Abstract
Abstract Are there laws connecting natural and moral phenomena? What is the ontology of the social such laws demand? Both Gandhi and Ambedkar held ontologically thin conceptions of social reality, including that of caste. Gandhi refrained from referring to caste in his account of untouchability as he thought such deep descriptions would delay the urgent task of self-purification. Ambedkar rejected the intentional and structural accounts of the origin of caste that could obstruct the annihilation of caste by granting it even a minimal justification. Gandhi claimed that the Bihar earthquake in 1934 was a punishment for us practising untouchability. I shall examine the hard connection he affirmed between natural phenomena and evil in the light of recent developments in philosophy of science and Indian metaphysics. Ambedkar, while rejecting the sociological theories about the origin of caste, admiringly refers to the law of imitation proposed by Gabriel Tarde, who rejected the dichotomy between the natural and social sciences and demanded an ontologically thin conception of social phenomenon like capitalism. Ambedkar used Tarde’s concept of the law to trace the origin of caste to the running amok of the means deployed for securing endogamy.
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