The burning of a juridical text was not a foreign act for Ambedkar. It emerged from the tradition of radical love centred around the claim of equal rights for all. Ambedkar’s episodic interventions with rigid Hindu society had already been made clear when he burned the Manusmriti, the oldest legal doctrine of Hindus. His courage to denounce the repressive form of legality—as represented by the Manusmriti, which propagated inequality and oppression—connects to his commitment to the radical pragmatism which believes in contemporary actions as opposed to the settled doctrines of the past. It is a
...more
