothing but morality. In Dhamma, morality takes the place of God, although
there is no God in Dhamma. Morality in Dhamma does not need any divine
sanction. It arises out of the human relationship for liberty, freedom and
justice.
Morality in Dhamma is considered as
sacred because it stands for the protection of the weak. Survival of the
weakest is the social imperative behind the morality. It is the morality or the
politics of the survival of the weakest what determines the progress of the
society. As in the case of religion, Dhamma is not controlled by ceremonies,
rituals and liturgies, rather social morality that sustains the society sacred.
Dhamma is not just rhetorical, rather it is practical and thus internally
political.
Ambedkar’s definition of religion
becomes significant in the post-religious and post-secular context. In Ambedkar’s political thought, religion
(Dhamma) is treated as a political philosophy through which the binarism
between the secular and the sacred is being denied and it is being immanently
connected to the political process of becoming. The reconfiguration of the
subjectivities is inherently connected with the socio-political and the
material relations which are founded on morality or Dhamma. Dhamma as a
political form of religion (Dhamma) becomes significant in Ambedkar’s thought
through which it transgresses the limitations of both Marxism and the
traditional Buddhism. When this
political thought of Ambedkar comes into dialogue with Christianity, the
problem becomes intensified since Christianity is assumed as the epitome of ‘The
Religion’.
Despite of its egalitarianism, Ambedkar
was skeptic about the potentiality and the usefulness of Christian theology in
challenging the caste knowledges and its practices. According to Ambedkar,
Christianity is good to be preached, but not to be practiced. For him, Christianity is purely spiritual. Christian
spirituality is unrelated to the material life and thus it is politically
unproductive. Ambedkar argues that it is evident in the life of the Dalits who
converted to Christianity. The Christian converted Dalits, in Ambedkar’s
perspective, become apolitical and inactive due to the transcendent content of
the Christian doctrines. Analyzing the missionized theology in India, Ambedkar tries
to expose the theological inconsistency within the doctrinal discourses of
Christian missionary program:
Instead of being taught that their fall was due to a wrong
social and religious environment and that for their environment they must
attack the environment, they were taught their fall was due to their sin.
Consequently the Dalit Christians instead of being empowered to conquer their
environmental context, conferred themselves with the belief that there is no
use of struggling, for the simple reason that their fall is due to the sin
committed not by them but by some remote ancestors of their called Adam and
Eve.[21]
According to James Massey, here Ambedkar
stresses that when a Dalit Christian ‘was a Hindu his fall was due to his karma. When he becomes a Christian he
learns that his fall is due to the sins of his ancestor. In either case, there
is no escape for him.’[22]
In Ambedkar’s political thought, the transcendental framework of Christianity is
being strongly interrogated and the Christian theology is being invoked to deconstruct
its doctrinal fecundity in a postcolonial political content.
4.
Ambedkar, Politics, and Theology
As
Agamben exposes, Christian Theology is inherently political. In the Western
tradition, what is political is always theological. However, through the
formation of political theology in the modern philosophical context, Christian
theology tried to cover up this inherent coalition and pretend to be neutral to
become capable enough to talk about democracy, justice, and freedom. The emergence
of the postcolonial theologies exposes the “imperio-colonial sense” of the
Christian Theology and tries to envisage theologies differently in the post-Christendom
context. While explaining the potential
space of the postcolonial theologies, Catherine Keller emphatically contends:
“With its (Christian Theology’s) imperial success, the church, one might argue,
absorbed an idolatry of identity: a metaphysical Babel of unity, an identity
that homogenizes the multiplicities it absorbs, that either excludes or
subordinates every creaturely other, alter, subaltern”.[23]
It is here the postcolonial theology,
that differentiates itself from the “imperio-colonial sense” of the Christian
Theology and rooted in the subaltern ethical and religious theological
epistemology, becomes imperative in the Indian theological context.
Dalit theology in India, on the other
hand, followed uncritically the epistemological foundations of Christian
Theology and never tried to engage with the philosophical framework of its
doctrinal discourses as we see in the political thought of Ambedkar. Dalit
theology tried to appropriate and incorporate Ambedkar into theological
discourses without attending his epistemological differences and contestations.
This is true in the case of all contextual theologies and public theologies in
India that pretend to be political in content. Ambedkar’s political thought
cannot be incorporated to Christian theology easily. The political thought of Ambedkar remains
insoluble and unfathomable for Christian Theology. To engage with the Ambedkar’s subaltern
political thought, Christian Theology has to go through certain foundational reconfigurations
and changes. Ambedkar’s political
thought invokes Christian Theology to take a postcolonial and subaltern
epistemological turn which is rooted in the materialist philosophical
traditions in India. Christian Theology has to prove its theological and
doctrinal fecundity to be a de-casteist epistemology. The offering of salvation
to the sinful bodies, whether it is human body or social body, through the
transcendentalist notions of the sacramental theology faces interrogation in
the Ambedkarite subaltern political thought. For Ambedkar, Christian theology
seems to be apolitical and impotent to challenge the caste formations of
subjectivity. In short, a theological engagement with the subaltern political
thought of Ambedkar provokes Christian theology to take a postcolonial and
materialist turn that even destabilizes the philosophical foundations of
Christian Theology itself. Differently
said, engagement with Ambedkar’s political thought is a ‘crucifixion point’ for
Christian Theology that necessitates new resurrections in the political
programs of the disenfranchised in the Indian context.
