Radical Equalityambedkar Gandhi And The Risk Of Democracy

B.R. Ambedkar the architect of Indias 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 democracys desire for inclusion opens within modern political thought. In excavating Ambedkar and Gandhis 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.