Ambedkar's Agonism: Sovereign Violence and Pakistan as Peace

In focusing primarily on B. R. Ambedkar, this essay will reconstruct and interpret the work on hostility and antagonism that was central to his political thought and writings. As a thinker, Ambedkar remained singular in taking account of the full and potential measure of violence predominantly in caste relations, but also beyond, in the comparative contexts of revolutions and formations of nation-states in the modern world. The essay reconstructs and interprets Ambedkar as a foundational thinker of sovereignty, republicanism, and agonism. In so doing, it analyzes in the same analytic rubric his writings on caste and Pakistan and the salience of separation to his political thought. Violence, power, and antagonism are elaborated here, as these were redirected to agonistic ends for the assumption of republicanism. The consideration of Pakistan as a political idea, the essay argues, needs to be understood in relation to the historic source of sovereignty, as Ambedkar uncovered namely in the figure of the Brahmin as a dispersed monarchy. Noting the singularity of his apprehension over the radical futurity of the idea of Pakistan, the essay intervenes in and contributes to global political thought and modern Indian history and the formation of Pakistan.