Ambedkar and the problem of biography

Abstract

In 1945 Dr. B. R. Ambedkar published What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. He prefaced it with a dedication to “F”, Fanny or Frances Fitzgerald, a widowed Irishwoman who was his longtime friend. This dedication gives us some clues as to the nature and complexity of their relationship. His dedication reproduces a section of the Book of Ruth, from the Old Testament, a story about loyalty and family, homeland and exile, one’s own tribe and another tribe, solidarity, migration and conversion. I delve deeper into the story of Ruth, along with another Biblical figure, Moses, who moves between countries, tribes, identities and religions. Their stories retain both the history of their otherness and the importance of their role as founders. Ambedkar’s refusal to integrate into the Hindu caste order, his assertion of the inassimilable otherness and difference of the Untouchables, and eventually his conversion Buddhism, all proceed from his interpretation of Ruth.