ePub The Angel of History: Rosenzweig; Benjamin; Scholem (Cultural Memory in the Present) by Stéphane Mosès in History

Description

B.R. Ambedkar; the architect of India's constitution; and M.K. Gandhi; the Indian nationalist; two figures whose thought and legacies have most strongly shaped the contours of Indian democracy; are typically considered antagonists who held irreconcilable views on empire; politics; and society. As such; they are rarely studied together. This book reassesses their complex relationship; focusing on their shared commitment to equality and justice; which for them was inseparable from anticolonial struggles for sovereignty. Both men inherited the concept of equality from Western humanism; but their ideas mark a radical turn in humanist conceptions of politics. This study recovers the philosophical foundations of their thought in Indian and Western traditions; religious and secular alike. Attending to moments of difficulty in their conceptions of justice and their languages of nonviolence; it probes the nature of risk that radical democracy's desire for inclusion opens within modern political thought. In excavating Ambedkar and Gandhi's intellectual kinship; Radical Equality allows them to shed light on each other; even as it places them within a global constellation of moral and political visions. The story of their struggle against inequality; violence; and empire thus transcends national boundaries and unfolds within a universal history of citizenship and dissent.