Ambedkar wasn’t just a crusader against caste’s chains; he was India’s fiercest economist, a razor-sharp lawmaker, and the unyielding architect of labour’s emancipation.
In today’s India, where Hindutva’s venomous grip strangles democracy and turns pluralism into a graveyard, Dr B.R. Ambedkar is cynically embalmed as a mere anti-caste mascot—safe, symbolic, and stripped of his revolutionary fangs. This mutilation isn’t innocent; it’s a calculated sabotage by dominant-caste elites and saffron-clad authoritarians who dread his full fury. Ambedkar wasn’t just a crusader against caste’s chains; he was India’s fiercest economist, a razor-sharp lawmaker, and the unyielding architect of labour’s emancipation. His blueprints for economic sovereignty, constitutional steel, and worker power directly indict the BJP’s Hindutva regime, whose fascist fantasies and neoliberal sycophancy are devouring the republic.
As mass unemployment festers under Modi’s “jobless growth” mirage, informal labour swells into a precariat hellhole, and the new Labour Codes shred protections like confetti, Ambedkar’s erasure isn’t oversight—it’s regime strategy. Hindutva paints him as an “anti-Hindu” bogeyman to dodge his scalpel on inequality; neoliberal technocrats bury his socialism under GST’s centralizing boot; and corporate cronies mock his federalism while Delhi hoards fiscal power. But the crises they spawn—agrarian bloodbaths, gig-slave dystopias, and constitutional coups—scream for Ambedkar’s resurrection. Reading him in full isn’t optional; it’s the inevitable war cry against this triple plague. This series unmasks three suppressed arsenals: Ambedkar the Economist, Ambedkar the Lawmaker, and Ambedkar the Labour Reformer—tools to dismantle the Hindutva-neoliberal monstrosity.
Ambedkar the Economist
India’s saffron overlords and their neoliberal puppeteers worship Ambedkar as a constitutional relic, but never as the economist whose intellect could torch their empire of inequality. Amid “Viksit Bharat” lies—where 90% toil in informality, farmers hang from despair’s noose, and billionaires feast on public wealth—Ambedkar’s economic radicalism isn’t nostalgia; it’s the dynamite we need to blow up this fraud.
Trained in the crucibles of Columbia and the LSE under titans like Seligman, Ambedkar wasn’t some armchair theorist; he forged weapons against colonial plunder that now gut neoliberal India. His PhD dissected how British fiscal vampirism starved provinces—centralizing revenues while dumping costs on the poor. Sound familiar? Today’s GST Raj echoes that tyranny, with Delhi’s Finance Ministry as the new Viceroy, strangling states into submission. Ambedkar thundered: No political democracy without economic federalism! His vision of fiscal autonomy for provinces and panchayats mocks Modi’s “cooperative federalism” charade, a euphemism for fiscal strangulation that starves Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Bengal while fuelling Hindutva’s hate machines in the Hindi heartland.
At the LSE, Ambedkar eviscerated the Gold Exchange Standard’s scam, blueprinting a sovereign rupee managed by science, not speculation—ideas that birthed the RBI but now rot under RBI’s capitulation to global capital. As Viceroy’s Council member, he birthed river-valley behemoths like Damodar and Hirakud, treating water as economic liberation, not Adani’s loot. In our climate inferno, where floods drown the marginalized and droughts weaponize scarcity, Ambedkar’s infrastructure socialism indicts the regime’s crony dams that enrich corporates while displacing Dalits.
Land? Ambedkar saw caste as capital’s co-conspirator, demanding redistribution to shatter zamindari ghosts haunting SEZs today. In States and Minorities, his democratic socialism—state control of industries, wealth caps, labour safeguards—spits in the face of neoliberal deregulation, where Foxconn sweatshops replace cooperative farms. Hindutva’s agrarian “reforms” (read: corporate land grabs) and neoliberal farm laws (killed by protests Ambedkar would cheer) prove his prescience: Without economic democracy, political rights are shackles.
This burial of Ambedkar the economist suits the Sangh’s casteist cabal, who fear his class war on capital, and neoliberal ayatollahs who loathe his anti-monopoly fire. The bill? A fragile India teetering on unemployment riots and federal fractures. Reclaiming him means arming the resistance: For labour-led growth, redistributed lands, and a socialism that buries Hindutva’s inequality cult. Ambedkar didn’t just dream justice—he plotted its seizure. In this neoliberal nightmare, that’s our only path.
