B. R. Ambedkar

Agora

B. R. Ambedkar

1891–1956

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Caste must be abolished, not softened, because democracy means living together as equals – and he found that ethics in the Buddha’s teaching.

Placement

South Asian & Tibetan Philosophy · South Asia · Politics & Law, Society & History, Ethics, Religion

Dalit jurist, philosopher and architect of India’s constitution: caste must be annihilated, not reformed; democracy is a mode of associated living – and the Buddha’s Dhamma an ethics of equality.

Key ideas

Annihilation of caste
Social democracy
Navayana Buddhism

Teachers: John Dewey

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Influence

Influenced by 4

Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

influenced by ✓
Ambedkar converted to Buddhism in 1956 and in The Buddha and His Dhamma (1957) read the Buddha’s teaching as a rational social ethic of equality against caste. B. R. Ambedkar, The Buddha and His Dhamma (1957); E. Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit (1992)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) › c. 480–400 BCE · conventionally dated 563–483 BCE
Kabir

influenced by ✓
Ambedkar named Kabir, with the Buddha and Phule, as one of his three teachers; he had grown up in a family devoted to Kabir’s teaching. B. R. Ambedkar, speech at Purandare Stadium, Bombay, 28 Oct. 1954; D. Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission (1954; 3rd ed. 1971)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Kabir › c. 1440–1518
Jyotirao Phule

influenced by ✓
Ambedkar dedicated Who Were the Shudras? (1946) to Phule as ‘the greatest Shudra of modern India’ and took up his critique of Brahmin dominance. B. R. Ambedkar, Who Were the Shudras? (1946), dedication; R. O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology (1985)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Jyotirao Phule › 1827–1890
John Dewey studied with

studied with ✓
Ambedkar studied at Columbia from 1913 to 1916 and took Dewey’s courses; his doctorate in economics was supervised by Edwin Seligman, but on Dewey’s death in 1952 he wrote that he owed Dewey his whole intellectual life. A. P. Mukherjee, “B. R. Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Meaning of Democracy”, New Literary History 40 (2009); S. R. Stroud, The Evolution of Pragmatism in India (2023)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
John Dewey › 1859–1952

Criticism

Criticizes 2

Karl Marx

criticised
In “Buddha or Karl Marx” (written 1956) Ambedkar accepted Marx’s critique of exploitation but rejected violence and the dictatorship of the proletariat: the Buddha’s way of persuasion and moral change, he argued, reaches the same goal more lastingly. B. R. Ambedkar, “Buddha or Karl Marx” (1956), in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, vol. 3 (1987)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Mohandas K. Gandhi

criticised
Ambedkar held that Gandhi’s defence of varna and his paternalism towards the ‘Harijans’ preserved caste, which only its annihilation could end (Annihilation of Caste, 1936). B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, 1936; What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, 1945
Evidence: AI draft
Mohandas K. Gandhi › 1869–1948

Works

1936Annihilation of Caste
A speech the organisers cancelled and Ambedkar printed himself: caste rests on religious sanction and cannot be reformed – it must be destroyed.

Position

For Ambedkar caste was a system of graded inequality, maintained by endogamy and sanctioned by Hindu scriptures. It could not be reformed from within; its religious authority itself had to be rejected – the thesis of Annihilation of Caste. From Dewey he took the idea that democracy is not merely a form of government but a mode of associated living, demanding liberty, equality and fraternity in social life. He clashed with Gandhi, who defended an idealised varna order and in 1932, by fasting, pressed him to give up separate electorates for the “Depressed Classes”, as the colonial administration called the Dalits. In The Buddha and His Dhamma he reinterpreted Buddhism as a rational social ethics, later called Navayana.

Life & context

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born in 1891 at Mhow into a Mahar family, a caste then treated as “untouchable”. He studied in Bombay, at Columbia University – where John Dewey was among his teachers – and at the London School of Economics. He led Dalit movements, became independent India’s first Law Minister and chaired the drafting committee of the Constitution. Weeks before his death in 1956 he converted to Buddhism.