Foundations of Caste and Constitutional Democracy: Ambedkar, Equality and Law

The idea of a casteless society has been important to anti-caste leaders since premodern times. Anti-caste movements gained momentum in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the so-called non-Brahmin movements in the Madras and Bombay Presidencies were vibrant by the time Ambedkar was born in 1891. Ambedkar's father, for example, was inspired by the low-caste leader Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, who also came from Maharashtra. In the twenty-first century, one could find posters of Ambedkar in many Dalit homes, for example, in rural south India and elsewhere in the country. Statues of Ambedkar have been erected in cities such as Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kanpur. Occasionally, statues are vandalized by members of other castes, and in some cases, they have had to be protected, but the proliferation of statues is nonetheless significant. Ambedkar's role as a symbol of assertion is a result of his contribution to the crafting of constitutional entitlements for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and his relentless critique of caste. He marks a new chapter in the anti-caste project, representing constitutional entitlements and claims to universal values. In addition to his advanced scholarly thought, he created a legacy as a statesman who was instrumental in designing India's constitution with entitlements and principles such as equality. In this chapter, I focus on two topics of Ambedkar's legacy, namely his theory of caste annihilation and his contribution to the Constitution of India, 1950. The two topics must be unpacked separately if one is to understand each of them and how they relate to one another. The idea of abolishing caste is a revolutionary intellectual project of emancipation, whereas the second topic is a story about a liberal democrat who struggled but followed his vision for social reform by taking part in the negotiations and participating in the development of India's constitution. Ambedkar made a number of different contributions and was engaged in theoretical and practical battles. In a seminal essay, Professor Upendra Baxi discussed his roles and enumerated seven dimensions of Ambedkar's career. Political theory and constitutional politics, which I focus on, are two dimensions noted in Baxi's discussion, and they cannot be mixed up if one is to understand Ambedkar's different types of contributions.