On
the 125th birth anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, on April 14, India still
finds itself unable to induct him into the pantheon of greats unquestioningly.
His statue, with its ubiquitous electric blue suit, may be a common sight at
bus stands, bastis and universities, but it hardly brings out the fact that his
life is one that was overshadowed by iconography and idolatry. We forget that
Ambedkar was one of modern India’s first great economic thinkers, its
constitutional draftsman and its first law minister who ensured the
codification of Hindu law.
Assimilating
Dr. Ambedkar into the national pantheon of the freedom struggle is difficult
because his life was one of steady accretion of ideas, of making a stand on
rights and of standing up to social wrongs. His biggest fights were with fellow
Indians and not with foreign rulers. He led no satyagraha against the British,
he led no march on Delhi, he broke no repressive law to court arrest for it. In
fact, his father and ancestors had willingly served in the British Army even in
the days of the East India Company. He himself served as a member of the
Viceroy’s Executive Council. His often stated view was that British rule had
come as a liberator for the depressed classes. Despite all this, he was in
agreement with the nationalists, that India must be ruled by Indians.
In
a corner
His
status in the national pantheon, where he occupies a corner all by himself, and
slightly apart from the nationalist heroes of independence, is somewhat like
his status in school. He once wrote: “I knew that I was an untouchable, and
that untouchables were subjected to certain indignities and discriminations.
For instance, I knew that in the school I could not sit in the midst of my
classmates according to my rank [in class performance], but that I was to sit
in a corner by myself.”
“
B.R. Ambedkar walked a tightrope, between securing a modern society for all
Indians and ensuring that a modern state stabilised around a constitutional
architecture of social change. ”
This
separateness was to lead him to assert in more than one instance, that the
depressed classes he represented, were not to be counted among the Hindus. He
famously chose to separately represent the depressed classes at the Round Table
Conference in the 1930s, where Gandhiji was sent as the sole representative of
the Congress. Having secured a separate electorate for the depressed classes,
he had to give it up in the face of a fasting Mahatma, whose death he did not
want ascribed to those outside the pale of varnashrama dharma. After this, the
Poona Pact of 1932 ensured a greater number of seats for the depressed classes,
but it was within a common Hindu electorate. Ambedkar never was sure that he
had secured a fair bargain.
He
never fully forgave Gandhiji for the pressure exerted on him. He told his
followers, “There have been many mahatmas in India whose sole object was to
remove untouchability and to elevate and absorb the depressed classes, but
everyone has failed in their mission. Mahatmas have come, mahatmas have gone
but the untouchables have remained as untouchables.” Ambedkar told Dalits: “You
must abolish your slavery yourselves. Do not depend for its abolition upon god
or a superman. ...We must shape our course ourselves and by ourselves.”
A
fight for rights
The
question of whether the depressed classes were to be counted among Hindus or
separately, continued to be relevant especially when the country was going to
be partitioned on religious lines. There were some Dalit leaders like B. Shyam
Sunder, who vociferously said: “We are not Hindus, we have nothing to do with
the Hindu caste system, yet we have been included among them by them and for
them.” With the support of the Nizam of Hyderabad and Master Tara Singh of the
Akalis, Shyam Sunder launched the Dalit-Muslim unity movement and urged his
people to join hands with Muslims.
The
imminent arrival of Independence saw a constituent assembly being elected to
draw up a constitution for the new nation. Dr. Ambedkar was first elected to
the assembly from an undivided Bengal. Because he lacked the requisite support
in his home province of Bombay, he was forced to seek election from Bengal, a
province he was unfamiliar with. Throughout the 1940s, Ambedkar and the
Congress clashed over issues of the rights and the representation of the
depressed classes. Ambedkar was a critic of the party’s positions on many an
issue, which he believed were inimical to Dalit interests. Therefore, Sardar
Patel personally directed the Bombay Congress to select strong Dalit candidates
who could defeat Dr. Ambedkar’s nominees. Despite the politics, once in the
Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar worked closely with his Congress colleagues in
formulating and drafting the Constitution.
