Reimagining Public Health in India Through Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Caste, Rights, and Structural Justice

ABSTRACT Dr. B. R. Ambedkar is widely recognized as the chief architect of the Indian Constitution and a leading theorist of the caste system and democracy, yet his far‐reaching engagement with public health remains insufficiently explored. Drawing on Ambedkar's primary writings, speeches, and policy interventions, this review paper reinterprets public health in India not as a technocratic or biomedical domain but as a question of rights, dignity, and structural justice. Ambedkar's analyses of water access, sanitation, labor conditions, spatial segregation, and institutional discrimination anticipate contemporary frameworks such as the social determinants of health, structural violence, and decolonial approaches to well‐being. Six interconnected themes emerged based on the literature review: public health as political resistance, sanitation and structural violence, labor rights as health rights, health and the Constitution, caste and the medical system, and Buddhism as collective psychosocial healing. The paper demonstrates how Ambedkar offers a radical normative framework for evaluating present‐day health governance in India, including initiatives such as Ayushman Bharat, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, and the National Health Mission. The paper further situates Ambedkar within broader Indigenous and decolonial health discourses, highlighting his relevance to global debates on health equity. Reimagining public health through Ambedkar's lens exposes the deep entanglements between caste, labor, environment, and state responsibility, while offering an actionable vision for building inclusive, democratic, and justice‐oriented health systems.