Are tradition and modernity antagonistic? Ambedkar in and against the postcolonial project

George, Noel Mariam (2024) Are tradition and modernity antagonistic? Ambedkar in and against the postcolonial project. Postcolonial Studies, 27 (2). pp. 248-266. ISSN 1368-8790

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Abstract

This paper attempts to demystify the antagonistic relationship between modernity and tradition as construed by Ashis Nandy. As a prominent voice in postcolonial scholarship, Nandy saw modernity as a colonial conception of rights, self, and society. Nandy’s critique of modernity laid the grounds for several projects that rejected the modern consensus for its colonial origins. Juxtaposing Nandy’s reiteration of early anti-modern nationalist thought with a multi-dimensional reading of colonial modernity in contemporary Ambedkarite scholarship, this paper explores the ambivalences of negotiating modern liberalism in a postcolonial order of hierarchical group identities. Despite the close imbrication of modernity with the imperial centre, Ambedkarite scholarship demonstrated how B.R. Ambedkar, synthesized a middle ground, where he incorporated the promise of modernity to liberate the ‘individual’ without dismissing the ‘communal’ collective self, construed by traditions. While postcolonial scholarship is heterogeneous, following Nandy, huge postcolonial melancholia has conflated modernity with coloniality. How do we rethink postcolonial theory from its current culturalist posturing1 to (re)claim the emancipatory potential of both modernity and tradition? Could it be that Nandy’s anxiety and discomfort with modernity fail to ‘contemporise theory’2?.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/cpcs20
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Institute of Postcolonial Studies
Divisions:	International History
Subjects:	J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration J Political Science > JC Political theory D History General and Old World > D History (General)
Date Deposited:	12 Jun 2024 13:24
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2024 10:08
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/123857

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