Dr.B.R.Ambedkar is 125. To those who
cherish democratic values and who are proud of Indian nationhood and the values
associated with it should thank Dr.B.R.Ambedkar who is admired as the architect
of Indian Constitution. How does the nation remember him today despite his
great and matchless contribution? His erudition, great intellect and
uncompromising efforts to lift millions of depressed classes of men and women
whose life and social status were determined and controlled by a heartless
orthodoxy which refused to recognize their worth as human beings are all
forgotten because of the thoughtless and sectarian act of hijacking his legacy
and making it ‘exclusive’ .
Unfortunately this led to a needless development
of both Gandhi’s heroic efforts to educate the countrymen on the imperative
need to mend their ways and dismantle the inhuman practice of ‘untouchability’
in India and Dr.Ambedkar’s fiery strivings gradually getting enmeshed in
unnecessary controversies, mostly raised and sustained by the followers of
Dr.Ambedkar who are convinced that their agenda of survival will be best served
by promoting politics of hate and distrust. The 125th birth anniversary period should therefore be,
an occasion for the nation to ask whether the nation has been fair to Dr.Ambedkar
as one of its all time heroes? If the answer is in the negative where have we
erred?
Dr.Ambedkar once
succinctly said “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”.
The centenary of
Dr.Ambedkar was observed 25 years ago with
a lot of fanfare by two Central Governments and in spite of a few centers of
studies and research, new Universities and institutes coming up and a series of
books were written, I am afraid, substantially very little had happened in the
attitude of scholars and educated Indians, political classes in the
understanding of the basic issues for the
amelioration which this great man fought all through his life.
The focus of
mostly of the numerous national and international conferences, seminars,
discussions and analytical sessions that were held during that period was on
the Gandhi-Ambedkar controversy, the Poona Pact, how Gandhi outwitted
Dr.Ambedkar etc. while the substantive issues received only peripheral
attention. Instead of the occasion becoming
a national initiative to highlight his contribution to cleanse the orthodoxy
and the lingering prejudices which by and large determine in a big way the attitude of the generation that follows,
what generated during this period was unnecessary dust of controversies out of
probably a wrong reading of history.
I had a personal
experience which gave me a glimpse of the manner in which how the disciples and
supporters of great leaders refuse to go beyond perhaps what they were tutored.
This happened during the centenary of Dr.Ambedkar’s birth and on the occasion
of the Government of India’s conferment of Bharat Ratna to Dr.Ambedkar. I was
working in Gandhi Smriti and Darsan Samiti in New Delhi as its Director in
those days. We thought that Smt.Savita Ambedkar who was in Delhi to receive the
award posthumously should be invited to the Gandhi Smriti as a gesture to
express our deep respect and regards to Dr.Ambedkar. We contacted her and she was very happy and
readily agreed to visit Gandhi’s Balidan
Sthal (The spot where Gandhi was assassinated) and join a commemorative prayer. Consequently we
made all arrangements but next day morning we had a message from her that she
would not be able to accede to our request.
This happened despite the fact that Gandhi Smriti was on her way and she
continued to stay in Delhi two or three more days. Our contacts in her
entourage gave us the impression later that she was advised by someone in her
party to keep away from the Gandhians.
Let
it be remembered that no great man or woman of history was above criticism and
Gandhi too had his share. It might be interesting to ask why is it that while
all the critics and dissenters of Gandhi who too were tall and important in their
times either have now faded into the dim pages or history or have been consigned
to the dustbins of political expediency, Gandhi continues to inspire even those
in the far away continents and his relevance is being increasingly examined all
over the world.
All
available trends from different parts of the world today indicate that humanity
caught in the web of material, cultural and consumerist quagmire is examining
seriously the Gandhian options as a way out. There is a void and no other
philosophy or way of life is believed to have at the moment the inbuilt
capacity to sustain not only the aspirations of our times but also take
humankind further as a variable alternative to meet the requirements of some of
the vexed problems humanity is confronted with.
There
is nothing wrong at this juncture if a section of Gandhi’s own countrymen raise
a controversy of his alleged failure in certain areas. Nobody is infallible,
not even the greatest. Examination and re-examination of the relevance and the
role men and women who lived before them is the right of succeeding generations
and what matters is the honesty with which such exercise is undertaken. As
Gandhi said again and again, fearlessness is the first pre-requisite of courage
and cowards can never be moral.
