B.R. Ambedkar was intimately involved with many factors that created the basis of what India is today. At the same time, one cannot overlook Ambedkar’s ‘past’ and the fact that he grew up facing discrimination and being made to sit on the floor outside the classroom as a child, as he was a Dalit. Even today, millions of Dalit children face similar discrimination in their everyday life. Such incidents are distinct reminders of the continuing relevance of Ambedkar and the uncivil and barbaric nature of India’s ‘civil’ society.
This book brings together a wide variety of scholarly ideas: the way ‘Aryans’ are perceived in Dalit historical thinking; seeing the problem of Dalit liberation through the lenses of Adam Smith; the election of the Constituent Assembly (1946) with which Ambedkar was intimately involved, and which scripted India’s Constitution; the approach of Gandhi and Ambedkar to the process of planning and India’s economic development; and Ambedkar’s attitude to Marx and Buddha, as well as Dalit Christianity. This book also includes a comparative study of Ambedkar and some of his contemporaries like Charan Singh and Ram Manohar Lohia in Uttar Pradesh.