Conclusion
It was Ambedkar who unsettled the
settled logic of Indian social order and reconstructed it on the basis modern
notions of social democracy and equality.
Ambedkar was not just an interpreter of the colonial modernity; rather
he twisted its head towards a social democracy of equality and justice. In his
political thought, both the process of secularization and the religious-moral
foundations are being interrogated and reformulated for the excluded mass of Indian
population. The question of social
agency and the recognition of the ‘broken people’—Dalits in the Indian
socio-political realm signifies Ambedkar’s political thought in the
contemporary transnational political context. Ambedkar’s subaltern political thought
due to its foundation in the materialistic philosophical tradition and in the
ethical-religious values rather than liberal, capitalistic values of the
Western democracy locates itself in post-Continental philosophical framework.
Ambedkar’s political philosophy remains
unassimilable for Christian Theology. It is not just easy to absorb him into
the philosophical foundation of Christianity. Christian Theology has to be
destabilized epistemologically and philosophically in order to attend the
political thought of Ambedkar. Ambedkar’s
political thought remains unincorporated and unfathomable for Christian
Theology. There is a tendency among the Christian theologians to theologize
everything by adding some Christian categories like liberation, salvation, and
redemption to anything. At least
Ambedkar needs to be saved from any kind of such incorporation and
accommodation into the all-embracing philosophical foundation of Christianity. The ‘irreducible singularity’ of Ambedkar’s subaltern
political thought is to be affirmed and differentiated. It was his desire for becoming a political
community through which the excluded ones envisage a political subjectivity and
social democracy lead him to embrace Buddhism and to reject Christianity. The
challenge before Christian Theology in India is to reconfigure its
epistemological and philosophical foundations that delimit its potential to
become a subaltern political practice which locates its epistemological
habitation in Indian materialistic philosophies and heterodox religious
traditions.
[1] Catherine Keller and John D. Caputo,
‘Theopoetic/ Theopolitic,’ Crosscurrents, March 2007,Vol. 60, Issue
1: 105-111.
[2] Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2005
[3] Dewey was Ambedkar’s teacher in the
Columbia University, New York. There are some studies that define Ambedkar as a
statist. It is a misunderstanding of Ambedkar’s political reading and a
misreading of Deweyan pragmatism. For
e.g. Keith Hebden, Dalit Theology and
Christian Anarchism (USA & London: Ashagate, 2011), 87. Dewey had never been a statist.
[4] Pradeep Gokhale, ‘Dr. Ambedkar as a
Philosopher: Beyond Reductionism,’ in The
Philosophy of Dr. B. R. Amedkar, edited by Pradeep Gokhale (Pune: Indian
Philosophical Quarterly Publication, 2008), 1-25.
[5] Anupama Rao, ‘Revisiting interwar
thought: Stigma, labor, and the immanence of caste-class,’ in The Political Philosophies of Antonio
Gramsci and B. R. Ambedkar: Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns edited by
Cosimo Zene (London & New York: Routledge, 2013), 43-58.
[6] Ibid., 48-49.
[7] Ibid., 52.
[8] Ibid., 55.
[9] Pradeep Gokhale, ‘Dr. Ambedkar as a
Philosopher: Beyond Reductionism,’ 6.
[10] Kancha Illaiah, God as Political Philosopher, Buddha’s Challenge to Brahmanism
(Culcutta: Samya, 2000).
[11] Gail Omvedt, Buddhism in India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003)
[12] Raosaheb Kasbe, Ambedkar ani Marx cited by
Pradeep Gokhale, ‘Dr. Ambedkar as a Philosopher: Beyond Reductionism, 13.
[13] Kesava Kumar, ‘Political Philosophy of
B. R. Ambedkar: A Critical Understanding, International
Research Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 1 No.2, pp 193-210, 2008,
Pondicherry University, Pondicherry.
[14] Ibid., 4-5.
[15] Harish Wnkhede, ‘The Political and
Social in the Dalit Movement Today,’ in Economic
& Political Weekly, February 9, 2008, 50-57.
[16] Valerian Roudrigues, ed., The Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 61.
[17] Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, edited by Vasant moon and Hari Narke, Vol. 17
(3): 503, Mumbai Education Department, Government of Maharashtra.
[18] Jon Soske, ‘The other prince, Ambedkar,
constitutional democracy, and the agency of the law,’ in The Political Philosophies, 70.
[19] Douglas Harink, ed., Paul, Philosophy and the Theopolitical
Vision, Critical Engagements with Agamben, Badiou, Zizek, and Others (Eugene:
Cascade Books, 2010).
[20] Aakash Singh Rathore and Ajay Verma,
eds. B. R. Ambedkar: the Buddha and his
Dhamma, A Critical Edition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011),
167-221.
[21] Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol.7, Bombay Education Department,
Government of Maharashtra, 1989, 471-2.
[22] James Massey, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, A Study in Just Society (New Delhi: Center for
Dalit/ Subaltern Studies, 2003), 60.
[23] Catherine Keller, “The Love of
Postcolonialism: Theology in the Interstices of Empire,” in Postcolonial Theologies, Divinity and Empire,
edited by Catherine Keller and et al. (Missouri: Chalice Press, 2004), 223.
