Graded Inequalities, Gendered Lives: Revisiting Ambedkar in the Age of Intersectionality

Abstract

This article revisits B. R. Ambedkar’s concept of graded inequality to interrogate how caste and gender continue to intersect in structuring everyday exclusions in contemporary India. While Ambedkar theorised caste as a hierarchy sustained by endogamy and enforced through social practices, dalit feminist scholars such as Sharmila Rege and Uma Chakravarti have shown how women’s bodies and labour remain central to its reproduction. By bringing these insights into dialogue with the global language of intersectionality developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins, the article underscores the urgency of reading caste and gender as co-constitutive rather than parallel systems of oppression. Drawing upon parliamentary reports, National Crime Records Bureau data and narratives of dalit women in education, labour and politics, it highlights how the persistence of caste patriarchy shapes humiliation, violence and systemic exclusion. Yet it also recovers voices of resilience and resistance, foregrounding dalit feminist standpoints as indispensable for reimagining social inclusion. The article argues that Ambedkarite intersectionality does not merely map oppression but gestures towards emancipatory futures where democracy is sustained by substantive, not symbolic, equality.