in Life/Philosophy
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar with Mr. Wallace Stevens at Columbia University after receiving Doctor of Laws (LLD) on June 5, 1952. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
The Paradox of Recognition
On Ambedkar’s birth anniversary, he will be praised. The headlines will call him a “Dalit leader,” the “architect of the Constitution,” a “social reformer,” the “voice of the oppressed.” Memorial lectures will be delivered. Statues will be garlanded. Political leaders across the spectrum will compete to claim his legacy.
All of this is true. And all of it is a confinement.
The language of praise, as it is currently structured, performs a subtle but systematic reduction. To call Ambedkar a “Dalit leader” is not incorrect, but it is incomplete. It suggests that his thought is for Dalits, about caste, relevant only to those who share his identity or his specific political project. It implies that his intellectual corpus belongs to a community, a moment, a struggle, not to the universal history of ideas.
Consider the contrast. Karl Marx is not reduced to a “workers’ leader” and left there. Michel Foucault is not confined to “prison reform.” Antonio Gramsci is not dismissed as merely a “communist activist.” These thinkers are read not because of the specific struggles they engaged, but because their concepts travel—because they speak to the human condition, because they illuminate structures of power that transcend any single context. A student of political theory in Japan reads Marx. A sociologist in Brazil reads Foucault. A philosopher in South Africa reads Gramsci. No one asks whether they have the “right” identity to engage these thinkers.
Ambedkar deserves the same. He is not merely a leader of a community; he is a political philosopher of the first rank. His analysis of graded inequality is a contribution to the sociology of stratification. His critique of majoritarianism is a contribution to democratic theory. His insistence on the interlocking of liberty, equality, and fraternity is a contribution to the philosophy of rights. His turn to conversion as a political act is a contribution to the study of religion and power.
And yet, he is not taught alongside Marx in political theory. He is not read alongside Weber in sociology. He is not cited alongside Rawls in philosophy. He is confined to “Dalit Studies,” to “South Asian Studies,” to the margins of the academy where his thought can be safely contained, acknowledged as important for those who study “caste,” but not required for those who study “society,” “power,” or “justice.”
This is the paradox of recognition: Ambedkar is honoured, but he is not heard. He is celebrated, but he is not read. He is present everywhere as a symbol, and nowhere as a thinker.
The Double Stage of Ambedkar Reception
What I call the “double stage” is a concept that resonates with, though it is not reducible to, existing distinctions between the visible and its constitutive outside—whether in Foucauldian analyses of power or Marxian accounts of structure. The term captures a specific operation of power: an official public scene that renders certain phenomena visible, speakable, and governable coexists with a social obscene that is strategically placed off-stage yet constitutively supports the scene. The scene provides legitimacy; the obscene provides substance.
In my earlier work on caste’s persistence in modern India, I have argued that caste operates through precisely this split. An official constitutional scene disavows hierarchy while a social obscene reproduces it through endogamy, social capital, informal networks, and episodic violence. The scene allows the obscene to flourish precisely by refusing to see it.
The reception of Ambedkar follows the same logic.
On the official scene, Ambedkar is publicly honoured. His portrait hangs in Parliament. His statue stands in courthouses. His birth anniversary is commemorated by the state. He is invoked by politicians across the ideological spectrum—from the Left to the Right, from Dalit parties to Savarna-dominated formations. He is credited as the “architect of the Constitution,” the “father of social justice,” the “champion of the oppressed.”
This is the scene of recognition. It is real, it is visible, and it is partial.
In the social obscene, beneath this official scene, Ambedkar’s thought is engaged very differently across different social locations. The fragmentation of his reception is not accidental; it is structural. It follows the logic of caste itself.
The central claim is this: Ambedkar circulates because he is fragmented. The radical whole is threatening; the fragmented parts are useful. The academy, the media, the political class, they all have a stake in keeping him in pieces. A whole Ambedkar would demand annihilation. Fragmented Ambedkar can be managed, cited, contained.
The pattern is unmistakable: the more powerful the group, the more partial the engagement. Dalits have no choice but to read Ambedkar whole, his thought is their only intellectual resource, their only weapon. Savarnas have the privilege of reading him in fragments, taking what is useful, setting aside what is threatening, keeping his radical edge at a safe distance.