And in a democracy like India where when
political leaderships run out of creative ideas to sustain their influence on
the masses, it is quite understandable that they look for issues both existent
and non-existent. They tend to look for the most emotive and sensitive issues
which they think will evoke desire emotional response in the people. They may
not be worried about the possible division their action might generate by doing
so among people. In the absence of any creative programmes based on the genuine
needs of the people who need to be offered genuine alternatives, short sighted
and small time politicians, social activists invoke names of leaders,
religions, caste, language and other emotional issues to whip up hatred between
people. They have every right to interpret history but what they forget is that
distorted versions of history will only help generate ill-will and disharmony
among people.
Dr. Ambedkar too
viewed Gandhi’s efforts with suspicions. But one should try to understand Dr
Ambedkar’s perception of the whole situation rather than looking at it
critically or dismissing it lightly. Dr Ambedkar who himself was a victim of
the inhuman practice of untouchability was naturally hurt. He was a rebel and
his attack on the evil system was as fierce as anybody else’s., if not more
ferocious.
But to argue
today that the honest difference of opinion that developed between Gandhi and
Ambedkar on this question from a purely political point of view and to deny
Gandhi the importance of what he has done is not fair and to equate Gandhi with
Dr Ambedkar or try to put Dr Ambedkar above or below Gandhi is not fair. They
were two great pillars and any comparison would only reflect our incapacity to understand
the depth and extent of the impact they left on society.
Winston
Churchill who called Gandhi almost in a contemptuous tone, the ‘Half-naked
Fakir’, appreciated Gandhi’s great anti-untouchability campaign in 1932-34.
Churchill is on record as having told G.D Birla on August 9, 1934 that Gandhi
had “gone up high in his esteem” since he stood for the 50 million untouchables
or India.
Even Gandhi’s
left-wing colleague, Subhash Chandra Bose, who disagreed with Gandhi violently
on the means he had been adopting, saw in Gandhi’s crusade against
untouchability “permanent and far-reaching effect in rousing the conscience of
the Hindu community”.
As Hiren
Mukherjee , the communist leader pointed out, “Gandhi was undoubtedly one of
the great social reformers of history. He could not ‘abolish’ untouchability
thought the Constitution of India today avers, with a fine indifference to fact
that it has been abolished. But the jolt which Gandhi pre-eminently gave to
that age old infamy produced cracks and fissures which produced also doom”.
Even today,
unfortunately though we can take pride in the fact that the situation has
improved considerably, can we satisfy ourselves with the wishful thinking that
this serious blot is getting erased out of our social system?
To quote Gandhi when he poured out his anguish
would not be out of place here. “I do want
to be reborn as an untouchable, so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings,
and the affronts leveled at them, in order that I may endeavour to free myself
and them from the miserable condition. I therefore pray that if I should be
born again, I should do so not as a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Shudra but
as an Atishutra”.
What Jagjivan
Ram said while evaluating Gandhi’s role in the removal of untouchability and
about the responsibilities of all of us in rooting out this malady is worth
remembering: “Gandhi did not succeed in
bringing about a radical change in the Hindu Social order which has influenced
the Islamic and Christian order also. He did not aspire to work for it. But he
did put untouchables on the road to emancipation of the Hindu-mind, which alone
will herald the new order and must necessarily be a long-drawn and painful
process. . .”
It is generally
said that scribes, disgruntled politicians and researchers are known to have a penchant
for raking up trivial issues and blowing them up out of proportion and each of
this category puts forward very spirited and what they believe convincing
arguments in their defense. And very often truth becomes the casualty in the
cross fire which will naturally follow these attempts. As one of the characters
in Shakespeare says, “some people are
born great, some achieve greatness, while some have greatness thrust upon
them”, there are people, who perfect the art of iconoclasm as their main
ammunition to remain in politics or in public discussion in order to carve out
a constituency. The desperate efforts of those people very often die down with
a whimper, hence most people countenance their efforts only with amused
delight, some with disdain, while quite a few ignore these efforts with the
contempt they deserve. To them these efforts are no more than the spasmodic and
kneejerk reactions of persons whose sole investment in public life is their
ability to remain provocative beyond reason. And it becomes practically
impossible for even the most matured person who cannot be tempted to join issue
with these men or women to remain silent. When historical facts are twisted , statements
misquoted and distorted and to suit one’s convenience, it raises the basic
question: where do we go from here?
And it appears
even in our media, be it print or electronic, those people who indulge in these
exercises, steal the limelight.
To charge Gandhi
as having used Satyagraha ‘for everything and against everybody’ and ‘who will
not practice it’, to say the least, was unfair and against all historical
records we have today. Even the bitterest critics of Gandhi could not fail to
see the rationale behind every Satyagraha Gandhi initiated from his South
African days.
