Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste

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B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) was the first Dalit or low-caste Hindu to be formally educated to the highest level, gaining his PhD in the West. Despite this achievement he remained true to his origins, fighting for Dalit rights throughout his life. No one today doubts Ambedkar's status as India's first and foremost Dalit. For years, Ambedkar waged a lonely battle against India's higher-caste political establishment, which included Mahatma Gandhi, who resisted Ambedkar's effort to formalize and codify a separate identity for lower-caste Hindus. Nonetheless, Ambedkar became Law Minister in the first government of independent India, and chairman of the committee which drafted the Indian constitution, and was able to modify Gandhian attempts to influence India's polity. Jaffrelot focuses on the three key areas that are central to a full understanding of India's pioneering Dalit: Ambedkar as social theorist; ambedkar as statesman and politician; and Ambedkar as an opponent of caste Hinduism and advocate of Buddhism.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Christophe Jaffrelot

Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot is Research Director at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherch Scientifique) and teaches South Asian politics and history at Science Po (Paris). From 2000 to 2008, he was Director of CERI (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales) at Sciences Po. Dr Jaffrelot’s publications include The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s (1996 and 1999), India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (2003), and Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste (2005). He has also edited Pakistan: Natinalism without a Nation: (2002), and co-edited, with P.Van der Veer, Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in China and India (2008) as well as, with L Gayer, Militias of South Asia (2010).