![[attachments/Radical-Equality-Ambedkar,-Gandhi,-and-the-Risk-of-Democracy.jpg|height=240]] ## Review The book aims to create a meta-understanding of the politics of Ambedkar & Gandhi, helping to build an understanding of the commonalities underlying their politics. It is organised in 7 chapters and each chapter does a rather deep dive into their writings with carefully selected verbatim quotations from their books, letters, speeches or other published work. The first and the sixth chapters for me were the best. The book requires a fair foundation on the popular works of both Gandhi & Ambedkar and assumes a fair degree of understanding of their politics. Although initially I thought it might be some kind of an apologia of Gandhi, it was not so. Both are treated fairly in isolation, but the republican, civil libertarian and constitutionalist/state-ist positions of Ambedkar are given thorough treatment as are the theological politics of Gandhi rooted in his particular understanding of Dharma (contrast with detailed explanations of Ambedkar's quest for a religion-grounded politics and his tryst with Buddhism and his departure from a Brahminical/Vedic Hinduism that he was never able to see rid of its foundations anyway). Overall, a decent read but not the easiest one. ## Reading status - Status: Read - My rating: 3 ⭐⭐⭐ - Date started / added: 2023/01/10 - Date finished: 2023/02/12 ## Metadata - Author: Aishwary Kumar - Year: 2015.0 - ISBN13: ="9788189059958" - Shelves (Goodreads): india, politics