BABG-171 Solved Assignment

Question 1: Explain Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s understanding of caste in Indian society.

Meaning of “caste” in Ambedkar’s analysis

Ambedkar treats caste as a social system that fixes a person’s social position by birth and then protects that position through strict social rules. For him, caste is not simply a cultural identity; it is a mechanism that creates hierarchy and enforces inequality. A key point in his explanation is that caste functions like an “enclosed” social group, where membership is controlled and protected so that the group remains separate from others.

Caste is not only division of labour, but division of labourers

He argues that caste cannot be defended as a harmless division of work. Instead, it divides people themselves into ranked categories, where some groups are treated as superior and others as inferior. This produces “graded inequality” in everyday life—status, dignity, and opportunities become unequal from the start.

Why caste remains stable: the central role of endogamy

Ambedkar highlights that the strongest support of caste is endogamy (marriage within the group). When marriage is restricted within the caste, caste boundaries remain solid across generations. In his discussion of how caste maintains itself, he connects endogamy with social practices that control women’s choices and sexuality, because controlling marriage is essential to preserving caste purity and boundaries.

Caste versus class

He distinguishes caste from class by showing that class boundaries can shift through occupation, education, and economic mobility, while caste boundaries are treated as “permanent” because they are tied to birth and supported by social and religious sanction. This is why caste becomes more rigid and socially harmful than a normal economic hierarchy.

Ambedkar’s solution: dismantling the social foundations of caste

Ambedkar’s approach to ending caste is not limited to moral advice; it is a programme of social reconstruction. He stresses that caste cannot disappear only through speeches about unity if society continues to treat caste as sacred. He therefore pushes for measures that weaken caste boundaries in daily life—especially inter-caste interaction and inter-caste marriage—while also challenging the social authority that treats caste rules as unquestionable.

Practical relevance

Even today, students can “see” caste operating when peer groups, housing choices, community networks, and marriage expectations follow inherited lines rather than individual merit. Ambedkar’s framework helps a learner identify caste not only in visible discrimination, but also in the quiet social rules that decide who mixes with whom, who is considered “respectable,” and whose opportunities are supported by family and community networks. His central message is that a democratic society must be built on liberty, equality, and fraternity in social life—not only on formal political rights.

Question 2: Discuss Ambedkar’s critique of the Indian village and village social life.

The village: ideal image versus lived reality

The village is often presented as a harmonious community where people cooperate and solve problems locally. Ambedkar challenges this romantic picture by asking a direct question: who benefits from the “community,” and who is excluded? His critique focuses on the fact that the traditional village structure is deeply shaped by caste hierarchy, which turns village life into unequal social living rather than equal community living.

Village as a caste-based social order

Ambedkar describes the village as a space where caste is not just a belief but an organised arrangement of people, space, and power. Dalits are often pushed to the edges of the village, physically separated, and treated as a dependent group. This separation is reinforced through everyday rules—where people may walk, where they may draw water, what forms of interaction are “permitted,” and which services they must provide.

Everyday discrimination is built into village routines

His criticism is powerful because it is not abstract: it shows how ordinary village routines can reproduce humiliation. Social distance becomes normalised through customs of purity and pollution, restricted entry into common spaces, and unequal treatment in public events. In student-level terms, the village becomes an “everyday classroom” where hierarchy is taught informally—children learn who can sit where, eat where, and speak to whom.

Village institutions and the problem of local power

Ambedkar is sceptical of village self-rule when local institutions are controlled by dominant castes. In such conditions, local decision-making can become a tool for enforcing tradition rather than protecting rights. So, the problem is not decentralisation as an idea, but decentralisation without safeguards for equality and dignity.

Ambedkar’s broader direction: rights, modern opportunities, and social mobility

His critique fits with his larger vision: real freedom requires social equality and access to modern opportunities—education, urban employment, fair public services, and legal protection. Without these, village life can trap the oppressed in inherited status roles. This is why his approach consistently connects social reform with constitutional and economic measures that expand dignity and mobility.