Consequent
to the announcement of Partition, fresh elections had to be held for only the
seats from West Bengal. Dr. Ambedkar would not have possibly been elected
again. At this stage he was co-opted by the Congress, into the seat vacated by
M.R. Jayakar from Bombay. Dr. Rajendra Prasad wrote to B.G. Kher, then Prime
Minister of Bombay and said: “Apart from any other consideration we have found
Dr. Ambedkar’s work both in Constituent Assembly and the various committees to
which he was appointed to be of such an order as to require that we should not
be deprived of his services. As you know, he was elected from Bengal and after
the division of the province he was ceased to be a member of the Constituent
Assembly commencing from the 14th July 1947 and it is therefore necessary that
he should be elected immediately.” Even Sardar Patel stepped in to persuade
both Kher and G.P. Mavalankar, who was otherwise slated to fill in the vacancy
caused by Jayakar.
It
is against these adverse circumstances, that we must evaluate Ambedkar’s
achievements in the Constituent Assembly. He walked a tightrope, between
securing a modern society for all Indians and ensuring that a modern state
stabilised around a constitutional architecture of social change. Granville
Austin has rightly described the Indian Constitution drafted by Ambedkar as
“first and foremost a social document. ... The majority of India’s
constitutional provisions are either directly arrived at furthering the aim of
social revolution or attempt to foster this revolution by establishing
conditions necessary for its achievement.”
Making
a mark
The
Constituent Assembly was the hallowed ground from which Ambedkar made his most
lasting contribution to all people of independent India, Dalit, savarna and
non-Hindu alike. As chairman of the drafting committee, it was his
interventions in the debates of the assembly that were soon to become
definitive expositions on the intent of the framers. He also joined Nehru’s
cabinet as the first Law Minister of independent India.
He
explained to the Assembly, “On the 26th January 1950, we are going to enter
into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social
and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognising
the principle of one-man-one-vote and one-vote-one-value. In our social and
economic life, we shall by reason of our social and economic structure,
continue to deny the principle of one-man-one-value. How long shall we continue
to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny
equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long,
we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril….”
Despite
his insistence on individual liberties being enshrined as fundamental rights,
Ambedkar was a realist as to their worth as guarantees. He said: “The prevalent
view is that once the rights are enacted in law then they are safeguarded. This
again is an unwarranted assumption. As experience proves, rights are protected
not by law but by social and moral conscience of the society.”
Political
battles
Ambedkar’s
constitution was barely finished and adopted, when he plunged into piloting the
Hindu Code Bill. There was opposition from the President of India, Dr. Rajendra
Prasad, as well as a host of Congressmen like Pattabhi Sitaramayya, but
Ambedkar kept pushing for the passage of the Act, by the Constituent Assembly,
which functioned as an interim parliament. Nehru was advised by Rajagopala
Ayyangar and others that it was better to wait till after the general election
of 1952. When it became apparent that the bill was going to be deferred,
Ambedkar resigned in protest from the cabinet in September 1951. The Hindu Code
Bill finally came about in 1956.
In
1952, in independent India’s first general election, he was defeated from the
Bombay North Constituency by a Dalit from the Congress. Though he was elected
to the Rajya Sabha immediately thereafter, he made a second attempt in 1954 to
enter the Lok Sabha through a by-election for the Bhandara seat. He failed
again.
His
political battles and his voracious capacity for intellectual work began
affecting his health. His spirit to fight on and his spiritual quest though
continued undaunted. In the 1930s, his first wife, Ramabai, who was dying, had
asked him to take her to Pandharpur on a pilgrimage. The entry of untouchables
was barred there. He then promised to build a new Pandharpur outside Hinduism.
After
her passing, he declared at Yeola in 1935: “I was born a Hindu, I had no
choice. But I will not die a Hindu because I do have a choice.” In the twilight
of his life, on October 14, 1956, two months before his death, he left Hinduism
to become a Buddhist. His Brahmin-born second wife and nearly six lakh of his
followers followed suit.
As
he lay down for the night on December 5, 1956, Dr. Ambedkar had by his side,
the preface to his latest book, The Buddha and his Dhamma. He wanted to work on
it but it was not to be. The book was published posthumously as Babasaheb,
never woke up and moved into history on December 6, 1956.
How
do we remember Ambedkar? He gave the nation a constitution that has endured, he
forced it to look shamefaced at its own social inequities, and he gave the most
oppressed Indians, the hope of a better nation to come. He may not have been a
hero of the war of Indian independence, but he is the hero who built an
independent India. It is time that we cease to keep him ‘slightly apart’.
(Sanjay
Hegde is a Supreme Court lawyer)
No comments:
Post a Comment