This is the double stage of Ambedkar reception. The same logic that structures caste society structures the circulation of anti-caste thought.
Consider the Savarna sociologist who teaches a course on social stratification. They assign Ambedkar’s analysis of graded inequality, the concept that caste organizes groups in a descending scale where each is both oppressed by those above and oppressor of those below. Students learn this concept. They find it useful. But the course moves on. It never returns to Ambedkar’s central claim: that graded inequality cannot be reformed; it must be annihilated. The fragment taken up is the analytical tool. The fragment left behind is the political demand.
Consider the Savarna political theorist who teaches a course on democracy. They assign Ambedkar’s warning that political democracy without social democracy is a facade. Students learn this critique. They appreciate its force. But the course focuses on institutional design, electoral systems, and constitutional rights. It does not ask what social democracy would require, the redistribution of land, the transformation of kinship, the destruction of endogamy. The fragment taken up is the critique of formalism. The fragment left behind is the substance of transformation.
Consider the syllabus. Annihilation of Caste is assigned in courses on social reform, but rarely taught as a program.[2] Students learn that Ambedkar criticised Hinduism. They do not learn that he proposed leaving it. They read the diagnosis; they skip the prescription. The radical edge is blunted.
Consider the conference. Ambedkar is cited in panels on “Caste and Democracy”, but his critique of majoritarianism is rarely extended to contemporary electoral politics. Scholars invoke his warnings about the tyranny of the majority. They do not ask whether India’s current political formations embody that tyranny. The critique is historicized, neutralized, rendered safe.
A political theory syllabus that excludes Ambedkar should be considered incomplete. This is not a demand for token inclusion. It is a recognition that Ambedkar’s questions, about the relationship between social and political equality, about the limits of majoritarianism, about the conditions of democratic citizenship—are central to the field. To exclude him is not to maintain standards; it is to reproduce a canon shaped by caste.
These are not attacks on individual scholars. Many of them are well-intentioned. Many genuinely admire Ambedkar. But admiration is not engagement. Citation is not transformation. The pattern is structural, not personal. The academy, like the society it studies, is shaped by the double stage.
The Danger of Identity Politics
Here I must pause. In pointing out that Savarnas engage Ambedkar selectively, I am not making a claim about who has the “right” to read him. I am not suggesting that only Dalits can truly understand him. I am not falling into the trap of identity politics, the trap that says thought belongs organically to the community of its origin.
This trap is real, and it is dangerous. It reproduces the very logic that Ambedkar spent his life fighting: the logic that birth determines essence, that identity determines authority, that community determines the reach of thought.
If I were to argue that Ambedkar is “properly” understood only by Dalits, I would be doing exactly what caste does: assigning thought to bodies, confining ideas to identities, policing the boundaries of who can speak and who can be heard. I would be reproducing the ghetto, not breaking it open.
But let me be precise about what I am refusing. There is an important distinction between epistemic access and political urgency.
Epistemic access is the capacity to understand. On this dimension, there is no in principle barrier to a Savarna student or a European scholar understanding Ambedkar’s thought. Graded inequality can be explained. The logic of endogamy can be grasped. The strategy of conversion can be analysed. No secret knowledge is withheld by birth.
Political urgency is the stake one has in engaging the thought. On this dimension, the distribution is not equal. Those who suffer under caste have a different relationship to Ambedkar’s thought than those who benefit from caste. This is not about understanding; it is about motivation, about need, about the cost of not engaging.
The correct position is not that Ambedkar belongs to Dalits. It is that Ambedkar belongs to everyone, and that the fact that he is not read by everyone is a scandal. The correct position is not that only Dalits can speak for Ambedkar. It is that anyone who engages his thought seriously, regardless of their origin, is participating in the work of annihilation.
This is what it means to decaste thought. It is to insist that ideas, like people, should not be confined by the circumstances of their birth. It is to recognize that the moment one starts envisioning a social order free of caste, one gets decasted from that moment onwards.