Practical illustration (ground-level understanding)

If a student observes village life closely (for example, through field-based assignments), the key learning is this: inequality is not only in “big events,” but in access to shared resources, treatment in public spaces, and the confidence to claim rights. Ambedkar’s critique trains learners to ask whether a village is truly a moral community, or only a traditional structure where hierarchy is maintained in the name of culture.

Question 3: Examine Ambedkar’s contribution to gender equality in India.

Gender equality placed inside the caste question

Ambedkar’s distinctive contribution is that he connects women’s subordination to the functioning of caste. He argues that caste survives mainly through endogamy (marriage within the group). When endogamy is protected, women’s lives are tightly controlled, and this control becomes a tool to reproduce “graded inequality” across generations.

Critical reading of tradition and history

He examined Hindu religious texts to trace why women’s status became low in society. In his analysis, practices such as sati, enforced widowhood and child marriage are not “random customs”; they are linked to maintaining caste boundaries and regulating marriage within caste. This helps explain why women’s freedom became a central casualty of caste society.

Women as participants in social movements

Ambedkar actively encouraged women’s education and public participation. The course material highlights women’s presence in major mobilisations and conferences connected to Ambedkar’s movements, and his direct appeal for girls’ schooling and self-respect among women of the Depressed Classes.

Welfare approach: dignity of women workers

As a legislator, he supported maternity benefit and related measures to protect women labourers, arguing that women’s health and rest are matters of public welfare and state responsibility.

Hindu Code Bill: equality within the family

His most concrete legal intervention was the Hindu Code Bill, which sought equal rights for women in property and succession, maintenance, marriage, divorce, adoption and guardianship. Key proposals included ending survivorship-based claims, giving daughters a defined share, converting women’s limited estate into absolute ownership, supporting monogamy, permitting divorce, and removing caste restrictions in marriage and adoption.

Why this matters (student application)

In everyday life, gender inequality is often visible in property denial, pressure to remain in unfair marriages, or stigma around divorce. Ambedkar’s framework helps students link these realities to social structure and law, showing that gender justice requires both social change and enforceable rights.

Question 4: Explain Ambedkar’s understanding of untouchability.

Untouchability within the caste order

The course explains untouchability as a practice embedded in the caste system, where a social category outside the varna scheme (avarnas) is treated as outcaste. Traditionally, they were denied social ties and resource ownership, pushed to the outskirts of villages, and forced into dependence on savarnas. This structural exclusion is central to Ambedkar’s understanding of untouchability as a system, not a mere attitude.

Changing names and growing political consciousness

The unit notes that “Depressed Classes,” “Scheduled Castes,” and later “Dalits” were used at different times. The shift to “Dalit” reflects a more assertive political consciousness against historical injustice.

Perspectives on untouchability discussed in the unit

• Religious perspective: Justifies hierarchy through religious cosmogony (varna origin narratives), making discrimination appear sacred and natural.
• Racial perspective: Links untouchability to conquest and subjugation; Ambedkar challenges the “racial difference” argument and offers the “Broken Men” explanation, suggesting they were later treated as untouchables and were not originally within Hindu society.
• Economic perspective: Marxian explanations connect untouchability to the mode of production, but the unit also highlights that discrimination often survives even with modernisation and urbanisation.

Ambedkar’s route against untouchability

Ambedkar did not treat it as only a personal “bad attitude.” He treated it as a system maintained by caste rules (especially purity–pollution ideas) and by social power in everyday life. Therefore, the remedy also had to be system-level. The unit shows three linked steps in his approach: (1) claiming civic rights in daily life (equal access to water sources, schools, public places and services), because untouchability works through denial of common resources; (2) education and organisation to build self-respect and collective strength, because isolated individuals cannot challenge entrenched caste practices; and (3) legal–constitutional safeguards, because social customs do not change reliably without enforceable rights and penalties.

