A Commentary on Ambedkar’s Posthumously Published Philosophy of Hinduism – Part II by Rajesh Sampath

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In "A Commentary on Ambedkar's Posthumously Published Philosophy of Hinduism Part II," Rajesh Sampath provides an analytical elaboration of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s critical framework for evaluating Hinduism. The essay focuses on Ambedkar’s methodological justification for a penetrating critique of the "immoral and amoral nature of Hinduism's social system of caste". At the core of this examination is Ambedkar's desire to test whether this world religion meets the modern criteria of "justice" and "utility". Sampath argues that Ambedkar’s thesis presupposes profound philosophical transformations in the relations of "God to man", "Society to man", and "man to man," within which Hindu-dominated society forecloses the possibility of individual freedom, equality, and dignity.

The methodology Ambedkar proposes relies on the study of historical revolutions. He asserts that "to know the philosophy of any movement or any institution one must study the revolutions which the movement or the institution has undergone". This approach leads to his famous maxim: "Revolution is the mother of philosophy and if it is not the mother of philosophy it is a lamp which illuminates philosophy". Ambedkar maintains that the best method to ascertain the criteria by which to judge the philosophy of religion is to study the revolutions religion itself has undergone. This concern with revolution arises from the existential alienation and oppression Ambedkar perceives in the long duration of Indian civilization, from the ancient Vedas to the birth of the caste system. He seeks to vanquish the "eternal order of caste" by instituting a changing conception within religion that creates a discontinuity from past epochs.

Ambedkar observes that in antiquity, religion functioned as an all-encompassing explanatory framework that subsumed all human knowledge, including science and medicine, within a mythological structure. This "omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnitemporal expanse" consolidated dominion over all nature and human nature, preventing the achievement of autonomy. While the West underwent a "secular and scientific modernity" that destroyed this religious sovereignty , Ambedkar argues that in Hinduism, the past remains "very much present". In this context, religion continues to be an infinitely borderless expanse that engulfs every branch of knowledge , making it impossible for the "individual" to exist as an entity endowed with rights and dignity. Instead, a "vacuum" takes the place of the individual.

This structure constitutes a "pathological form of sovereignty" that conflates the mysteries of birth and death with problems of "purity, holiness, saintliness and that which is demonic". In the social reality of the caste system, disease is linked to "divine retribution" for the sins of a previous life. Hinduism is characterized as the only religion that "perpetuates that injustice in an intergenerational, hereditary succession". Sampath describes the caste system as the "inner-beating of the ravenous heart of Hinduism" , manifesting in a "frenzied linkage between hate, apathy, revenge, and vengefulness". Those self-ordained as "pure," the "Brahmanic," are positioned against the "constructed other of the Dalit as the quintessence of impurity".

Sampath draws parallels between Ambedkar’s task and the work of modern continental European philosophers. He notes that Ambedkar attempts to do for Hinduism what "Nietzsche, and before him Kierkegaard, Schelling, and Hegel, did for Christianity". To "humanize religion," Ambedkar’s project is likened to a "Nietzschean task to overcome all values we have inherited up to this point". Just as Nietzsche questioned moral systems that sapped human potential, Ambedkar critiques a Hinduism "rooted in the distinction of the pure and impure, the saintly and the demonic".

Ultimately, Ambedkar seeks a "new norm" for judging the philosophy of religion, which requires a revolution touching the "nature and content of ruling conceptions of the relations of God to man, of Society to man and of man to man". The goal is a complete rearrangement of these relations to replace the "savage society" with a "civilized society". Sampath concludes that the tantalizing possibility in Ambedkar’s work is the "invention of a new human being". This new being would be liberated from mythic-hereditary terms and rooted in equality and liberty, thereby altering the entire social structure of the Indian context.