Arc of Ambedkar's Fraternity: Law, Secularism, Religion

Arc of Ambedkar's Fraternity examines Ambedkar's idea of fraternity through Constituent Assembly debates and Supreme Court judgements, situating it within recent scholarship on democracy, caste, class, religion, and socio-economic rights. Arc of Ambedkar's Fraternity focuses on B. R. Ambedkar in the light of recent global interest in constitutional fraternity. The book locates his work in the context of contemporary scholarship and examines deliberations on fraternity in the Constituent Assembly in relation to democracy and the divisions of caste, class, and religion. It looks at Supreme Court judgements and legal discussions that gradually interpreted Ambedkar's fraternity to frame state obligations and the socioeconomic rights of individuals and groups in relation to each other. Robinson reflects on the disappearance of fraternity and emergence of secularism as the focus of Indian social science debates, and the book highlights the need to bridge this gap by considering how the two are interconnected. Finally, the discussion turns to another strand in Ambedkar's thought, which located fraternity in religion, specifically, Navayana Buddhism, and questioned the limitations of democratic constitutionalism and secular law in creating fraternity. This perspective is read in the light of Derrida, who similarly indicated the paradox of fraternity in modern democracy. Ambedkar's Buddhism is thus interpreted not as an abandonment of politics or its practical resolution, but as an acknowledgement of the indeterminacy involved in keeping fraternity and democracy open to what is to come.