His disagreements with Gandhi become relevant here only on one point: Ambedkar argued that untouchability cannot be removed while the wider caste framework remains morally protected. From his perspective, untouchability is not an “extra evil” added onto caste; it is produced by caste logic itself. That is why his later conclusion moved towards rejecting the religious justification of caste, since that justification keeps untouchability socially acceptable even when it is publicly condemned.

After Independence

Post-Independence, untouchability was made a punishable offence (Article 17) and Scheduled Castes received safeguards including reservations in education, jobs and representation. The material also stresses that untouchability continues in newer forms with regional variation, so legal reform must be supported by social transformation.

Question 5: Critically explain Ambedkar’s critique of the colonial monetary economy with special reference to the Indian Rupee.

Monetary economy in colonial India (what it implies)

A monetary economy depends on currency for wages, taxes, trade, savings, and public finance. Ambedkar’s critique focuses on how colonial currency management and exchange arrangements affected ordinary people through prices, purchasing power, and instability.

Ambedkar’s diagnosis of the rupee problem

Ambedkar closely studied the rupee’s standard and the policy debates around it. He argued that currency policy should be judged by its impact on price stability and the cost of living, not by administrative convenience. He examined how changes in the currency standard and exchange management could disturb domestic prices and create hardship for fixed-income and wage-earning groups.

Economic effects: cost of living, trade, and public finance

When the currency value shifts or the price level becomes unstable, the poor are hit first: wages lag behind prices, savings lose value, and taxation becomes more burdensome in real terms. Ambedkar links monetary stability to social welfare because unstable money silently redistributes resources from weaker groups to stronger groups who can protect themselves through assets and influence.

Policy direction: stable money and accountable institutions

His broad policy direction is that currency must be managed scientifically and independently to protect internal stability. He supports reforms that reduce arbitrary manipulation of the currency and focus on an internal standard of value (price stability), because a democracy cannot function meaningfully when economic insecurity is produced through unstable money.

Question 6: Short Notes- Write brief notes on the following concepts.

a) Social democracy

For Ambedkar, social democracy is not only a political arrangement; it is a way of life grounded in liberty, equality, and fraternity. Political democracy becomes fragile if society continues graded inequality and social exclusion. Social democracy therefore demands a moral social order—people must treat one another with respect and equal dignity, and institutions must prevent isolation and exclusiveness. In the Indian context, abolition of caste hierarchy becomes a necessary condition for a stable and real democracy.

b) Citizenship

Citizenship is membership in a political community with a bundle of rights and duties. In modern constitutional systems, it expands beyond territory to include civil, political, and social dimensions. Ambedkar focuses on protecting human dignity through fundamental rights and building a welfare-oriented framework through directive principles. He also treats the citizen as socially embedded: when society denies equal belonging through caste or gender discrimination, citizenship becomes incomplete in practice even if it exists on paper.

c) Small holding

Small holding refers to very small and often fragmented land parcels. Ambedkar shows that fragmentation reduces efficiency and productivity because cultivation becomes costly and difficult to manage. His remedies include consolidation (so scattered plots are reorganised into workable units), cooperative farming for standard areas, and taxation based on ability to pay (progressive land revenue with relief for low-income farmers). He also links agrarian reform with social justice, so that landless and weaker sections can gain secure livelihoods.

d) Federalism

Federalism concerns the relationship between the centre and constituent units (states) and requires balanced distribution of power along with safeguards. Ambedkar supports a strong centre for stability while also insisting on checks and balances so that states and people’s interests are represented. On linguistic reorganisation, he distinguishes “one-state one-language” from “one-language one-state,” preferring arrangements that avoid creating oversized units and protect minorities from majority tyranny.

e) Parliamentary democracy

Parliamentary democracy is a system where the executive is drawn from the legislature and must retain its confidence. Ambedkar values it because it rejects hereditary rule and makes government accountable through elections, an effective opposition, and free and fair electoral competition. He also points to practical limits: parliamentary institutions can fail if society lacks social and economic democracy, because political equality alone cannot ensure real freedom and welfare for the masses.