Rhetoric Society Quarterly Jan 2016

Pragmatism and the Pursuit of Social Justice in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar and the Rhetoric of Religious Reorientation

Scott R. Stroud

Abstract

This essay engages the understudied Indian reformer, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), in order to explicate pragmatism’s influence in non-Western rhetorical situations. By charting the influence of John Dewey on Ambedkar as a student at Columbia University, this study explores Ambedkar’s translation of pragmatism into an Indian context filled with religiously underwritten injustice. His form of pragmatist rhetoric focuses on conversion as a solution to the problems of untouchables in India, and represents a version of pragmatist rhetoric that is revolutionary in form and effect. Expanding our knowledge of how persuasion relates to religious conversion, I argue that Ambedkar constructs and employs a pragmatist rhetoric of reorientation. Honed by Ambedkar in the pluralistic context of India, this process is composed of three distinct steps: evaluation of existing religious commitments, renunciation of harmful worldviews, and conversion to beneficial alternative religious orientations.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2016-01-01
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2015.1104717
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism argument assessment race and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Adsanatham (2018)
    Bloody Rhetoric and Civic Unrest: Rhetorical Aims of Human Blood Splashing in t…
    Advances in the History of Rhetoric

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