Ambedkar, Islam and Left

During the anti-CAA protests of 2019-2020, banners reading 'Meem-Bheem' — signalling solidarity between Muslims and Dalits — appeared across Indian cities. Behind them lay a claim: that Ambedkar belonged to an alliance of the marginalised that included Islamist politics and Left ideology. Mithilesh Kumar Singh's book examines whether that claim has any basis in what Ambedkar actually wrote and said.

The answer, as Singh documents in careful detail, is that it does not. Ambedkar's writings on Islam and on Left politics were not sympathetic asides; they were sustained, critical analyses. He examined both ideologies on their own terms and found them incompatible with the emancipation of Dalits and with his broader vision of a just society. Singh traces the competing efforts by Islamist and Leftist groups to appropriate Baba Saheb's legacy, exposes the selective quotation and contextual distortion that sustain these claims, and argues that the appropriation serves specific political interests that Ambedkar himself would have recognised and rejected.

At a moment when Ambedkar's name is invoked across the political spectrum, this book cuts through the competing claims to ask what he actually thought — and why the answer remains inconvenient for multiple camps.