Thinker · TH-0074
B. R. Ambedkar
B. R. Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and political philosopher, born into a community treated as untouchable. He studied at Columbia…
भीमराव रामजी आंबेडकर
Also known as Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Babasaheb Ambedkar
1891 – 1956 · Mhow, Bombay, New York, London, Delhi, Nagpur
Traditions: Indian
B. R. Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and political philosopher, born into a community treated as untouchable. He studied at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, led movements against caste discrimination and chaired the drafting committee of the Constitution of India. He argued that justice requires dismantling caste as a graded hierarchy of birth, not merely redistributing within it. Shortly before his death he converted to Buddhism with a very large number of followers.
Key ideas
- Caste is a graded inequality of birth that must be annihilated, not reformed from within.
- Democracy is a mode of associated living, requiring social and not only political equality.
- Liberty, equality and fraternity must hold together; each fails without the others.
- Religion should be judged by its moral and social consequences, and Buddhism read as a rational social ethic.
Major works
- Castes in India (1916)
- Annihilation of Caste (1936)
- Who Were the Shudras? (1946)
- The Buddha and His Dhamma (1957, posthumous)
In the conversation
- Question If consent of the governed is the newcomer, what did legitimacy rest on before it?
- Question If a life has a place rather than a meaning, what happens when the place is unjust?
- Question Is Iris Marion Young right that most injustice is not about who gets what?
- Debate A role-based ethics gives too little protection to the person the roles are failing
- Reading group Reading group: Rousseau’s Social Contract in four weeks, in French and English
- Debate The Gita’s svadharma cannot be cleanly separated from varṇa, and readers should face Ambedkar’s reading