The Doctor and the Saint

The Doctor and the Saint
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Haymarket Books+ORM
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2017-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1608467988

The little-known story of Gandhi’s reluctance to challenge the caste system, and the man who fought fiercely for India’s downtrodden. Democracy hasn’t eradicated caste, argues bestselling author and Booker Prize–winner Arundhati Roy—it has entrenched and modernized it. To understand caste today in India, Roy insists we must examine the influence of Gandhi in shaping what India ultimately became: independent of British rule, globally powerful, and marked to this day by the caste system. Roy states that for more than a half century, Gandhi’s pronouncements on the inherent qualities of black Africans, Dalit “untouchables,” and the laboring classes remained consistently insulting, and he also refused to allow lower castes to create their own political organizations and elect their own representatives. But there was someone else who had a larger vision of justice—a founding father of the republic and the chief architect of its constitution. In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy introduces us to this contemporary of Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, who challenged the thinking of the time and fought to promote not merely formal democracy, but liberation from the oppression, shame, and poverty imposed on millions of Indians by an archaic caste system. This is a fascinating and surprising look at two men—one of whom has become a worldwide symbol and the other of whom remains unfamiliar to most outside his native country. Praise for Arundhati Roy “Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness.” —Junot Díaz “The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.” —Alice Walker

Radical Equality

Radical Equality
Author: Aishwary Kumar
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2015-06-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 080479426X

B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of India's constitution, and M.K. Gandhi, the Indian nationalist, two figures whose thought and legacies have most strongly shaped the contours of Indian democracy, are typically considered antagonists who held irreconcilable views on empire, politics, and society. As such, they are rarely studied together. This book reassesses their complex relationship, focusing on their shared commitment to equality and justice, which for them was inseparable from anticolonial struggles for sovereignty. Both men inherited the concept of equality from Western humanism, but their ideas mark a radical turn in humanist conceptions of politics. This study recovers the philosophical foundations of their thought in Indian and Western traditions, religious and secular alike. Attending to moments of difficulty in their conceptions of justice and their languages of nonviolence, it probes the nature of risk that radical democracy's desire for inclusion opens within modern political thought. In excavating Ambedkar and Gandhi's intellectual kinship, Radical Equality allows them to shed light on each other, even as it places them within a global constellation of moral and political visions. The story of their struggle against inequality, violence, and empire thus transcends national boundaries and unfolds within a universal history of citizenship and dissent.

Ambedkar, Gandhi and Patel

Ambedkar, Gandhi and Patel
Author: Raja Sekhar Vundru
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2017-12-10
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9386826240

In 1931 Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. B R Ambedkar met in London and clashed on the future of India's electoral system. Later in 1932 when the British announced reserved seats for dalits, Gandhi went on a fast unto death. Ambedkar saved his life by agreeing to the changed terms of representation, which changed the course of electoral system of India. The Gandhi - Ambedkar engagement was only on the electoral system and method of election by separate electorates which Muslims enjoyed till then. Till the partition of India in 1947, the draft Constitution provided reserved seats for minorities and Dalits, which Sardar Patel chose to abolish. The fate of India's electoral system shifted to Ambedkar and Sardar Patel after Gandhi's assassination in 1948. Sardar Patel tried to abolish reserved seats for Dalits also in 1948 only to be thwarted by Ambedkar. Those reserved seats continue. Based on a singular pursuit of tracing the electoral system and methods that define India-the world's largest democracy, this book is the first to document the evolution and account of electoral history of colonial and independent India. Do we know how Sardar Patel and Gandhi used electoral system to integrate India? Since the first provincial elections in 1937, do we know that double member constituencies existed till 1961, only to be abolished by Jawaharlal Nehru? Do we know that Ambedkar lost his first election in independent India because voters threw away their ballots? If we need women reserved seats, we need to know that we might have to try to double member constituencies. This book tells all. The story of electoral thoughts and ideas of Ambedkar, Gandhi and Patel and Ambedkar's struggle to get a representative electoral system appear for the first time in a book. In India only election results are predicted, analysed and compiled. The electoral method that determines India's every election comes into focus in this book. Can any political party get away without offering tickets to one minority community or Dalits? The history is the answer to the future - through this book.

