Dr B. R. Ambedkar's Vision of Nation-Building

Among the modern Indian social and political thinkers, B. R. Ambedkar is preeminent because of his pragmatic ideology of social transformation and of nationbuilding. Kanta Kataria in her present work states that Ambedkar’s vision of nationbuilding is of abiding interest, which perhaps has been paid scant attention by the scholars. Defending the logic of Ambedkar, she argues that unless the infallibility of the Vedas is not discarded and the Varna system is not completely uprooted, it would not be possible to create social solidarity and psychological unity among the people. No strong and vigorous nationbuilding is possible, unless the primacy of Man, rationality and social justice is recognized; and a new social order based on liberty, equality and fraternity is ushered in. She advocates that Ambedkars’s model of nationbuilding is a realistic one; it possesses enough resilience for the creation of an energetic nation. Written in an ornamental language, Kanta Kataria’s work is scholarly, brilliant, brimful of ideas, clearly expressed and easy to understand.