Ambedkar and Nietzsche walk into a bar
On Holi, Navayana brings you the opportunity to forego the tradition of immolating Bahujan icons like Holika and instead partake in the thought-worlds of two thinkers, B.R. Ambedkar and Friedrich Nietzsche, knotted together in the tangles of a holy book—the Manusmriti.
Ambedkar and Nietzsche are thinkers whose academic afterlives have not intersected in any serious manner. Curiously, they share similar concerns. Both contemplate the familiar problem of equality and freedom in the modern world, albeit from opposite ends. Both look to the Manusmriti for answers. The book-loving Ambedkar finds the scripture entirely objectionable. On 25 December 1927, in Mahad, he famously consigned a copy of it to flames. Whereas, Nietzsche finds in it traces of a necessary nobility that can be counterposed to the flattening effects of Christianity in Europe. So, are the two thinkers simply antagonistic? The picture is far more complex. Ankit Kawade, a young scholar pursuing his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University, attends to their comparability in his first book, The Ambedkar–Nietzsche Provocations: The Genius of the Chandala and the Gospel of the Superman.
Ankit was a recipient of the Navayana Dalit History Fellowship in 2021. He came to us, an MPhil candidate, with his comparative method in place, his application already indicating the thoroughgoing nature of his approach. Over the course of the last four years, he developed his ideas into a formidable book, one that Barnard history professor Anupama Rao says ‘will inspire how we approach Ambedkar’s thought for years to come’. Bruno Bosteels, professor at Columbia University, commends it as ‘an urgent and original contribution’, and Ajay Skaria, professor at University of Minnesota, thinks that this ‘exciting, erudite and brilliant’ book will ‘open up many lines of flight for its readers’. Ankit’s strength is in identifying the benefits of misreading. Nietzsche misreads the Manusmriti, Ambedkar misreads Nietzsche, and yet in this historical game of telephone, something like a true approximation of the task at hand emerges.
The task is the realization of human freedom. Freedom is a heady brew; it instills in us a terrifying confidence in our own collective destiny. Its intoxication has led us into dark alleys and dead ends, and yet, beyond good and evil, it is only by following through to the full possibility of our own freedom that we can truly understand what it means to be human.
In an age where war itself has become a banal spectacle, the world seems to have forgotten how to concoct universal freedom. We think that we have outgrown thinkers like Ambedkar and Nietzsche. But we continue to live in their world, heedless as ever. The Ambedkar–Nietzsche Provocations is among those few books that reminds us that the problems of the present were most eloquently articulated long before our time. The colourful cover is illumined by a photograph of artist Rajyashri Goody’s work—Installation of shredded and pulped Manusmriti.
This Holi, get high on the wisdom of two teetotaling world-historical thinkers. Feel free to feel free—for only Rs 399!