Since the social customs of caste and untouchability were ultimately grounded in a Hindu theology imputing responsibility for action to a fixed immutable being, Ambedkar sought to unsettle and destabilize it by proffering a counter-theology of Buddhism that delinked action from any substantial being.
Author
Moiz Tundawala, Associate Professor, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.
Summary
This paper will argue that B.R. Ambedkar attacked the social law of Hindu dharma for legalizing and legitimizing Brahminical sovereignty in the form of a birth-based caste order centred around the ambivalent sacrality of untouchability.
Although Ambedkar inaugurated postcolonial India’s transformative constitutional project, its juridical language of secular legality was not powerful enough an antidote against the social customs of caste and untouchability.
Since these practices were ultimately grounded in a Hindu theology imputing responsibility for action to a fixed immutable being, Ambedkar sought to unsettle and destabilize it by proffering a counter-theology of Buddhism that delinked action from any substantial being, and thereby opened up sovereignty as an empty place of political power.
His Buddhism though, was less a religion of selfless renunciation, and more a religion of rupture mediated by the political law of fraternal freedom, actualized in the excessive subjectivity of the Dalit community of converted Buddhists.
Published in: Political Theology
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