B.R. Ambedkar:
The Quest for Justice
Volumes 1-5
Edited by Aakash Singh Rathore
1. Political Justice
2. Social Justice
3. Legal and Economic Justice
4. Gender and Racial Justice
5. Religious and Cultural Justice
The five volumes of papers exploring the major themes of research surrounding the capacious oeuvre of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar provide a summary evaluation of the state of Ambedkar studies internationally, highlight research trends both about and inspired by Ambedkar, and open up lines of future enquiry.
Volume 1 focuses specifically on the theme of political justice, including explorations in political theory inspired by Ambedkarite thought.
Volume 2 examines key issues in social justice, especially in terms of Indian democracy, and provides a wide range of perspectives all anchored in Ambedkar’s work and writings.
Volume 3 covers legal and economic justice. The first part explores literature on the Constitution of India and its institutions, the idea of constitutional morality, rights and the rule of law, and Ambedkarite jurisprudence. The second part turns to a variety of issues in economic justice anchored in Ambedkar’s economic philosophy.
Volume 4 focuses on gender justice and racial justice. The first part explores Ambedkar’s impact on efforts to achieve gender justice in India, and effects various readings of Ambedkar as a feminist. The second part turns to comparisons of race and caste, and explores the ways in which the movements for racial justice and caste equality can learn from one another and seek strategies of synergy.
Volume 5 treats of religious justice and cultural justice. It covers topics such as conversion, Navayana Buddhism, and liberation theology. The second part explores timely issues in cultural justice inspired by Ambedkar’s own activism and struggles.
About the books: A Preface
The books form part of a five-volume publication entitled B.R. Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice, an ambitious project that originated during the B.R. Ambedkar International Conference, ‘Quest for Equity’, held at Bengaluru, India, in July 2017, with some 350 speakers and thousands of participants. That conference took place keeping in view that the values of social, political, and economic justice that were so vigorously championed by Dr Ambedkar are now under attack at several levels: constitutional norms and pub- lic institutions created to fight against dominance and subservience have proved inadequate or have been subverted; norms and policy often merely pay lip service to egalitarian considerations; and the rise of social intolerance and exclusion tends to effectively whittle down and even sabotage an inclusive conception of polity and citizenship. The complexity of the social, political, and economic environment in which the value of social justice has to be envisaged too has undergone significant changes: we understand social inequality and diversity to be layered and multidimensional; and the State has to reckon with several competing centres of religious, communal, and cultural allegiances. Despite these serious challenges, new sites for social and political assertions have re-emerged, renewing the call for justice. These five volumes are very much part of that engagement.
Social activism in India today is inspired by Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s insightful lifework analysing complex social and political challenges and proposing daring and radical policy measures in response. His approach to critical intellectual and policy challenges may inspire similar interventions elsewhere in the world, particularly throughout the Global South. Thus, in the light of the conference, this five-volume collection emerged as an invitation to scholars and policymakers to substantially re-think current political, social, legal, economic, gender, racial, religious, and cultural paradigms motivated by Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s imaginative and creative work.
The project has succeeded in encouraging a wide interdisciplinary engagement among academics, scholars, activists, and policymakers on each of these themes, which are treated across the five volumes.
Social activism in India today is inspired by Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s insightful lifework analysing complex social and political challenges and proposing daring and radical policy measures in response. His approach to critical intellectual and policy challenges may inspire similar interventions elsewhere in the world, particularly throughout the Global South. Thus, in the light of the conference, this five-volume collection emerged as an invitation to scholars and policymakers to substantially re-think current political, social, legal, economic, gender, racial, religious, and cultural paradigms motivated by Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s imaginative and creative work.
The project has succeeded in encouraging a wide interdisciplinary engagement among academics, scholars, activists, and policymakers on each of these themes, which are treated across the five volumes.
“Bravo! This is breathtaking.”
