Two personalities: one escaped from the constrictive machinery of concentration camps under totalitarian regimes driven by an insatiable hunger for power; the other emancipated from centuries-old inhuman classifications to construct the very scaffolding on which India, the world’s largest democracy, operates today. One departed 69 years ago, the other 50; last week, we commemorated their passing.
Every courtroom in India reverberates with the silent presence of B.R. Ambedkar’s portrait, alongside the ever-controversial figure whose moral authority is enshrined in the conscience of a nation, Mahatma Gandhi. Meanwhile, Hannah Arendt, seated at the front of a smoke-filled lecture hall, observed the world with eyes that pierced ordinary perception, uncovering the terrifying ordinariness of evil.
What do these lives, so distinct in geography and circumstance, reveal about the political and ethical fabric of the modern world? How is it that two of the most penetrating minds of the 20th century – one a scholar of human suffering and law, the other a witness to the collapse of civilisation – remain, in many respects, peripheral to contemporary discourse on politics, morality, and governance?
Arendt: A refusal to conform
Arendt’s existence was profoundly shaped by exile and the continuous intrusion of catastrophe into thought.
Arrested briefly by the Gestapo in 1933, she fled Germany illegally and spent time in the internment camp in Gurs, assisting the Zionist underground in facilitating the escape of fellow refugees to safer territories. She later reflected: “Those years were the best years of my life,” not because they offered comfort or leisure, but because they demanded immediate moral and practical responsibility.
In this crucible, she honed an understanding of political evil that was both nuanced and unsettling. Her intellectual audacity became most apparent during her reporting on the Adolf Eichmann trial, where she articulated the controversial idea of the ‘banality of evil.’
Eichmann, a seemingly ordinary bureaucrat, participated in the most horrifying crimes with meticulous obedience, lacking both cruelty and extraordinary malevolence. As Arendt observed: “The trouble with Adolf Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, incapable of thinking from the standpoint of another.”
This, I believe, challenges the comforting notion that only monsters commit evil, revealing that ordinary people, acting unthinkingly, can perpetrate atrocity.
Arendt’s intellectual methods were as unconventional as her conclusions. She smoked incessantly, lectured for hours in smoke-filled rooms, and maintained rigorous independence from traditional academic hierarchies. “I am not a philosopher. I have never pretended to be one,” she remarked.
Her refusal to conform, to be categorised neatly as philosopher or historian, allowed her to combine historical scholarship with philosophical inquiry, producing analyses of totalitarianism, revolution, and the erosion of public life that remain uniquely prescient.
Her personal life, equally unconventional, included a marriage that combined intellectual partnership with romantic engagement, defying bourgeois norms yet maintaining profound companionship – a reminder that thought and life were inseparable in her practice.
Ambedkar: A radical vision of equality
On another continent, Ambedkar faced a lifetime of structural oppression from his birth into the Mahar caste in 1891.
At a time when untouchables had little access to education or public life, Ambedkar pursued his studies with extraordinary intensity, dedicating up to 21 hours a day to reading and research. He earned degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and a doctorate, synthesising legal, economic, and historical scholarship in ways few contemporaries could match.
Yet Ambedkar’s intellectual achievements were inseparable from political action. Early experiences of discrimination – roommates refusing to share quarters, peers shunning him – cemented his belief that entrenched social hierarchies could not be reformed voluntarily.
His greatest legacy, the drafting of India’s Constitution, codified principles of equality and human dignity, including the abolition of untouchability, yet this monumental achievement came after painful negotiation, notably during the 1932 Poona Pact. Gandhi’s fast compelled him to abandon separate electorates for Dalits, a compromise Ambedkar later described as morally troubling: “There was nothing noble in the fast. It was a foul and filthy act.”
Ambedkar’s radicalism was inseparable from his intellect. While Gandhi framed untouchability as a moral blemish to be corrected through spiritual awakening, Ambedkar regarded caste as a system of structural oppression embedded in law, religion, and social custom.
In ‘Annihilation of Caste,’ he declared: “You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build a nation.” His critique extended to sacred texts, including the ‘Manusmriti,’ which he publicly burnt in 1927 as an act of defiance, declaring it an instrument of subjugation.
His vision of equality was uncompromising, seeking not symbolic reform but structural transformation. Yet both men shared a commitment to justice, albeit through radically different methods: Gandhi’s Harijan programme pursued moral persuasion; Ambedkar’s legal interventions demanded enforceable equality.
Intertwined ideas
The reception of these thinkers reveals a persistent discomfort with radical thought.
Arendt, 50 years after her death in 1975, remains largely discussed within academic circles rather than mainstream political debate, despite her acute warnings about the dangers of bureaucratic obedience and the erosion of public life.
Ambedkar, who passed almost 70 years ago in 1956, is venerated ceremonially yet often reduced to a symbol for Dalits rather than celebrated as the architect of modern Indian democracy. Ironically, India still writhes under the grip of caste and systemic subjugation, while informal hierarchies silently poison the conscience and corrode the very fabric of society.
In both cases, the radical implications of their work challenge comfortable narratives. Arendt resists simplistic moral heroism; Ambedkar rejects reformist compromises that preserve hierarchical privilege under the guise of national unity. Their lives confront the persistent question: how do societies construct legitimacy while masking structures of oppression, and how do ordinary individuals participate in systemic injustice without conscious malice?
Their ideas intertwine in their insistence on fundamental human capacities: the ability to think, reflect, and act responsibly. Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ reveals that moral failure is often ordinary, embedded in routine, and enacted without reflection. Ambedkar demonstrates the converse: reflection and analysis can translate into political structures that prevent systemic cruelty.
Both understood that human beings are socially and politically conditioned, and that without structural safeguards, systems exploit, oppress, and normalise injustice. Arendt observed the perils of ideological conformity; Ambedkar demonstrated the dangers of inherited social hierarchy and legalised discrimination. Their lives illustrate what occurs when thought is divorced from responsibility, or when social systems fossilise injustice.
Politically inconvenient
However, controversies continue to haunt their legacies. Arendt’s Eichmann analysis drew accusations of excusing Nazism – a misreading of her claim that thoughtlessness, not malevolence, fuels atrocity. Ambedkar’s conflict with Gandhi over the Poona Pact has been recast as a personal clash rather than a principled stance on representation.
Both confronted uncomfortable realities, remaining politically inconvenient. Arendt’s critique of public life and obedience could illuminate modern authoritarian tendencies; Ambedkar’s insistence on structural equality continues to be selectively invoked, stripped of its radical implications.
Yet their lives demand critical engagement today more than ever, reflecting Arendt’s insight that “the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution,” and Ambedkar’s insistence that “caste is a state of mind,” highlighting that thought and action are inseparable and that societies failing to cultivate reflective citizens remain vulnerable to injustice.
Their legacies compel a reevaluation of political structures and human behaviour, revealing that ordinary complicity exposes the limits of democracy and demands that citizens confront the moral and structural inequities in which they participate.
(The writer is an author based in Colombo)
(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official position of this publication)