Ambedkar Reading Group at Cambridge: The Evolution of Ambedkar's Navayana Pragmatism

This talk was organised by the ARC and took place on Wednesday 8th February 2023 the speaker is Dr Scott R Stroud, University of Texas at Austin, author of The Evolution of Pragmatism in India and the chair is Prof Manali Desai, Head of the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. Abstract: Many know of Bhimrao Ambedkar's educational experiences in the west. Some know of how much he thought of the classes he took with John Dewey. Almost nothing is known, however, about the depth of Ambedkar's engagement with John Dewey and his pragmatism. This talk builds on the archival and conceptual work in my forthcoming book, The Evolution of Pragmatism in India (Chicago, 2023), to argue that Ambedkar extended various parts of Dewey's pragmatism and used them to help construct a novel vision of meliorist philosophy. Ambedkar's new form of pragmatism--what I call Navayana Pragmatism--changes the parameters of pragmatist psychology and sociology to align them with the anti-caste struggle. Undergirding Ambedkar's critique of caste is his pragmatism's vision of social democracy as a way of life for individuals and groups in a community. Thus, Ambedkar's roles as an anti-caste thinker, a pragmatist philosopher, and a theorist of democracy all converge when we think of him as part of the evolution of pragmatism in India and the world. To find out more about the Ambedkar Reading Group at Cambridge please visit: https://research.sociology.cam.ac.uk/...