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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.