| Publisher |
Navayana |
| Publication Year |
2020 |
| ISBN-13 |
9788194447122 |
| ISBN-10 |
9788194447122 |
| Binding |
Paperback |
| Number of Pages |
264 Pages |
| Language |
(English) |
| Weight (grms) |
295 |
Who is an Indian? Who is a nationalist? Who is antinational? This selection of speeches, from 1930 to 1956, shows Dr B.R. Ambedkar as the most original among the architects of modern India as he asks and answers such difficult questions. Whether he was dealing with the British or the Congress, his commitment to equality and justice for minorities remained steadfast. These twenty speeches tell us a story jettisoned by narratives that valorize a Hinduised ‘idea of India’. Ambedkar addresses various publics: dalit workers in Nashik, British lawmakers in London, the Non-Brahmin Movement in Madras, parliamentarians in Delhi and college students in Jalandhar. He speaks of democracy, labor, minority rights, communalism, brahminism, constitution-making and foreign policy. The prose spans different registers of reason and affect—lyrical and polemical, combative and poignant.
B.R Ambedkar
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) was a radical thinker, statesman, lawyer, editor of newspapers and many books, economist, jurist, philosopher, and founder of a school of Buddhism. Born into an ‘Untouchable’ Mahar family in Mhow in present-day Madhya Pradesh, he waged a relentless, lifelong struggle for the rights of Dalits. Having earned doctorates from both Columbia University and the London School of Economics, he went on to serve as Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism along with half a million followers a few months before his death in 1956. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political thinker best known for Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy and Post-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan, Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution. Alex George, a philosophy graduate from Birkbeck College, London, is an editor with Navayana. S. Anand is the publisher of Navayana. He is the coauthor of Bhimayana, and has annotated the critical editions of B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste and Riddles in Hinduism.
B.R Ambedkar
Navayana