ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how biopolitics changes, in India, from what it means under colonialism to what it comes to mean, post-Ambedkar, covering the distance from the ethnographic state to the biopolitical state. It suggests the importance of developing a robust theory of biopolitics as the proper idiom in which to talk about the inequality, domination and violence we see in the context of caste in India. In Ambedkar’s telling, Shivaji’s story is a part of this narrative of persistent inequality: he is deserving of his power but unable to attain it without the help of a Brahmin, conniving and unprincipled Gagabhatta, or without the entitlement that attaches to Ksatriya status. Ambedkar’s interpretation of Shivaji’s Sudra kingship or of his belated and contrived entry into Ksatriya status in order to attain royalty is very different from Phule’s; in fact, it is opposed to Phule’s interpretation.
