How London taught Ambedkar to ‘educate, agitate, organise’

A new book explores B.R. Ambedkar’s little-known years in Britain, revealing his far-reaching influence on anti-discrimination movements.

Dr B. R. Ambedkar (first from right in second row) with his professors and friends from the London School of Economics and Political Science, circa 1916-17. | Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

While Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s studies in, and connections with, Columbia University are well-known and much celebrated, not many know that he also studied for a masters in Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE), and was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in London. In fact, his doctoral work in economics and finance at LSE was instrumental in the setting up of the Central banking mechanism now known as the Reserve Bank of India.

Ambedkar in London

Edited by William Gould, Santosh Dass and Christophe Jaffrelot

Rupa Publications

Pages: 352

Price:Rs.995

Even less studied is Ambedkar’s work in London during the 1930s as part of the two Round Table Conferences held in 1930-early 1931 and late 1931-early 1923 respectively, and his subsequent work in the UK championing the cause of the “Depressed Classes”. The book Ambedkar in London is an attempt to bridge this gap, even as it reveals the extent of his involvement in, and influence upon, the struggles of the underdog all over the world.

Edited by William Gould, professor of Indian History at University of Leeds; Santosh Dass MBE, former civil servant and human rights activist; and Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, Research Director at CERI-Sciences Po and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s College London, this excellent compilation of essays covers a wide range of geographies and schools of thought.

It is not incidental that the trigger for this volume was the mobilisation by several UK-based Dalits to set up the Ambedkar Museum at 10, King Henry Road, in Camden, a residential borough in the heart of London where Ambedkar spent several years as a tenant. The struggle to set up the Museum after decades of obscurity and years of lobbying and advocacy with civic authorities, the Maharashtra and UK governments, and not least, the residents of King Henry Road, is emblematic of society’s reception to the values that Ambedkar himself struggled for.

Evaluating Ambedkar’s contribution

Ambedkar in London is divided into two parts. Part one covers Ambedkar’s years in London as a student in the 1920s and a lobbyist and policymaker in the 1930s. The foreword by Suraj Milind Yengde, who has worked on the issues of caste and race in Africa, the US, and now the UK, emphasises the international scholarly and policy footprint of Ambedkar whose work continues to impact present-day India and inspires generations. The Introduction by Santosh Dass and William Gould connects Ambedkar’s sojourns in London with the progress of the struggle for the rights of Dalits in the UK, which is explored in greater detail in Chapter 8 in the second part of the book.

The first three chapters, by William Gould, Sue Donnelly and Daniel Payne, and Steven Gasztowicz KC respectively, cover Ambedkar’s stint as an activist research scholar, student of LSE, and student of Law in London, while the fourth by Jesus F. Chairez-Garza discusses Ambedkar’s networking and activism in the First Round Table Conference. “Dr Ambedkar in the 1920s: The Transitional Decade” by Christophe Jaffrelot is a comprehensive treatment of the years between Ambedkar’s life as a student in London and his leadership in the Round Table Conferences in the 1930s.

The second part of the book, while broadly discussing the contemporary movement for the rights of Dalits in the UK, also harks back to Ambedkar’s interaction with the Black intellectual W.E.B Dubois and the subsequent engagement of the Black movement in the US with the Indian freedom struggle and the Dalit movement in India. The African-American community was in sympathy with Indians struggling against white supremacy/colonialism, and also aware of the overlaps between caste and race. Santosh Dass has collaborated with Arun Kumar to trace the growing Ambedkarite movement in the UK in Chapter 6; with Jamie Sullivan to explain how the Ambedkar Museum in London was set up; and writes in detail about the campaign to outlaw caste discrimination in the UK in Chapter 8. The African-American scholar Professor Kevin Brown, renowned for his work on race and caste, writes on Ambedkar in London and the African-American community in Chapter 9.

A fuller evaluation of Ambedkar’s contribution and intellectual and political leadership at the national and international sphere is yet to be achieved, but this compilation of essays does cover extensive ground, and connects the contribution of the younger scholar Ambedkar to the mature Constitutionalist, Law Minister, and politician in a substantial manner.

In his Conclusion, Gould writes: “[t]he early 1920s in London position Ambedkar’s intellectual contributions in the longer term…(his) powerful principles and strategies for Dalit representation and keen principles and strategies for Dalit representation and keen sociological approaches to Indian inequality that characterise his mature phase can only be fully explained in relation to his longer-term intellectual contributions. In his early writings this included the politics and governance of space, the nature of the colonial economy, the idea of the rule of law, and the wider context of political power in interwar India.”

Chairez-Garza and Jaffrelot argue that Ambedkar’s experiences and connections to London around the early mobilisation of the Depressed Classes through education and reform were significant to his later, and more radical, ideas about caste. Gould feels that Ambedkar’s study in London helped him better relate the significance of space and transnationalism to the issues of social segregation and exclusion of the untouchables.

The bungalow on King Henry’s Road in North London where Dr. B R Ambedkar lived as a student in the 1920s. | Photo Credit: PTI

Thus we find that Ambedkar embodied, as an exemplar, that education was the first strategy to ensure the social and economic progress of Dalits, and thereafter became an important means of fostering the wider Dalit movement. Even as his own sponsors saw in his education and progress a means to be more influential in the public life in India, Ambedkar himself saw it as a means to be taken more seriously as an internationally qualified person with the capability to take on both the colonial government as well as Indian politicians who enjoyed a higher social status.

These approaches have stood the Dalit movement in good stead. The principles of institution-building and social mobilisation as modelled by Ambedkar continue to be popular, including in the Buddha Vihara in London as well as at the smallest village or taluk level even now in India.

Spirited challenge to inequality

The other important model that he followed is the spatial contextualisation and representation of the Depressed Classes in the face of caste discrimination. This elicited results in the UK, as the Dalits strove to have caste discrimination officially acknowledged in anti-discrimination legislation: the struggle against social elitism continues as a significant challenge even now both in India and the UK, stemming from an inability—or unwillingness—of the social and political elite to understand the structural advantages conferred on them by historical privilege.

Ambedkar’s spirited and multi-pronged challenge to this inequality includes education, institutionalising legal obligations to the progress of the disadvantaged, political representation and even, towards the end of his life, a spiritual challenge to the entrenched privilege enjoyed by a few on the basis of birth and religious claims.

Thus, it was Ambedkar’s critical analysis of the nature and influence of the caste system which set the tone for the pre-Independence struggle against caste discrimination in India and also inspired the leaders of struggle of the African-Americans against racial and colour discrimination. W.E.B. Dubois wrote appreciatively of Ambedkar’s speech in the First Round Table Conference.

Ambedkar’s signal contribution to the framing of the Indian Constitution was the drafting of the Preamble and the foundational values of liberty, equality, and fraternity, based not so much on the slogan of the French Revolution as on the teachings of the Buddha and their values in Indian society.

There is no doubt that Ambedkar would have been proud of the team that successfully campaigned to set up the museum in London dedicated to his memory and legacy. Interestingly, they used the very slogan—“Educate, Agitate, Organise”, which Ambedkar coined to achieve the goal of representation of the underdog—to occupy the space which had hitherto excluded them, and which shall now inspire succeeding generations.

Cynthia Stephen is an independent journalist and social policy researcher who tracks developments related to marginalised sections and women.