Kanshi Ram’s Counter-diplomacy

This article offers an intervention into the field of diplomacy studies by foregrounding the figure of Kanshi Ram as a political thinker and organiser, and as a practitioner of what may be theorised as counter-diplomacy . While the dominant scholarship on diplomacy remains fixated on elite actors and state-centric interactions, this work disrupts such paradigms by locating political agency among subaltern publics and historically oppressed communities. It interrogates how Kanshi Ram’s political praxis, rooted in caste resistance and Ambedkarite thought, sought to forge a transnational Bahujan consciousness. Kanshi Ram’s organisational and ideological interventions through DS 4, BAMCEF , BSP and Buddhist Research Centre advanced a form of counter-diplomacy that challenged caste hierarchy and caste erasure in global discourse. This article examines Kanshi Ram’s international advocacy to propose a critical framework that reimagines justice and global belonging beyond state-centric diplomacy, foregrounding oppressed communities as legitimate actors in global politics.