Reason, Liberty, and Social Reform

Ambedkar explicitly invokes the three revolutionary ideals as the foundation of the alternative social order he is proposing. Liberty is the freedom of each individual to develop as a person without the hereditary constraint of birth-assignment to a caste. Equality is equal dignity, equal legal standing, equal access to public space and resources. Fraternity — the most important for Ambedkar — is the sense of common humanity that makes equality and liberty more than formal rights, that makes social solidarity possible across the boundaries that caste has drawn.

Ambedkar is sharply critical of the Indian independence movement's failure to engage with caste. Gandhi's version of nationalism asks Dalits to subordinate their emancipation to Hindu unity and the struggle for independence from British rule. Ambedkar refuses: a nation that does not address the internal oppression of eighty million Untouchables is not a democracy but a caste oligarchy with an Indian rather than British face. Political independence is worthless without social independence.

Ambedkar's ultimate standard is reason: applied consistently, without deference to tradition, authority, or sentiment, to every social institution and every claimed right. This is not a Western imposition but a universal demand. Ambedkar draws on the Buddhist emphasis on independent inquiry (the Kalama Sutta's instruction not to accept any teaching on the basis of authority alone) as evidence that the rational critique of received wisdom is available within the Indian tradition itself — if that tradition is read selectively and honestly.

Ambedkar's engagement with the French revolutionary tradition and with Buddhism as sources for the counter-tradition to Brahminism runs through all his major works. The comparison with Gandhi is most explicit in the appendix to Annihilation of Caste.