The event welcomes professor Vivek Kumar (PhD) of Jawaharlal Nehru University whose new book examines the erasure of the late Indian stateman Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) from academia while highlighting the doctor’s commitment to a truly equal Indian society.
“To have social justice, you have to have equality, liberty and fraternity,” Kumar says of Ambedkar’s vision for modern India. “Ambedkar says that ‘I have not borrowed equality, liberty and fraternity from the French slogan…I have taken the metaphor from my master, the Buddha.”
Addressing societal exclusion
Kumar adds that India’s now-abolished Hindu caste system had five categories: the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras and Dalits. Each caste was assigned professions and roles in society. The Brahmins, for example, were the priestly class and the Kshatriyas were responsible for defending the country, while the Shudras were labourers.
“The difficulty of understanding caste is because people belong to the same colour and they belong to the same religion,” the professor adds. “Yet, there is discrimination and exclusion.”
The Dalits were the lowest social class under the system. They faced what Kumar refers to as “traditional discrimination”: exclusion from numerous public spaces and societal institutions.
“They were not allowed to enter in the schools; they were not allowed to come in the marriage processions,” the professor explains, adding that the group even had different graveyards. “They could not take water from the same source as the upper [class].”
Referring to this structure as a “closed system,” Kumar notes that one cannot move up or down in social class. According to him, once India modernized and became a constitutional democracy, people were granted equal rights, yet the discriminatory effects of the caste system did not disappear.
“Now there are different types of discrimination,” he says, noting the disproportional representation of Dalits in judiciary, bureaucratic and academic systems. “If India has become really modern and democratic, then at least, [the Dalits] should have gotten representation to the tune of their proportion of population.”
This lack of representation has continued even after applying affirmative action policies. Professor Kumar further notes that Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution who also belonged to the Dalit class, faced discrimination even though he was intimately involved in the struggle for Indian independence and worked with Hindu leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru. Such discrimination seems to have influenced his conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism – he encouraged others to do so – near the end of his life.
Fraternity in democracy
“Ambedkar has suffered erasure from the academia,” Kumar says. “His contributions are very gigantic, but yet he has been reduced [to] only a Dalit leader.”
According to Kumar, one of Ambedkar’s core tenets was the belief that a free society granted freedom to everyone. He further notes that out of the three Buddhist tenets – fraternity, equality and liberty – it was the first that Ambedkar prioritized.
“[Ambedkar] says that you can make a law for equality, you can make a law for liberty, but you cannot make a law for fraternity,” he explains, adding the latter manifests itself through actions, values and wisdom. “As far as Buddhism is concerned, if there is fraternity, equality and liberty will come on their own.”
Ambedkar extended these values to his treatment of other minorities within Indian society, including women and Muslims. Kumar cites the leader’s work to abolish dowries, permit divorces, create maternity leave and ensure equal distribution of inheritance – all while welcoming women into the political sphere.
He further notes that Ambedkar recognized Muslim minorities’ right to religious, linguistic and educational freedom. Kumar observes how Western worldviews often interpret social movements as threats to the state’s existence; he suggests interpreting them as expressing gaps in democracy instead.
“If modernity will come, tradition will be wiped out; if there is a movement, state will be wiped out,” he says of the western perspective, pointing to the west’s history of revolutions. “Today, movement is not for displacement; movement is for telling people that there is a deficit of democracy.”
The talk is presented in collaboration with SFU’s Institute for the Humanities, along with other organizations, and is supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
For more information, see https://www.sfu.ca/global-asia/new-events-community/events.html
For more information on Vivek Kumar, see https://www.jnu.ac.in/
