Ambedkar’s Framing of the ‘Political’ within Ethical Practice

Abstract

This article advances Ambedkar’s recasting of pure politics and the political within an ethical framework. It explores Ambedkar’s ethos of radical action grounded in the limitation of the state, law and institutional structures to transform society. In foregrounding Ambedkar’s idea of transformation and change through practices of the self, the essay locates self-transformation as going beyond a critique of existing social and economic frameworks. In furtherance, this view captures an ethics of internal transformation resulting from the change in moral conduct achieved through voluntary conversion. Dhamma was based on techniques of self-restraint that stressed on an unremitting duty owed to the other including an adversary and stranger. It inaugurated an inclusive and ecological notion of kinship based on empathy and friendship whose aim was to break down all barriers and create a compassionate society. Ambedkar furnishes us with an original formulation to think through a notion of compassionate justice from the moral lexicon of the broken men.