Nidān Volume 7, Issue 2. December 2022, pp. 88-90 Book Review ISSN 2414-8636 doi.org/10.36886/nidan.2022.7.2.7 88 V. Geetha, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India (Marx, Engels, and Marxisms). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan-Springer, 2021. Pp. xix+341. ISBN 978-3-030- 80374-2 (Hardback). Price: Not Stated. Runa Chakraborty Paunksnis Lecturer, Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities in Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania Email: runa.chakraborty@ktu.lt Rajendra Pal Gautam, a former minister of Delhi government, made headlines when he resigned from his position in the face of an allegation by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that accused him of insulting Hindu gods. Gautam who is a member of the Aam Admi Party (AAP), had attended a Buddhist conversion ceremony on October 5, 2022 (Joshi 2022) where he took an oath to renounce the Hindu pantheon. However, interestingly, this particular oath is one of the twenty-two vows that B.R. Ambedkar administered to his followers when he led the mass conversion ceremony in 1956. Needless to say, these vows are held by Ambedkarite Buddhists as guidelines for social revolution. The AAP-BJP conflict concerning Gautam’s conversion oath speaks volumes about the relevance of Ambedkar’s resistance to Brahmanical philosophy and the Hindu caste order in contemporary India. Ambedkar who did not dissociate religion from the social, emphasized the need for a strong moral foundation upon which a free, equal society could be erected. His quest for a eutopic world is vividly traced in V. Geetha’s book as she examines Ambedkar’s understanding of socialism through his study of Buddhism. What makes this book remarkable is its eagerness to situate the theme within a wider socio- religious, political and economic context that both shaped and was shaped by Ambedkar’s world-view and political endeavours. The Introduction, befittingly titled A Haunting not merely presents the overarching theme of Ambedkar’s uneasy relationship with socialism, but it also argues that the ubiquity of Ambedkar’s image as the architect of the Indian Constitution – “a bespectacled man in suit” with “a book in hand, and right forefinger pointing into the distance” (p. 1) is predominantly a creation of mainstream politics that has constructed a homogenous identity for him. However, V. Geetha clarifies that Ambedkar was more than just that. He was, as deemed by many counter-publics, a “revolutionary thinker, radical democrat and republican” and an “unusual socialist” (p. 1). It is interesting to read how she thinks through the prevailing complexities of Ambedkar’s thought-world that deliberated over socialist principles, and yet, at the same time, critiqued Indian communism and communists. Keeping in mind the fact that Ambedkar did not limit his knowledge to the territorial narrowness of a specific discipline, V. Geetha adopts a holistic approach and examines Ambedkar’s engagement with socialism, from epistemic, political and ethical standpoints. The second chapter (’A Part Apart’: The Life and Times of Dr. Ambedkar) sets the stage for this as it analyses Ambedkar’s life and works vis-à-vis multiple social and political events that were at the time unfolding in his native Maharashtra, as well as in other parts of India. V. Geetha in this chapter articulates Ambedkar’s awareness of the necessity for a two-pronged resistance that would simultaneously critique oppressive colonial rule and the caste-stratified Hindu social order. Furthermore, she foregrounds Ambedkar’s ideological standpoint as she explains how nationalist and communist movements both showed disinterest in “interrogating the constitutive inequality of the caste order on its own terms” (p.36). However, the