Event Details
Thu, September 24, 2026
18:00 – 19:30
VILLA SASSETTI
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Florence, Italy
(Event open to NYU Florence Community-only)
Vidhu Verma, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and Debora Spini, NYU Florence, in conversation.
This presentation examines the theoretical developments in the writings of B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), a prominent leader of the ex-untouchable Mahar community in Maharashtra and the principal architect of India’s Constitution. He has provided one of the most insightful commentaries on Buddhism. On 14 October 1956, Babasaheb Ambedkar converted from Hinduism, which he had previously rejected at a 1935 conference in Yeola, and established Navayana (new vehicle) as a sect of modern Indian Buddhism. He initiated a mass conversion movement among Dalits away from Hinduism. The Buddha and His Dhamma, a text that reinterpreted India’s philosophical and political traditions, was published in 1957 shortly after Ambedkar’s death. Scholarly interpretations often frame Ambedkar’s critique of religion as an analysis of power structures, emphasizing his view of Brahmanical Hinduism as a mechanism for maintaining the caste system.
This presentation analyzes Ambedkar’s approach to identity formation by considering his early position in Annihilation of Caste, which advocates for state centralization to enable targeted social interventions against caste, and his later work, where the option of conversion to Buddhism is predicated on the concept of liberated selfhood.
* Photo: A grand procession organized in Mau on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti, published by Dainik Bhaskar
Featured Biographies
Vidhu Verma
AWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY, DELHI
Vidhu Verma was Professor, at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She has been educated at the universities of Delhi, JNU, and Oxford. She was an Inlaks scholar to Oxford to study for an M.Phil degree in the Faculty of Politics.
She has joined the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fellowship, Teen Murti, New Delhi for 2026-2028. Her current research project is:Colonial Modernity and Epistemic Injustice: Politics, Ethics and Action in Gandhi, Ambedkar and Tagore.
She teaches courses in Political Philosophy and Political Theory. Her areas of research include Comparative Political Theory, Feminist political theory, State, religion and democracy, affirmative action policies, and social justice in India.
She has co-edited and contributed to volumes on ‘Radical Imaginaries of Life Beyond ‘Growth’: Challenges and Pathways’ (Routledge, New Delhi 2026), ‘State, Law and Adivasi: Shifting Terrains of Exclusion’ (Sage, New Delhi 2022) and ‘Empire of Disgust’ (OUP, New Delhi 2018).
She has edited ‘State in India: Ideas, Norms and Politics’ (Orient Black Swan, New Delhi 2018), ‘Unequal Worlds’ (OUP, New Delhi 2015), and Secularism, Religion and Democracy (OUP, New Delhi 2019).
She is the author of three books including “Non-discrimination and Equality in India: Contesting boundaries of Social Justice” (Routledge, London 2012), and articles in several journals.