Du Bois and Ambedkar: Discourse on Race and Caste

• In Event: Toward an Anti-Imperial Thought in Education: Pedagogy, Methodology, and Struggle for a World Anew

Abstract

This presentation explores the intellectual and political kinship between two towering 20th century thinkers—the African American scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois and the Dalit jurist, economist, and leader of India's anti-caste movement, B.R. Ambedkar. Though separated by geography and context, Du Bois and Ambedkar engaged in direct correspondence and shared a mutual commitment to dismantling oppressive social hierarchies. This presentation examines their engagement as a point of entry into a broader comparative and critical discourse on race and caste, foregrounding the theoretical and political resources each thinker provides for a global theory of structural oppression.

Herein, Du Bois’s and Ambedkar’s correspondence is situated within the context of global anti-colonial and liberatory thought. Their communication, while limited in volume, offers an important symbolic and philosophical bridge between African American and Dalit liberation struggles. Both thinkers saw in each other’s work a mirror of their own contexts—Du Bois saw caste-like structures in racial oppression, while Ambedkar drew from African American experiences to frame the Dalit struggle as part of a wider global condition of dehumanization.
Further, this work examines Du Bois’s contributions to race theorizing, as evidenced in his early works such as The Philadelphia Negro and The Souls of Black Folk. Particularly emphasis is placed on Du Bois’s departure from biological determinism and his framing of race as a socio-historical construct shaped by power, colonialism, and economic relations. In Du Bois’s thought, race is not simply a basis of social identity, but a mechanism of structural domination, produced and maintained through global systems of inequality.

Necessarily, this work examines Ambedkar’s theorization of caste, particularly as articulated in Annihilation of Caste. Here, caste is examined not as a purely cultural or religious institution, but as a system of social control with epistemic and material dimensions. Ambedkar’s rejection of Hindu orthodoxy and his framing of caste as a form of graded inequality highlight his critique of spiritual and philosophical determinism as tools of oppression. Lastly, the presentation seeks to engage in a critical interpolation of Du Boisian and Ambedkarite thought. It argues that reading Du Bois and Ambedkar together enables the formation of a more nuanced critical theory of oppression—one that interrogates how social stratification is legitimated through cultural, epistemological, and institutional means. Their shared vision of liberation offers powerful tools for confronting the intersecting forms of exclusion that persist in the modern world whether they be based on race, caste, or some other form of oppression.

Author

• Kamau Rashid, Northeastern Illinois University