Satyagraha was a
sacred weapon for him to realise God, to achieve social justice, to root out
evil practice, to create awareness, to fight racial discrimination and finally
to end oppression. Ambdekar, one of the finest brains we have in recent times,
could not deny the basic fact that the Satyagraha of Gandhi released energy of
unimaginable magnitude which indirectly helped Ambedkar also in carrying
forward his fight for social justice.
A closer
scrutiny of the situation in the thirties and forties of last century in India
would show that the Dalit Movement was built on the foundations laid by Gandhi and
Ambedkar, in two different ways. And again, satyagraha was only one of the many
weapons in Gandhi’s armoury and he used it with astonishing success,
particularly in rousing the conscience of the forces he was fighting.
Having said this,
It cannot be forgotten that Gandhi and Ambedkar adopted different strategies in
their crusade. No one can deny the fact that the onslaught of Gandhi on the
age-old practice of untouchability was sincere, and as typical of Gandhi, he
did not say anything which he did not practice. Ambedkar questions: ‘Do they
regard Mr. Gandhi as honest and sincere?’ He himself answers, ‘. . .they do not
regard Mr. Gandhi as honest and sincere’. If this is so, how could Gandhi be held
responsible for this? It should be as well due to the misinformation campaign
orchestrated against Gandhi by those who were trying to provide the Indian
Society and create anarchy before they left India. The role played by the
camp-followers of the British in this calumny also has to be borne in mind.
Some leaders go
to the extent of calling Gandhi “a hypocrite, just fooling innocent people”. It
appears that they function and allow themselves to be carried away by prejudices
and emotion when they make this sweeping statement. The question that would
naturally come to anyone’s mind is what is all this about? If the idea is to
strengthen the base of Ambedkarvad then why not it be on the basis of the sound
philosophy and extremely important work of Dr.Ambedkar. Both of them had their distinct
mission, and their idiom and styles of articulation were also different.
The major
differences one may notice in their approach was when it came to the question
of the Depressed Classes Ambedkar was
uncompromising and he was impatient about the slow progress in the dismantling of
untouchability. His demand for separate electorate, separate area for the
depressed classes were all part of his programme, whereas Gandhi was trying to
play the role of an integrator who believed that any more class division of
Indian society was harmful to the health of the nation.
While Gandhi was not quite happy with the slow
progress in the removal of untouchability, he was convinced that the national
debate he had initiated, the various steps that he himself supervised, the
tours he undertook, his speeches, his writings, the devotion with which several
thousand of his followers all over India plunged into the Harijan campaign, the
temple entry satyagraha, opening of schools, digging of common wells,
inter-dining, inter-caste marriage and many other programmes helped in
generating awareness and putting pressure on the forces of status quo and
gradually these steps assumed the shape of a mighty wave which kept on lashing
at the shores and citadels of orthodoxy.
Both Gandhi and
Ambedkar have become part of our heritage and their contributions are no mean,
and any attempt to slight their memory and dishonor them by any section has to
be discouraged. They do not belong to any particular group or section and any
attempt to hijack their existence should be discouraged. We should be able to
see through the games self-appointed champions who whip up either Gandhi-baiting
or Ambedkar-baiting periodically.
Instead of
indulging in polemics we should encourage people to look at the profound
significance of what Gandhi and Ambedkar did to the national awakening and subsequent
societal transformation.
One of the most
disquieting developments in the Indian social and political scenario in the
last three decades is the emergence of
religion and caste as potential vote banks. In the mad rush for political
supremacy, instead of working for the removal of several of the age old
inequities and dehumanizing practices like caste and untouchability people are
encouraged to fight among themselves on flimsy reasons and imaginary or
contrived past events excavated from what they want us to believe history .
Mutual acrimony and denigration of leaders of the past have become the chief
modes in this game of one- upmanship.
Regrettably,
whatever they may espouse, all those who are promoting this dangerous game seem
to have forgotten the simple truth that by denigrating national leaders for
whatever they believe right they only expose their ignorance of history.
While
no sensible person could feel happy about the tardy progress India has made to
undo the injustice done to a sizeable segment of its population for generation in
the name of casteism, attempts to denigrate any particular leader, and least of
all to denigrate Mahatma Gandhi, by unleashing a mischievous propaganda that he
was not interested in doing away with the practice of untouchability is unfair and against all historical facts.
The argument that Gandhi’s concern for the untouchables was only skin-deep also will only indicate
how hypocritical these self-appointed messiahs of social justice who propagate
such distorted versions of history are. Instead
of indulging in polemics we should encourage people to look at the
profound significance of what Gandhi and Ambedkar did to the national awakening
and subsequent societal transformation.
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