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VOL. 7, ISSUE 4 (2025)
Ambedkar as a global anti-caste thinker: Dialogues with Du Bois, Fanon and contemporary critical race theory
Authors
Dr. Dheeraj Pratap Mitra
Abstract
This paper takes up a problem that global social theory has quietly
lived with for decades: caste remains pushed to the margins of race theory
treated as local, cultural or residual even though it works through structure,
inheritance and social closure in ways that strongly resemble racial domination
elsewhere. That gap shapes how inequality is understood worldwide. It narrows
the field. The central argument developed here is that B. R. Ambedkar should be
read as a foundational global theorist of structural domination whose work
speaks directly to the same problems that animate W. E. B. Du Bois’s writing on
race, Frantz Fanon’s account of colonial injury and the later concerns of
Critical Race Theory. Ambedkar’s analysis of caste does not rest on identity alone
but on how institutions, law, labour, religion and everyday habits combine to
lock people into graded forms of life from birth often with no visible exit.
That insight travels. This paper places Ambedkar in dialogue with Du Bois’s
idea of double consciousness, Fanon’s work on dehumanization and violence, and
key Critical Race Theory arguments about law, power and interest without
forcing equivalence or smooth comparison. The method is comparative textual
sociology built through close reading of major texts, speeches and debates, and
guided by later high-citation scholarship in race and postcolonial studies. The
aim is not to add caste as a footnote to race theory but to widen the frame
itself so that global sociology can better grasp how durable systems of
hierarchy are built, defended and lived through. This shift matters now. It
opens space for new conversations across regions, movements and traditions of
critical thought.
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Pages:118-125
How to cite this article:
Dr. Dheeraj Pratap Mitra "Ambedkar as a global anti-caste thinker: Dialogues with Du Bois, Fanon and contemporary critical race theory". International Journal of Sociology and Political Science, Vol 7, Issue 4, 2025, Pages 118-125
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