Ambedkar Chair Professorships in India and Abroad Must Move Beyond Symbolism

The establishment of Dr B.R. Ambedkar Chair Professorships across universities in India and abroad since the 1990s marked a significant institutional intervention. Yet, over the past three decades, their trajectory reveals that many of these Chairs have functioned largely as sites of symbolic commemorations, rather than actual centres of intellectual engagement. This calls for a closer scrutiny of their functioning and a considered reorientation of their purpose.

Origins and institutional design

Conceived in 1992 on the recommendation of the Sub-Committee on Education constituted by the Dr Ambedkar Centenary Celebrations Committee, the objective was to advance scholarship on Ambedkar’s thought and its contemporary relevance. This was crucial given the relative paucity of sustained academic engagement with his ideas in the so-called mainstream.

The same year saw the creation of the Dr Ambedkar Foundation (DAF) under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, entrusted with institutionalising this intellectual legacy through long-term academic programmes and public engagement. Today, under its revised 2021–22 scheme, substantial public funding in millions continues to be allocated annually for this purpose.

Nearly three decades later, around 30 Ambedkar Chairs exist across institutions, with 28 funded by the DAF. One was established at Columbia University in 2010 through a Government of India endowment. More recently, a Chair at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, funded by the Government of Telangana, marks a rare state-level initiative. On the face of it, this appears to be a robust multi-institutional project spanning universities in India and abroad.

At the design level, the DAF scheme is ambitious. It envisages interdisciplinary research, doctoral fellowships, publications and policy engagement, with a clear orientation towards marginalised communities. In principle, Ambedkar Chairs are meant to function not merely as academic posts, but as institutional engines of social justice. The practice, however, reveals a more uneven reality.

Structural deficits in design and practice

A central concern lies in the absence of structural safeguards in appointments. While the scheme requires adherence to University Grants Commission norms and an expectation of representation “as far as possible”, it does not mandate any form of reservation. As a result, many Chairs are held by faculty from socially dominant groups, with no explicit effort to ensure representation of scholars from historically marginalised communities. This concern is compounded by a visible gender imbalance. While there are a few notable appointments, such as that of former Chief Justice B.R. Gavai at NALSAR, they remain exceptions rather than evidence of a structural shift.

Also read: Beyond Statistics, The Link Between Institutional Caste Discrimination and Student Suicides in India

This produces a troubling paradox. Institutions intended to advance an anti-caste intellectual project risk becoming spaces where discrimination is theorised without the participation or leadership of those who have lived its realities. To borrow from Gopal Guru, the divide between “theoretical Brahmins” and “empirical Shudras” continues to shape exclusionary knowledge production in India. The current DAF scheme does little to disrupt this epistemic hierarchy.

Therefore, any effective rethinking of the scheme must foreground representation, not as an afterthought, but as a foundational principle.

A second issue is disciplinary drift. Despite Ambedkar’s central role in shaping India’s constitutional framework, the Chairs funded by DAF are located within sociology, social work, or interdisciplinary social sciences, with little engagement with law and constitutional studies. Only the Chairs at Columbia and NALSAR are oriented towards constitutional law. This imbalance calls for reorientation, particularly towards law universities and institutions of public governance.

A third, and perhaps deeper concern relates to institutional functioning and social auditing. While the scheme provides for monitoring committees, annual reports and audited fund utilisation, the reality across universities is uneven.

Several Chairs remain understaffed, intermittently active or defunct, or have been reduced to ceremonial functions. This raises serious questions about whether public resources are being effectively deployed. What is required is not merely procedural compliance but substantive audits of intellectual and social impact.

The epistemic capture at Columbia

These concerns become even sharper in the context of the Ambedkar Chair at Columbia University. Columbia occupies a special place in Ambedkar’s intellectual journey, and the establishment of a Chair there was significant. Yet its functioning raises difficult questions. There has been no visible commitment to ensuring representation of Bahujan scholars, and, so far, the Chair has been occupied only by scholars from socially dominant (savarna) castes. In effect, this amounts to an epistemic capture of the Chair.

Also read: Over 13,000 SC, ST, OBC Students Dropped Out of Central Universities, IITs, IIMs Since 2018

This is particularly troubling because this exclusion persists despite the presence of a substantial pool of scholars from marginalised communities who hold doctorates from leading global universities. It cannot, therefore, be attributed to any lack of qualification or potential, but instead points to deeper structural barriers in access and selection.

This is not an argument against individual scholars, who have held the chair over several years, but against an unexamined structure. While the Government of India may not have formal control or say over appointments in a foreign university, the endowment is not ideologically neutral. It carries with it the aspirations of historically oppressed communities in India. When those communities do not find representation, the Chair risks becoming detached from its normative foundation. The lack of transparency in Columbia's appointment process only deepens this disconnect.

Reimagining the model

There is also a missed opportunity in how Columbia University has utilised the Ambedkar endowment. Rather than sustaining a single professorial position, it could be used to build a larger ecosystem of inclusion. A significant portion of the funding should be dedicated to hosting scholars, early-career researchers and doctoral candidates from marginalised communities in India as visiting fellows at Columbia, enabling them to conduct research, teach and participate in global academic networks.

There are workable precedents. The Letten Prize, for instance, allocates a three-fourths portion of its funding towards advancing research and institutional initiatives. Tarun Khaitan, now a professor at LSE, used his prize amount to launch the Indian Equality Law Programme, creating transnational opportunities for scholars from marginalised communities. A comparable model at Columbia would align far more closely with Ambedkar’s own intellectual journey, which was transnational in form, but rooted in the experiences of the oppressed.

Such a reimagining would transform the Ambedkar Chair from a static position into a platform for redistributive academic opportunity. Without such reorientation, there remains a real risk that the Ambedkar Chair, even in a globally prestigious institution, reproduces the very asymmetries that it is meant to challenge.

Going forward

Ultimately, the question is not whether Ambedkar Chairs should exist, but what they are meant to do. If they are to embody Ambedkar’s transformative vision of annihilating caste, restructuring knowledge, and democratising institutions, the functioning of established Chairs requires urgent rethinking.

Ambedkar Chairs cannot become spaces where Ambedkar is remembered but his politics is forgotten.

Dr Anurag Bhaskar is the author of The Foresighted Ambedkar: Ideas That Shaped Indian Constitutional Discourse.

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