The Perpetuation of Caste: An Exposition of Merleau-Ponty’s Classic Text—Humanism and Terror—to Elaborate Buried Possibilities in the Thought of Ambedkar

Abstract

In our investigation into the persistence of caste, we attempt to build a preliminary framework of analysis to set the stage for a reading of Ambedkar’s posthumously published, unfinished manuscript, Buddha or Karl Marx. We see an uncanny resemblance between Ambedkar’s mid-twentieth century context in the newly independent democratic society of post-colonial India and that of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s post-Second World War Western European context and his intriguing attempt to justify communist violence. Ultimately, we argue that although one cannot use one context to understand the other on how to realise a communist revolution within a democratic, industrial capitalist society, there are lessons to be learned from both with regard to problems in the philosophy of history, historical time, and epochal shifts. The ultimate question is whether a new society that has no precedent in either the West or the East and everything in between is imaginable. Ultimately this article sets up the possibility to read Ambedkar’s text while returning to Marx’s (1990) Capital Vol. 1 itself, particularly on the ‘primitive accumulation’. Then we can be in a position to philosophise in the margins and beyond where Ambedkar leaves off on his brief but brilliant essay, Buddha or Karl Marx.