Caste (May 2021)

Clearing of the Ground - Ambedkar's Method of Reading

  • Ankit Kawade

DOI
https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v2i1.246
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 1
pp. 174 – 188

Abstract

Read online

This essay attempts to study and explicate the method of reading as operative in Ambedkar’s writings. The essay is organized around five thematic sections, each aimed at discussing a methodological concern guiding Ambedkar’s investigations. His engagements with the religious texts of Hinduism in general and the Manusmriti (The Laws of Manu or The Law Code of Manu) in particular have been used here to explicate the substance and implications of what has been described by Aishwary Kumar as Ambedkar’s ‘politics of reading’, a highly suggestive phrase that points towards the political as well as epistemic stakes of Ambedkar’s acts of reading.

Keywords