Quest for Social Justice: A comparative study of Panchanan Barma and Dr B. R. Ambedkar

Abstract

The concept of ideal society largely depends on one’s perception, experience and interactions with the given society. Thus it is ‘contextual’ and ‘relational’ in reality. While reality determines the nature of one’s ideas, the transformation of his ideas gets denials from traditional perceptions, taboos and vested interests. All these features of ideas and activism have been found in the lives and works of Panchanan Barma (1865–1935) and Dr B. R. Ambedkar (1890–1956). Both of them were the products of their times. Thus their ideas on an ideal society got maturity through the interactions with their contemporary society. Hence, their attempts at attaining ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ for an ‘ideal society’ were the outcome of their ideas on ‘just society’ and ‘equality’ and finding probable ways for attaining ‘self-reliance’ to fight against injustice. This article seeks to analyse the concept of social justice of Panchanan Barma (the father of the Rajbanshi community of Bengal) and to compare it with that of Dr B. R. Ambedkar (who has been accepted as the ‘Father of the Indian Constitution’).