What does a decasted reading of Ambedkar look like in practice? It means assigning Annihilation of Caste in a political theory course, not because it is “Dalit thought” but because it is thought. It means expecting students of all backgrounds to engage its arguments, not to speak for or about a community. It means holding Savarna students to the same standard of comprehension as Dalit students, neither exempting them because they are “outside” the experience nor privileging them because they are “inside” the academy.
When someone starts envisioning a social order free of caste, they are not merely imagining a different future. They are performing an act of refusal. They are refusing the logic that says: your birth determines your essence, your identity determines your authority, your community determines your audience. They are insisting that thought can travel, that ideas can be universal, that a person from a marginalized community can speak to the human condition—and that a person from a dominant community can, through serious engagement, join the struggle.
This is the decasting of the intellectual.
It applies to Ambedkar himself. He was born into a Mahar community, classified as an “untouchable” caste. But he refused to let that be a cage. He read widely, Marx, Buddha, Dewey, the Fabians, and he wrote for everyone. His Annihilation of Caste is not a text for Dalits; it is a text for anyone who believes that hierarchy can be overcome. His Buddha and His Dhamma is not a sectarian religious text; it is a philosophical meditation on ethics, society, and the good life.[3]
It applies to those who follow him. To prefix thinkers as “Dalit,” “Savarna,” or “foreign” is to reinscribe the very logic their thought seeks to undo. The moment we attach these prefixes, we are doing the work of caste. We are sorting thinkers into boxes, assigning them to their proper places, policing the boundaries of who can speak to whom. This is not analysis; it is the reproduction of hierarchy in the realm of knowledge.
Decasting the intellectual means refusing these prefixes. It means reading Anand Teltumbde as we read Marx, not as a “Dalit thinker” but as a thinker. It means reading Gopal Guru as we read Gramsci, not as a “Dalit theorist” but as a theorist. It means reading Arundhati Roy as we read Arendt, not as a “Savarna intellectual” but as an intellectual. It means reading Sharmila Rege and Gail Omvedt as intellectuals, period.
First, social movements are deprived of strategic resources. Ambedkar’s writings on political mobilization, on the relationship between law and social change, on the strategy of conversion, on the importance of independent organization, these are not merely historical documents. They are living resources for anyone engaged in the struggle against hierarchy. But because his thought is confined to the academy, or to Dalit communities, these resources remain underutilized.
Second, democratic theory remains impoverished. Ambedkar’s insight that political democracy without social democracy is a façade, that formal equality without substantive equality is a sham is a contribution of universal significance. Every society that claims to be democratic while permitting structural inequality faces this problem. But because Ambedkar is not read alongside theorists of democracy, his insight is repeatedly rediscovered rather than built upon.
Third, anti-caste struggles are forced to reinvent the wheel. The strategic debates that Ambedkar engaged, the tension between constitutionalism and direct action, the role of conversion, the relationship between caste and class, the importance of independent organization are still unresolved. But because his thought is not treated as a living resource, each generation of activists must rediscover what he already wrote.
Fourth, the broader public is denied access to a powerful analytical framework. Ambedkar’s concepts: graded inequality, endogamy as the generative principle of caste, the distinction between division of labour and division of labourers, the interlocking of liberty, equality, and fraternity are tools for understanding not only caste but all forms of social hierarchy. But because these concepts are confined to “Dalit Studies,” they do not reach the broader public. They remain a specialist’s toolkit, not a common language for social critique.[4]
What Annihilation Would Require
What would it mean to truly honour Ambedkar? Not to garland his statue, not to deliver commemorative lectures, not to invoke his name during elections. To truly honour Ambedkar is to shatter the double stage of his reception. It is to insist that his thought be read whole, by everyone, as a universal philosophy of annihilation.
This requires work on three fronts: institutional, pedagogical, and ethical.
Institutional reforms. Ambedkar must be placed in core curricula, not in “Dalit Studies” electives, but in political theory, in sociology, in philosophy, in legal studies. His texts should be assigned alongside Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Foucault. A political theory syllabus that excludes Ambedkar is incomplete. Hiring committees should treat expertise in Ambedkar as expertise in political theory, not as a “specialization” in “caste studies.” Research funding should be allocated to projects that engage Ambedkar’s thought seriously, not only to those that document Dalit experience.
