This article attempts to extend studies on Ambedkar’s understanding of the nation state to include his concerns for the international. This is achieved by looking at the problem of caste inequality outside the borders of the Indian nation state and the latter’s response or the absence of response to such a pertinent issue. Via an analysis of political sovereignty, the social question, and Buddhism, we seek to demonstrate how Ambedkar reworks the connections between the national and the international on the common register of human equality.
The meaning and implications of the presence of “Dalit studies” in the pedagogical content of higher education in India need to be analysed. “Dalit studies” seeks to intervene into such a space of pedagogical practices and institutional policies in higher education which may have grudgingly accepted the physical presence of the Dalit through affirmative action, but which has nonetheless historically overlooked the thought of the Dalit.
This article highlights the incongruity involved in the Prime Minister of a nation proclaiming himself to be a “chowkidar.” But who will watch the watchmen?
Hegemonic ideologies not only provide a desired frame of action, but also a desired frame of dissent. The environment of hate against the minorities and a section of dissenters and their response--invoking the "Idea of India" as tolerant, diverse and inclusive--caters perfectly to the needs of Hindutva as a hegemonic ideology. This article attempts a diagnosis of this stalemate.
Subrata Roy exemplifies the state's deficient regulation of finance capital in our neo-liberal economy. His recent imprisonment works to avoid some fundamental questions about the culpability of the state, and its failure to control capitalism through liberal-democracy. In the fallout of this case, Roy may well be a mere scapegoat of the larger ailment of financial speculation itself.
