Educate to Annihilate Caste: Ambedkar, Freire, and Inclusive Education in Contemporary India

Abstract

This article examines inclusive education for marginalised communities in India through the philosophy of B. R. Ambedkar. It reads Ambedkar's ideas alongside Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, from a Global South perspective. The paper argues that Ambedkar built a theory of education rooted in the Indian experience of caste, well before Freire wrote on the pedagogy of the oppressed in Latin America. Both thinkers saw education as a tool of liberation, not mere literacy. The article uses a qualitative, textual and conceptual method, drawing on Ambedkar's primary writings, Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and secondary scholarship on caste and schooling in India. The analysis finds a strong convergence between Ambedkar's idea of "educate, agitate, organise" and Freire's idea of conscientisation, alongside important differences rooted in the specific nature of caste as graded inequality. It also extends the comparison to gender, showing how caste and patriarchy together shape Dalit women's education. The paper discusses how these ideas apply to present-day Indian education policy, including the Right to Education Act, 2009, and the National Education Policy, 2020. It concludes that genuine inclusive education in India needs an Ambedkarite foundation, not administrative access alone, requiring attention to dignity, self-respect, and the redistribution of social power.