Pedagogical reforms. A decasted reading of Ambedkar in the classroom means assigning Annihilation of Caste in a political theory course, not because it is “Dalit thought” but because it is thought. It means expecting students of all backgrounds to engage its arguments, not to speak for or about a community. It means holding Savarna students to the same standard of comprehension as Dalit students. It means teaching Ambedkar not as a “non-Western” thinker but as a thinker whose concepts travel.
Intellectual ethics. We must refuse the prefixes that sort thinkers into their proper places—”Dalit intellectual,” “Savarna intellectual,” “foreign intellectual.” We must read Teltumbde as we read Marx, Guru as we read Gramsci, Roy as we read Arendt. We must insist that thought is not owned by identity. We must practice decasting every time we open a book, assign a text, cite a source.
These are not utopian demands. They are practical requirements for a knowledge system that no longer reproduces the hierarchies it claims to study.
Not because his origins are erased. Not because we forget that he was Dalit. Not because we pretend that his perspective is not shaped by his experience. But because we refuse to let his origin be a cage. Because we insist that thought can travel, that the particular can speak to the universal, that a person from a marginalized community can be a philosopher for humanity.
This is the decasting of thought. It is the recognition that the moment one starts envisioning a social order free of caste, one gets decasted from that moment onwards. The thought is the beginning of the freedom.
On his birth anniversary, let us honour Ambedkar not by confining him to a ghetto, but by liberating him into the universal. Let us read him as we read Marx, as we read Foucault, as we read Gramsci, not as a “Dalit leader” but as a philosopher of annihilation.
Let us place him in the core curriculum. Let us teach him alongside the canon. Let us refuse the prefixes that sort thinkers into their proper places. Let us decaste the intellectual.
And let us remember: the struggle for a casteless society is also the struggle for a casteless knowledge. The annihilation of caste in the world requires the annihilation of caste in the mind. Ambedkar gave us the tools. The question is whether we are ready to use them.
Ambedkar did not write only for Dalits. He wrote for everyone who believes that hierarchy can be annihilated. The question is not whether we are ready to read him. The question is whether we are ready to become, in the act of reading, decasted.
This essay was completed on the eve of Ambedkar’s birth anniversary, 14 April 2026.
Skand Priya is Assistant Professor of History at Shivaji College, University of Delhi. His work develops the concept of the “double stage of caste” to analyze the metamorphosis of hierarchy from premodern sacral order to contemporary social schizophrenia.
Endnotes:
[1] This insight draws on Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony, which emphasizes that dominant orders do not simply exclude oppositional ideas but absorb and neutralize them. For the application of this insight to the circulation of radical thought in the academy, see the essays collected in Guru and Sarukkai (2012). The specific claim here—that fragmentation is the condition of circulation—extends Gramsci’s analysis by specifying the mechanism through which neutralization operates.
[2] Annihilation of Caste is Ambedkar’s most famous text, originally written as a speech for the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal in Lahore in 1936. When the invitation was withdrawn due to the speech’s radical content, Ambedkar published it himself. The text combines a critique of the caste system with a demand for its complete destruction, and concludes with a controversial appendix responding to Gandhi’s critique. It remains the most widely assigned of Ambedkar’s works in university courses—but, as argued here, often assigned in fragments.
[3] Ambedkar’s Buddha and His Dhamma (1957) is a distinctive work of religious philosophy, presenting Buddhism not as a faith but as a rational ethical system. Ambedkar argues that Buddhism offers a path out of caste because it rejects the authority of the Vedas, denies the efficacy of ritual, and insists on the equality of all human beings. His own conversion to Buddhism in 1956, along with hundreds of thousands of followers, was a political act—a refusal of the caste system and an assertion of a new identity.
[4] The concept of “graded inequality” is central to Ambedkar’s analysis. Unlike simple hierarchy, graded inequality positions each group in relation to all others, creating a structure in which even the oppressed have someone to look down upon. This, Ambedkar argues, is what makes caste so resilient: every group has a stake in the system. For contemporary applications of this concept, see Teltumbde (2010, 2018) and the essays in Guru (2009).
By Skand Priya
Courtesy : Counter Currents
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