Understanding Ambedkar: why reading his work carefully is important today

T he appropriation of B.R. Ambedkar remains central to the project of the current regime trying to make inroads into the Dalit electorate. His intellectual legacy is sought to be decontextualised and refashioned to suit current political agendas. Ambedkar’s Political Philosophy: A Grammar of Public Life from the Social Margins by political philosopher Prof. Valerian Rodrigues seeks to (re)situate Ambedkarite thought in its socio-political, and more importantly, moral context. The book takes the position that Ambedkar cannot be reduced to a political leader; he is a philosopher and thinker whose work speaks to the marginalised in any society. Rodrigues foregrounds the political frame that makes Ambedkar ask the difficult questions that the Congress party often expediently overlooked in t