Becoming Babasaheb: The Life and Times of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (Volume 1)

by Aakash Singh Rathore

The letters show that Ambedkar was as attuned to issues regarding gender as he was to those regarding race. One worth mentioning was addressed to a friend of his father, a retired jamadar of the Indian Army, also from the Mahar caste. In it, he implored the recipient—who was the father of a young girl gaining notoriety for having made it all the way to the fourth standard in school, unheard of for a Mahar girl—to preach the idea of education to anyone from their community who was willing to listen. Ambedkar wrote that he should continue the education of his daughter and that the entire community would progress more quickly if boys and girls were educated side by side, with no difference between them.

In the paper, titled ‘Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development’, Ambedkar argued that caste was a distinct social category that could not be accounted for either by theories of race or by class antagonism. Rejecting the standard explanation of the racial origins of caste popular in colonial ethnography (i.e., a consequence of Aryan invasions, wherein the darker-skinned earlier inhabitants were subjugated) and also the dominant sociological claim that caste was maintained through a hierarchy of purity and pollution, Ambedkar boldly asserted that the essence of caste was the control of women’s sexuality—foremost, the practice of endogamy.

It is clear, then, that Ambedkar was deeply engaged with the academic world as well as the legal one. But he was also in the process of becoming evermore deeply immersed in the world of social work and social activism. At times, the simultaneous wearing of three hats—lawyer, academician and social worker—was mutually reinforcing, such as how Ambedkar’s legal work turned out to be a kind of activism and social work in many cases. At other times, however, there was a sort of ambivalence caused. For example, during this time the post of principal at Sydenham College opened up, and Dr Ambedkar applied for the position. Padhye recollects that Ambedkar was quite keen on getting the position, although it was not to be.