Discuss B. R. Ambedkar’s views on democracy and State socialism.

Democracy. Ambedkar refuses to treat democracy as a form of government. It is "primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience" — an attitude of respect and reverence towards fellow men. Three propositions follow:

• Political democracy rests on social democracy, which he defines as liberty, equality and fraternity as a union of principles. Divorced, liberty destroys equality and equality kills liberty.
• Without it, India enters "a life of contradictions" — one man one vote and one vote one value in politics, sitting on a society that denies equal value in social and economic life. He warned the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949 that those denied its benefits will blow up the structure.
• Constitutional methods are the condition. Abandoning them for civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha once they are available is "the Grammar of Anarchy" — and hero-worship is a surer road to dictatorship in India than anywhere else.

State socialism. In States and Minorities (1947) he proposed state ownership of key industries, state-owned insurance, and agriculture as a state industry with land leased to cultivators in collective farms. Its distinctive move is constitutional: he wanted state socialism written into the fundamental law, immune to alteration by a legislative majority, precisely so that parliamentary democracy could not be used to undo economic democracy.

The link. For Ambedkar the two are one argument. Political democracy without economic restructuring leaves the vote formal, and socialism without constitutional liberty ends in dictatorship.