Dr B.R. Ambedkar's View on Untouchability

The stance of Dr B.R. Ambedkar on untouchability (which is discussed in this essay) is one of the most comprehensive and radical critiques of caste-based exclusion in the modern Indian social philosophy. Dr Ambedkar dismissed the moralistic and reformist theory in favour of the concept of untouchability as a result of historical developments, institutional preservation based on economic deprivation, spatial division, religious dogma, and coercive social practices. The study, based primarily on the writings of Dr. Ambedkar, explores his diagnosis of untouchability as a complete social fact and how he subverted concepts of purity and filth based on birth, like in the scriptures and Brahmanical orthodoxy. The essay goes further to discuss the all-round solutions Dr Ambedkar suggests to terminate untouchability, legislative enforcement, political mobilisation, constitutional safeguards, and an ethical-religious breakthrough, conversion into Buddhism. It argues that despite its acute realism in realising the constraints of legal reform, in the absence of social and political power, the approach of Dr. Ambedkar offers an integrated model of social change that combines law, institutions and collective agency. By evaluating how the concept continues to have relevance in the context of persistent caste bias in contemporary India, the study takes into consideration the enduring relevance of the concept of social justice, democracy, and human rights as developed by Dr. Ambedkar in his work.