Rethinking Untouchability - (Racism, Resistance and Social Change) by Jesús F Cháirez-Garza (Paperback)

About the Book

This book explores the political thought of B.R. Ambedkar, one of the most important thinkers of modern India. Ambedkar's ideas transformed untouchability, often considered a millenary religious issue, into a political problem by linking it to larger ideas in the twentieth century such as liberty, slavery, race, and the creation of Pakistan.

Book Synopsis

This book examines the transformation of untouchability into a political idea in India during the first half of the twentieth century. At its heart is Ambedkar's role and the concepts he used to champion untouchability as a political problem. Ambedkar's main objective was to comprehend the numerous avatars of untouchability in order to eradicate this practice. Ambedkar understood untouchability beyond aspects of ritual purity and pollution by stressing its complex nature and uncovering the political, historical, racial, spatial and emotional characteristics contained in this concept. Ambedkar believed the abolition of untouchability depended on a widespread alteration of India's political, economic and cultural systems. Ambedkar reframed the problem of untouchability by linking it to larger concepts floating in the political environment of late colonial India such as representation, slavery, race, the Indian village, internationalism and even the creation of Pakistan.

From the Back Cover

Rethinking untouchability sheds new light on the intellectual life of B. R. Ambedkar, one of twentieth-century India's most important thinkers. Often in the shadow of Indian nationalists like Gandhi and Nehru, the importance of Ambedkar's political thought has remained largely unexplored.

Ambedkar dedicated his life's work to the abolition of untouchability. Born into one of the most oppressed communities in India, he went on to earn doctoral degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, where he familiarised himself with the newest anthropological, political and sociological theories emerging at the turn of the twentieth century. Influenced by the thought of Franz Boas and John Dewey, among others, Ambedkar showed his followers that their condition of oppression was not the result of karma from previous lives but was fluid and malleable, and therefore could be changed.

By analysing untouchability and its links to religion and ideologies of racial supremacy, Ambedkar exposed untouchability as an economic, political and cultural system designed to oppress Dalits. He demanded political and educational rights to bridge the inequalities present in the lives of his followers. For Ambedkar, India required a social and political revolution beyond the scope of nationalist aspirations. At a time when inequality and injustice is still rampant in India and elsewhere, recovering the value of Ambedkar's thought is paramount.

Review Quotes

CHOICE: Recommended

'Jesus F. Cháirez-Garza's extraordinary study of B R Ambedkar is the first extended work situating his oeuvre and career in the context early 20th Century political thought. Rethinking Untouchability gives us a clear sense of how and why Ambedkar's thought should be taken seriously not just in India, but in relation to a range of other contexts. Rather than simply examining Ambedkar's work in terms of advocacy for India's most oppressed communities, Cháirez-Garza shows how his development of the category of 'untouchability' related to frameworks of race, space and debates with India's political left. Connecting to a range of political, anthropological and sociological theorists including Boas and Dewey, Cháirez-Garza shows how Ambedkar framed his followers' oppression as contingent and adaptable. As a history of political thought, Rethinking Untouchability is a tour de force, requiring us to take Ambedkar seriously in explorations of inequality and injustice both within India and beyond.'
Professor William Gould, University of Leeds

About the Author

Jesús F. Cháirez-Garza is a Senior Lecturer of the History of Race and Ethnicity at the University of Manchester