What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables

What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables
Author: Bhimrao Ambedkar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-05-17
Genre:
ISBN:

The book investigates in depth the outcomes of the Provincial Legislative Elections held in February 1937 in accordance with the Government of India Act of 1935. In sharp contrast to the dominant, bourgeois-dominated Congress party, Dr. Ambedkar provides a perceptive picture of the absence of political rights enjoyed by Scheduled Caste candidates (during the election). This book also seeks to debunk the misconception that Mahatma Gandhi was the "benefactor" of the Dalit.

Annihilation of Caste

Annihilation of Caste
Author: B.R. Ambedkar
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 178168832X

“What the Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world, Annihilation of Caste is to India.” —Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste The classic work of Indian Dalit politics, reframed with an extensive introduction by Arundathi Roy B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar – a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois – offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to the provocation. The hatchet was never buried. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste in “The Doctor and the Saint,” examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy takes us to the beginning of Gandhi’s political career in South Africa, where his views on race, caste and imperialism were shaped. She tracks Ambedkar’s emergence as a major political figure in the national movement, and shows how his scholarship and intelligence illuminated a political struggle beset by sectarianism and obscurantism. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar’s anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality.

Gandhi Aur Ambedkar

Gandhi Aur Ambedkar
Author: Ganesh Mantri
Publisher: Prabhat Prakashan
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9788173152757

गांधी और आंबेडकर पर अनेक छोटे-बडे़ अध्ययन हुए हैं; किंतु अस्पृश्यों की सामाजिक स्थिति में परिवर्तन की दृष्टि से उनके विचारों और कार्यों का अध्ययन आंशिक रूप से ही हुआ है। प्रस्तुत अध्ययन का उद्देश्य अस्पृश्यता के परिप्रेक्ष्य में गांधी और आंबेडकर का समग्र रूप से तुलनात्मक विवेचन करना है। इस पुस्तक में इन दोनों महान् व्यक्तियों के जीवन-संदर्भों; विचारधाराओं; स्वतंत्रता-संग्राम के समय की सामाजिक-राजनीतिक प्रक्रियाओं का विश्लेषण करते हुए; भारत की वर्तमान परिस्थितियों में दोनों के विचार और कर्म की भूमिका तथा दलितों की वर्तमान स्थिति में इनकी प्रासंगिकता की खोज की गई है। Gandhi Aur Ambedkar by Ganesh Mantri delves into the ideologies of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Explore their perspectives on social justice, equality, caste system, Dalit rights, and Indian nationalism. Understand their contributions to the Indian constitution, social reform, and nation-building for a transformative vision of a just society. Gain a deep understanding of the ideologies that shaped the Indian freedom movement with Gandhi Aur Ambedkar by Ganesh Mantri. This thought-provoking book explores the lives and philosophies of two iconic figures, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Discover their contrasting perspectives on social justice, equality, and nation-building, and how their ideas continue to resonate in contemporary India. Gandhi Aur Ambedkar, Ganesh Mantri, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, social justice, equality, caste system, Dalit rights, Indian constitution, social reform, political philosophy, emancipation, socio-political vision, nation-building, ideological perspectives, transformative leaders

Gandhi-Ambedkar Dispute

Gandhi-Ambedkar Dispute
Author: A. K. Vakil
Publisher:
Total Pages: 222
Release: 1991
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Views of Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948, and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, 1892-1956, Indian statesmen; on the removal of untouchability in India.

The Shudra

The Shudra
Author: Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-02-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9390914248

The Shudras echoes Dr Ambedkar's question in Who Were the Shudras? that he asked in 1946. More than 70 years later, Kancha Ilaiah and his team of authors revisit this issue to give Shudras a voice again' -CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT The Shudras: Vision for a New Path weaves together multiple dimensions of the predicament of India's productive castes-in the spiritual, social, political, economic, philosophical and historical spheres. It reformulates their current position as well as future pathways. It strives to provoke Shudras-including regional political party leaders-all over India to realize their unique historical role in fighting unequal caste structures. And it gives a call to resist Hindutva, in which they have no liberated, equal space with the Dwija castes. At a juncture when the Shudra castes are regionalized and the Dwijas have become 'national', the fifth volume of the Rethinking India series, in collaboration with the Samruddha Bharat Foundation, seeks to bring home the real picture of their marginalized status in all key structures of the nation. It posits that the emancipation and progress of the Shudras are vital to sustain Ambedkar's constitutional democracy and move towards socio-spiritual equality.