Urvi is a doctoral student with the department of history at McGill University, Montreal. She studied at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, and the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin. She worked at Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), Bombay. Her PhD research focuses on the histories of birth control in colonial and post-colonial Bombay.
Ambedkar predates one of the most powerful feminist slogans of the twentieth century “the personal is the political”, yet his relationship with wife Ramabai, as well as his views on marriage and birth control, represent precisely this. His feminism is alert to the caste and gendered discrimination that governs our lives and our decisions — who we socialise with, who we hire, where we live, and who we marry.
Ambedkar’s concerns were three-fold. How does representative democracy function (successfully) in a society that is fundamentally unequal? How can implementation and adherence by the Hindu majority be ensured? How does law function in a democracy where the lawmakers themselves are socially conditioned? As much as Ambedkar struggled with establishing a legal framework to protect marginalised groups, he left a lasting legacy in the form of an imagination for equality for the millions who followed his path and continue to negotiate within the system, against the system.