Revision summary
Rawls’s justice as fairness models pure procedural justice: a fair original position defines just shares. Ambedkar’s social justice starts from graded inequality and aims at equal status, not only a fair bet among equals. Article 17, reservations, and annihilation of caste are substantive egalitarian tools. The original position assumes moral equality that caste society denies. Indian basic structure and reservation law sit closer to Ambedkar’s end-state than to a caste-blind procedure.
Model answer
Introduction
B. R. Ambedkar and John Rawls both reject a caste or class lottery as destiny. They still aim at different objects. Ambedkar’s social justice is a substantive egalitarian reconstruction of a graded society. Rawls’s justice as fairness is a hypothetical procedure whose outcome is to be accepted as just if the procedure is fair.
Body
Rawls: justice as fairness and procedure
- In A Theory of Justice (1971), parties behind a veil of ignorance choose equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle.
- Rawls distinguishes perfect, imperfect, and pure procedural justice. Gambling is his school example of pure procedure: whatever results from a fair bet is fair.
- Justice as fairness is presented as the closest political analogue of pure procedural justice: a fair original position defines the just distribution, without a prior independent pattern of desert.
- The self is prior to its social titles. Caste, race, and class are morally arbitrary and must not dictate life chances.
- The theory is ideal theory for a well-ordered society of free and equal citizens, not a handbook for annihilating untouchability.
Ambedkar: social justice as egalitarian substance
- Ambedkar treated caste as a system of graded inequality, not as one more social primary good to be redistributed after a veil.
- Annihilation of Caste, the Poona Pact struggle, Article 17, and constitutional reservations aim at a real equality of status, not only a fair procedure among already equal persons.
- Representation, education, and entry into office are instruments of egalitarian justice because the Hindu social order denied personality itself to the Depressed Classes.
- Granville Austin placed this in the Constitution’s social-revolution strand, beside political democracy.
- For Ambedkar, a procedure among caste Hindus would reproduce hierarchy. The end-state of equal dignity is known in advance and must be forced by law.
The comparison the question asks
- Rawls’s persons in the original position are already moral equals. Ambedkar’s society does not contain that fact; it must be made.
- Pure procedural justice suspends a prior criterion of just shares. Ambedkar has a prior criterion: end of untouchability, end of graded inequality, effective equal citizenship.
- Reservations look ‘patterned’ in Nozick’s hostile sense. For Ambedkar they are corrective of a structural wrong, closer to rectification than to a lottery.
- Rawls can support fair equality of opportunity and even some affirmative action in non-ideal theory. He does not start from caste as the central injustice.
- Egalitarian justice in Ambedkar is status equality plus material access. Justice as fairness is lexical liberties first, then distribution regulated by the difference principle.
Comment, not a false choice
- Both oppose natural hierarchy and both use the state. The comment is about starting point and metric.
- Indian courts after Indra Sawhney (1992) and the 103rd Amendment’s EWS debate show the tension: group remedy versus a Rawlsian-looking income criterion.
- Kesavananda keeps both dignity and equality inside basic structure, which is more Ambedkar’s substance than a pure gamble.
- A fair procedure is not enough where the players are not recognised as players. That is Ambedkar’s decisive addition.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD R[Rawls] --> PP[Pure procedural justice] R --> VF[Veil and two principles] A[Ambedkar] --> EJ[Egalitarian social justice] A --> CA[Annihilation of caste] EJ --> ST[Status equality in law]
Conclusion
Rawls aims at fair terms of social cooperation through a procedure that defines justice. Ambedkar aims at an egalitarian social order that must be known and built because caste already defines persons as unequal. Social justice here is substantive equality of status. Justice as fairness is hypothetical pure procedure among equals. India needs both, but it cannot treat the veil as a substitute for annihilation of caste.
Quick related
Students also ask
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"The Panchayats with Gram Sabhas should be so organised as to identify the resources locally available for the development in agricultural and industrial sectors." Examine the statement in the context of Gram Swaraj
Next question in the 2022 paper (Q4). View answer →
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Did Rawls ignore historical injustice?
Ideal theory largely did. Later non-ideal work and some Rawlsians support affirmative action. Caste as a total social order is still not his starting map.
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Is reservation pure procedural justice?
No. It is a patterned, group-targeted correction. Ambedkar defends it as necessary substance, not as a fair lottery.
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