Law and Liberation Unfulfilled:

Reinvigorating Ambedkar's Vision in Indian law and development for the oppressed
Pragna Sree

Literature Review

The constitution of India, predominantly designed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, can be understood
as an attempt to enable the struggle towards an equitable and just democracy, that holds the
capacity to emancipate its marginalized. In that attempt, caste as a socio-cultural institution in
India has been recognised to have an inevitable influence on the law of the land, thereby
interpretation of such a constitution is designated to be transformative and obligated to
contextualize its principles to the contemporary caste dynamics. However, the depth and
intricacy of the caste entrenchment in the country can often slip through the scope of its
judicial precedents and executive administration by law, wherein caste oppression can
continue to persist.

David Mosse’s 2018 essay, titled ‘Caste and development: Contemporary perspectives on a
structure of discrimination and advantage’ holds as testimony to caste injustices in
Independent India. The author talks about such intricate slip through of caste discrimination
that are spread across various realms of social and political aspects of Indian democracy.
From employment opportunities to access of public service and public resource distribution,
Moose highlights multiple instances of marginalization that create a vicious cycle
perpetuating economic inequality and limiting access to education, particularly for Dalits and
Adivasi communities at the lowest rungs of the caste hierarchy (Mosse, 2018). Although
there are established constitutional provisions to prevent discrimination, the law and
governance fails to fully resist the savrana capacity to discriminate through the framework of
Ambedkar's constitution.

To dwell into the essence of Ambedkar’s ideas that are embedded constitution, Valerian
Rodrigues in their 2017 paper titled ‘Ambedkar as a political philosopher’ elucidates on
Ambedkar's meaning of equality that stands as the essence of the constitution on which the
system of Indian legal and political architecture is built. Amongst more nuanced arguments of
Ambedkar’s equality, the larger notion of his equality stands to enable a struggle against
dominance, providing a level playing field for all individuals against social prejudices.
Ambedkar has emphasized the importance of extending equal consideration to all members of
the country, even if it meant meting out unequal treatment based on the concrete context to
achieve justice. This vision to achieve justice, gave birth to affirmative action based on caste
in India (Rodrigues, 2017). This continues to be a pivotal point in transforming the Dalit and
Adivasi communities towards being a part of civil societies, and organizing themselves into
political societies.

However, Ambedkar’s vision of achieving justice through affirmative action as a

constitutional and legal aid, has been persistently challenged by the oppressor caste
communities. According to Anurag Bhaskar’s 2021 paper, titled ‘Ambedkar’s Constitution’:
A Radical Phenomenon in Anti-Caste Discourse?’, reveals the counter-revolutionary efforts
by the oppressor castes that are aimed at undermining the Constitution's provisions for
Dalit’s, including reservations and safeguards for minorities. The author points out that the
upward economic mobility of the lower caste as a result of reservation and other supportive
policies has met with the rise in atrocities and abuses against Dalit and there is empirical
recorded evidence for the same (Bhaskar, 2021). The paper sheds light on the resistance and
propaganda against policies supporting Dalits' upward mobility, such as the myth of
reservation diluting efficiency and the promotion of the "creamy layer" narrative. In
Ambedkar's view, the Buddhist era marked a radical shift towards democratic ideals.
However, he argued that these principles were later undermined by a reactionary movement
led by Brahminical forces. Democracy, Ambedkar believed, was a revolution of the present
times. which will be countered by the oppressor caste and Brahmical forces. Aligning with
this thought, the author points out that the higher judiciary, which is dominated by the
oppressor caste, has an active role in perpetuating caste prejudices by questioning the
effectiveness of reservations. The supreme court judgements of General Manager, Southern
Railway v. Rangachari, AIR 1962 SC 36; Indra Sawhney v. Union of India, AIR 1993 SC
477; M. Nagaraj v. Union of India, (2006) 8 SCC 212, are all evidence that the Supreme
Court kept on repeating this myth to create caste prejudices against Dalits, as quoted by
Bhaskar in his work (Bhaskar, 2021). According to Bhaskar, this, in essence, is an opposition
to transform the ‘legal status of Dalits’ and hinder their fundamental right to live, so as to
preserve the Pre-Independence status quo of the oppressor caste.
That said, the intervention of Judicial authorities in aligning democratic processes with
constitutional provisions against caste discrimination has also been proven crucial in certain
instances, thereby projecting a need to understand law and policy with a much nuanced lens,
devoid of a bias that the judiciary is innately oriented towards caste practices. David
Gilmartin’s 2010 essay, titled ‘Rule of Law, Rule of Life: Caste, Democracy, and the Courts
in India’, highlights how caste plays a crucial role in electoral mobilization and political
competition. The context provided in the paper discusses the role of judicial intervention in
addressing the influence of caste in Indian elections. The courts grappled with the tension
between universalizing principles of electoral morality and the particularity of specific
political configurations that defined the actual conduct of each election (Gilmartin, 2010).
The courts sought to negotiate these tensions by searching for relationships between caste and
rational, "interest-based" attachments, in the process constructing caste not simply as a
"primordial" attachment but as a distinctive cultural vehicle within which the free will of the
individual voter found expression. The takeaway is that judicial intervention played a critical
role in reframing and replicating the tensions underlying the political system, and in
addressing the influence of caste in electoral contests.

Given the present scenario, it is noteworthy to consider that legal and judicial systems of
governance established in the country are slowly and steadily improving towards their effort
of aligning constitutional provisions against caste discrimination with lived experience of the
marginalized. However, whether these instruments of law completely extended their duties to
achieving the notion of emancipatory justice embedded in Ambedkar’s constitution, is a
contention that requires a larger depth of understanding of caste realities in the country.
References

Bhaskar, A. (2021). Ambedkar’s Constitution’: A Radical Phenomenon in Anti-Caste Discourse?

CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, 109-131.

Gilmartin, D. (2010). Rule of Law, Rule of Life: Caste, Democracy, and the Courts in India. American
Historical Review, 406-427.

Mosse, D. (2018). Caste and development: Contemporary perspectives on a structure of

discrimination and advantage. Elsevier, 422-436.

Rodrigues, V. (2017). Ambedkar as a Political Philosopher. Economic & Political Weekly, 101-107.
References