Ambedkar the Lawmaker
Ambedkar the Dalit icon? A saffron-sanctioned straitjacket that hides his juristic jihad against hierarchy. As Hindutva’s lynch mobs and sedition laws eviscerate rights, and executive fiat crushes judicial spines, Ambedkar’s legal arsenal—honed at Gray’s Inn and LSE—stands as the republic’s last bulwark. Reducing him to reservations’ daddy erases the comparative constitutional genius who could prosecute Modi’s constitutional theocracy.
Globetrotting through U.S., Canadian, and Irish charters, Ambedkar returned to Bombay’s courts as a gladiator for the dispossessed—wielding international labour norms against colonial bosses before independence dawned. At Round Tables, his minority-rights blitzkrieg birthed safeguards not as alms, but as democracy’s spine: No equality without annihilation of caste’s legal vestiges. Today’s CAA-NRC pogrom? Ambedkar’s ghost would summon SC/ST Atrocities Act’s full wrath, exposing Hindutva’s Muslim-baiting as the tyranny he forewarned.
As Labour Minister (1942–46), he rammed through factories reforms, wages floors, and union rights—legal grenades lobbed at capital’s fortress, now diluted by Labour Codes that greenlight exploitation. The Hindu Code Bill? His feminist thunderbolt for equal inheritance, shredded by Congress cowards and now echoed in UCC’s Hindutva hijab—proving Ambedkar’s resignation was a martyr’s stand against patriarchal theocracy.
Chairing the Drafting Committee, he wove global rights into India’s warp: Federal checks, judicial fangs, and Directive Principles as socialist mandates. His mantra—constitutional morality over brute majoritarianism—torches today’s Emergency 2.0, where ED raids replace habeas corpus and farm laws defy parliamentary sovereignty.
Hindutva’s Ambedkar cosplay masks his legal war on social domination; neoliberals ignore his institutional firewalls against corporate capture. In this era of weakened SCs and RSS-embedded bureaucracy, his jurisprudence isn’t heritage—it’s insurgency. Reading Ambedkar the lawmaker arms us to reclaim the Constitution from saffron saboteurs, forging a republic where law crushes, not cuddles, the powerful.
Ambedkar the Labour Reformer
Ambedkar wasn’t a distant drafter; he was labour’s street-fighting vanguard, whose economist-unionist fire could incinerate the new Labour Codes’ chains. As gig apps and “flexible” contracts herd workers into bonded drudgery, and Hindutva unions peddle communal poison over class solidarity, Ambedkar’s reforms scream betrayal. His erasure leaves us defenseless against neoliberal labour’s death march.
From Bombay mills to Mahad’s waters, Ambedkar fused caste annihilation with class war—organizing textiles slaves via Independent Labour Party, exposing how caste segmented toil for capitalist profit. As Labour Minister, he unleashed a four-year blitz: Eight-hour days, maternity shields, injury payouts, provident nets, exchanges, and union muscle—bedrock now bulldozed by four Codes that gift ESIC to private sharks and scrap dispute settlements.
He constitutionalized this fury: Article 23’s bonded-labour ban, 24’s child-slavery axe, 16’s affirmative jobs, and 39’s living-wage directive. Directive Principles? Ambedkar’s blueprint for worker co-management, mocking today’s gig precarity where Uber drivers die uninsured.
Hindutva’s “labour reforms” are caste-coded assaults—while neoliberals hail “ease of doing business” as code for ease of screwing workers. Ambedkar’s warning? Political democracy without economic bulwarks is fascist bait. Today’s strikes—from Maruti to MGNREGA’s ghosts—echo his call: Labour justice or bust.
Reclaiming Ambedkar the reformer isn’t sentiment; it’s sabotage against Code fascism. His vision—unions as democracy’s muscle, wages as rights—fuels the inferno to burn neoliberal-Hindutva’s labour gulags.
India’s selective Ambedkar amnesia is the regime’s shield; shattering it is our sword. As Hindutva curses the soul with hate, neoliberals normalize plunder, and Codes erase dignity, his full spectrum—economist insurgent, legal titan, labour liberator—becomes inevitable armament. Not for wistful toasts, but for the battles ahead: Seizing economic democracy, enforcing constitutional fire, and rebuilding labour as republic’s heart. Ambedkar in full isn’t revival—it’s revolution. The cursed order trembles at his name.
(The author is a forced labour investigator and author of two books.)
Undocumented: Stories Of Indian Migranst
Rejimon Kuttappan (Author)
Imprint: India Penguin
MRP : 399.00
***
Rowing Between the Rooftops: The Heroic Fishermen of the Kerala Floods
Rejimon Kuttappan (Author)
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
MRP : 299.00
***
No Comments yet!