Book Talks@NLS Library | Ambedkar’s Political Philosophy: A Grammar of Public Life from the Social Margins

The NLSIU Library Committee is organising a book talk at the NLS Library by Valerian Rodrigues on his book ‘Ambedkar’s Political Philosophy: A Grammar of Public Life from the Social Margins.’ The talk will take place from 5 pm to 6:30 pm. This is the first public discussion of Prof. Valerian’s book.

Panelists:

Valerian Rodrigues, Former Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU (Author of the book)
Shruti Kapila, Professor of History and Politics, University of Cambridge, and Visiting Professor, NLSIU
Arvind Narrain, President, PUCL, Karnataka

Moderator: Chandrabhan Pratap Yadav, Assistant Professor, Social Science, NLSIU

This event is open to the public and registration for members outside of the NLSIU community is mandatory to attend the event. To register, click here.

About the book

This study is organized around a set of key concepts that Ambedkar, the Indian thinker and leader of the socially marginalized, proposed to reconstruct public life, factoring in oppression and degradation. This framework conceived human beings as endowed with a distinct set of attributes entitling them to consideration as moral equals despite other differences among them. It also accorded a procedural priority to consciousness in human understanding. Ambedkar deployed this framework to contend against social institutions of caste, untouchability, and other forms of marginalities and to interrogate texts, traditions, and modes of social dominance. Ambedkar regards justice as foundational to modern societies. It called for ‘initial equality’ across its members while recognizing desert. All differential accomplishments, however, cannot be rewarded or compensated. Democracy is an essential requirement to resolve competing claims. As a self-governing mode of rule, democracy affords access to its members to multiple avenues of reach, learning, and enablement. Nationalism, a distinctive bond that precipitates with the entry of the masses into the political arena, is justiciable only if it has a definitive tilt towards democracy. Social relations, however, are caught in trappings of power across levels of a social ensemble. Control over state power is an indispensable condition to undermine dominance and enable the commons. The representational, constitutional, and institutional architecture of power must be geared to this end. Such a pursuit needs to be secured through an apt moral anchor shored up through religious sanctions. In Ambedkar’s view only Buddhism can measure up to this demand.
(Source: Oxford University Press)

About the author

Valerian Rodrigues is currently a Jawaharlal Nehru University Fellow, Nehru Memorial Trust, New Delhi, and former Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He has taught at Mangalore University, Karnataka (1982-2003) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (2003-2015). Rodrigues has been National Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) (2015-17) and Ambedkar Chair, Ambedkar University, Delhi (2017-2018). He has also been Visiting Scholar and Professor at Erfurt University (2012), Wuerzburg University (2011, 2015), and Simon Fraser University (2019), and Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (1989-1991), Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (1999-2001), and Max Weber College, Erfurt (2012).
(Source: Oxford University Press)