Category: Diversity and Inclusion

  • The People

    The People

    I suppose one must blame the Constitution. When it starts with – WE THE PEOPLE – is it any surprise then that people begin to believe that it is all about them?

    We could start at the beginning, but let us go even before that to a time when barristers trained in Britain began to return home and found that they were getting no respect. They gathered around a table and demanded a piece of the cake because after all it was baked from ingredients grown in their backyard. This did not cut any cake until they entered the kitchen and talked to the staff and convinced them to join their demand for a slice of the cake since the staff had actually baked it. The squatters, who had occupied the house through trickery and deceit, were forced to vacate once the kitchen staff took away the salt. In the meanwhile, the kitchen staff had been emboldened and wanted a piece of the cake too. This brings us to the beginning. (more…)

  • Making Brutes of Us All: Rule by Dehumanizing

    Making Brutes of Us All: Rule by Dehumanizing

    Photo by Chitto Cancio on Unsplash.

    The following article has been republished from here.

    In his scathing critique of Gandhi in “What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables”, Ambedkar takes on Gandhi´s views on technology, arguing that Gandhism is suited to a society which does not believe in democracy, and hence will lead to a situation where human beings “must keep on toiling ceaselessly for a pittance and remain a brute”. For Ambedkar modern machinery is “indispensable for emancipating man from leading the life of a brute, and for providing him with leisure and for making a life of culture possible”. He goes on to conclude that the ¨ultimate goal of a brute’s life is reached once his physical appetites are satisfied, the ultimate goal of man’s existence is not reached unless and until he has fully cultivated his mind¨.

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