— William A. Darity,
Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics, Duke University, USA
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Contents
Vol 1: Political Justice
Preface Aakash Singh Rathore
Acknowledgements S. Japhet
Foreword Shashi Tharoor
Introduction Aakash Singh Rathore
- Bhikhu Parekh The Intellectual and Political Legacy of B.R. Ambedkar
- Cosimo Zene B.R. Ambedkar and Antonio Gramsci: Justice for the Excluded, Education for Democracy
- Anand Teltumbde Ambedkar and Democracy: Critical Reflections
- Neera Chandhoke Repairing Complex Historical Injustice
- Pradeep Gokhale Dr Ambedkar and the Trio of Principles: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
- Vidhu Verma Discrimination, Colonial Injustice, and the Good Society
- Scott R. Stroud Communication, Justice, and Reconstruction: Ambedkar as an Indian Pragmatist
- J. Daniel Elam Of Castes and Crowds: B.R. Ambedkar’s Anticolonial Endosmosis
- Pushparaj Deshpande A Constellation of Ideas: Revisiting Ambedkar and Gandhi
- Shaunna Rodrigues Self-Respect as a Primary Political Ideal: Ambedkar’s Challenge to Political Theory
Volume II: Social Justice
Preface Aakash Singh Rathore
Acknowledgements S. Japhet
Foreword Valerian Rodrigues
Introduction Aakash Singh Rathore
- Martin Fuchs Ambedkar’s Theory of the Social: The Universal Condition of Recognition
- James Manor B.R. Ambedkar: Visionary and Realist
- G.C. Pal Caste and Delivery of Social Justice: Revisiting Ambedkar
- Meena Dhanda ‘Made to Think and Forced to Feel’: The Power of Counter-Ritual
- David N. Gellner, Krishna P. Adhikari, Arjun Bahadur B.K. Dalits in Search of Inclusion: Comparing Nepal with India
- Navyug Gill Ambedkar, Labour, and the Political Economy of Dalit Conversion in Colonial Panjab
- Shailaja Menon The Fractured Society of the Republic
- Karen Gabriel and Prem Kumar Vijayan Whose State Is It Anyway? Reservation, Representation, Caste, and Power
- Jagannatham Begari Reclaiming Social Justice and Deepening Democracy
- Suraj Yengde Ambedkar’s Internationalization of Social Justice
- Karthik Raja Karuppusamy Foregrounding Social Justice in Indian Historiography: Interrogating the Poona Pact
- Ajay Verma Ambedkar and the Metaphysics of Social Justice
Volume III: Legal and Economic Justice
Preface Aakash Singh Rathore
Acknowledgements S. Japhet
Foreword Sukhadeo Thorat
Introduction Aakash Singh Rathore
Part One: Legal Justice
- Upendra Baxi Lawless Law, Living Death, and the Insurgent Reason of Babasaheb Ambedkar
- R. Sudarshan B.R. Ambedkar’s Exemplary Adherence to Constitutional Morality
- Arvind Narrain Radical Constitutionalism: Towards an Ambedkarite Jurisprudence
- Antje Linkenbach B.R. Ambedkar’s Imaginations of Justice
- Umakant The Significance of Rights and Rule of Law under the Indian Constitutional Framework
- Anupama Rao B.R. Ambedkar and Indian Democracy
Part Two: Economic Justice
7. Vijay Gudavarthy Development through Informalization and Circulation of Labour: The Emerging Anatomy of an Uncivil Society
8. Joseph Tharamangalam India’s Paradox of ‘Hunger Amidst Plenty’ Has a Name: Caste-Based Discrimination and Exclusion
9. Aseem Prakash Dalits Enter the Indian Markets as Owners of Capital: Adverse Inclusion, Social Networks, and Civil Society
10. Pritam Singh Ambedkar’s Economic Methodology for Social Justice: The Centrality of Dalits
11. Jawed Alam Khan Economic Justice: Policy and Public Investment for Pasmanda Muslims
Volume IV: Gender and Racial Justice
Preface Aakash Singh Rathore
Acknowledgements S. Japhet
Foreword Shailaja Paik
Introduction Aakash Singh Rathore
Part One: Gender Justice
- Sanghmitra S. Acharya Double Disadvantage of Sanitation Workers and Government Responses
- Mushtaq Ahmad Malla The Shame of India: Stigma and Shame among Dalit Women in Rural Agricultural Relations
- Rajesh Raushan Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Ambedkar in Contemporary Context
- Sunaina Arya Ambedkar as a Feminist Philosopher
- Mala Mukherjee Ambedkar on Women’s Empowerment and the Status of Dalit Women in Karnataka
- Komal Rajak and N. Sukumar Constructing a New Female Subjectivity: Ambedkar’s Perspective
Part Two: Racial Justice
7. Moses Seenarine Organic Resistance: The Relevance of Ambedkar, Du Bois, and Garvey to Diaspora, Caste, Race, and Women’s Liberation
8. Goolam Vahed and Ashwin Desai Racelessness and Ambedkar’s Idea of Annihilation: Post-Apartheid South Africa
9. Kevin Brown and Lalit Khandare Common Struggles? Why There Has Not Been More Cooperation between African- Americans and Dalits
10. Goolam Vahed Can Ambedkar Speak to Africa? Colour, Caste, and Class Struggles in Contemporary South Africa
Volume V: Religious and Cultural Justice
Preface Aakash Singh Rathore
Acknowledgements S. Japhet
Foreword Kancha Ilaiah Shephard
Introduction Aakash Singh Rathore
Part One: Religious Justice
- Laurence R. Simon Searching for a Theology of Liberation in India
- Kanchana Mahadevan Ambedkar’s Critical Hermeneutics of Religion
- Debora Spini Civil Religion, Uncivil Society: Ambedkar’s Conception of a ‘Religion for Civil Society’
- Priyanka Jha Civil Religion, Uncivil Society: A Reflection on Baba Sahib Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s Conception of a ‘Religion for Civil Society’
- Bansidhar Deep B.R. Ambedkar’s Philosophy of Religion
- Matthew H. Baxter Two Concepts of Conversion at Meenakshipuram: Seeing through Ambedkar’s Buddhism and Being Seen in EVR’s Islam.
Part Two: Cultural Justice
7. Pramod K. Nayar Marginality, Suffering, Justice: Questions of Dalit Dignity in Cultural Texts
8. Y. Srinivasa Rao Asura: Myth into Cultural Reality
9. John Clammer Cultural Rights in the Context of Ambedkarite Social Justice
10. Raju Sakthivel Education in a Hierarchical Culture
11. Jadumani Mahanand Ambedkar in/and Academic Space
B.R. Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice
Volumes 1-5
Edited by Aakash Singh Rathore
Editorial Advisory Board
Anand Teltumbde
Annapurna Waughray
G. Haragopal
Kalpana Kannabiran
Laurence R. Simon
Meena Dhanda
Moses Seenarine
Rochana Bajpai
S. Japhet
S. Thorat
Suraj Yengde
Valerian Rodrigues