Ambedkar, Politics, and Theology

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.           

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Notes

[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.