Today, Ambedkar certainly outshines every other leader in terms of public acceptance. However, the incidences of casteism also show parallel growth. This paradoxical phenomenon can be explained only by separating the real Ambedkar from the unreal one
In an
interview published in Outlook (March
10, 2014), Arundhati Roy says, “We need Ambedkar — now, urgently” — it was in
connection with the publication of a new annotated edition of Ambedkar’s text, The Annihilation
of Caste, brought out by Navayana, a New Delhi-based publishing house. Ms.
Roy wrote a 164-page essay titled “The Doctor and the Saint” as an introduction
to the book, which has now become 415 pages thick, expanding the core text of
just about 100 pages.
Behind the controversy
Her introduction has already
created an unseemly controversy in Dalit circles, reminiscent of the debate in
the 1970s in the wake of incipient Dalit literature, about who could produce
Dalit literature. The protagonists of Dalits insisted that one had to be born a
Dalit to do that. The controversy now reflects a similar identitarian obsession
that one had to produce a caste certificate (Scheduled Caste) to introduce
either Ambedkar or his text. It is intriguing however why such a controversy
has cropped up only in the case of Ms. Roy especially when scores of non-Dalits
have written on Ambedkar and his writings earlier. Is it because of her
celebrity status or of her infamy as a Maoist sympathiser as perceived by
middle class Dalits? The latter is more probable. For them, anything even
remotely connected with communism is enough to evoke despisal and disapproval.
Whatever
be the motivation behind this uproar, it is surely unwarranted. Ignoring the
outpouring of nasty “one-liners” in social media, the main objections, at a
reasonable level, to her writing this piece appear to be her undue projection
of Gandhiji to introduce Ambedkar or to her being qualified to do the job in
the first place or even her purported introduction not being an introduction to
the text that followed. Even if one concedes the validity of these viewpoints,
they need not have been expressed with such vehemence and negativity. As a
matter of fact, the creative writer in Ms. Roy chose not the text per se but
the stand-off between Ambedkar and Gandhiji in the context of Gandhiji’s
reaction to the text in his magazine Harijan. She imagined that she could bring forth the
problem of castes far more effectively if she used the contrast between
Ambedkar and Gandhiji, who best represented moderate Hindu society, than dealing
with the subject matter in a dry and mechanical manner. As for the
qualification, while she took great pains to understand the issue she wrote on,
her writings never reflected any aura of authority beyond a commonsensical
objectivity necessitated by her style. Perhaps, and therefore, they appeal more
to common people than to the so-called intellectuals.
Ambedkar, real and unreal
The most interesting
argument however came not from Dalits but, paradoxically, an upper caste
journalist (“B.R. Ambedkar, Arundhati Roy, and the politics of appropriation”
by G. Sampath,Livemint, March 18, 2014).
Challenging Ms. Roy, it said that if she wanted the bauxite under the Niyamgiri
hills to be left to the Adivasis, why did she not leave Ambedkar who has been
the only possession of Dalits to Dalits themselves? Interestingly though, the
implication of the argument can be dangerous insofar as any engagement of the
“other” defined as such on the basis of caste can be dismissed as illegitimate.
May be, Ambedkar symbolises the cultural good of Dalits, but still, to
ghettoise him to Dalits alone will mean downright disrespect to him and
incalculable harm to the cause of Dalits. Niyamgiri left to the Adivasis
implies a progressive interrogation of the prevailing developmental paradigm,
while leaving Ambedkar to Dalits will mean retrogressive destruction of the
annihilation-agenda of Babasaheb Ambedkar.
The
controversy has surprisingly gone past the main point — that it is the bland
business logic of the publisher that has fundamentally drawn Ms. Roy into
writing the introduction. With her stature as a Booker Prize awardee, later
amplified by her fearless pro-people stands on various issues on various
occasions, the book was sure to go global. Moreover, it can well be imagined that
her writing would certainly create a controversy, as has happened before. All
this would mean a bonanza for any publisher in boosting sales of the book.
Whether Navayana had consciously thought it out this way or not, these
established product strategies of a publisher cannot be grudged by anyone as,
after all, s/he has to follow the grammar of business. Notwithstanding the
“anti-caste” tag Navayana tends to wear of late, publishing adulatory and
cultish literature on Ambedkar is not the same thing as supporting the
annihilation of castes. Once this controversy raked up by a few dies down, the
vast majority of Dalits would rather take pride in the point that even
Arundhati Roy joined them in worshipping their god. Every such form of Ambedkar
adulation has indeed been reinforcing the caste identity and directly distances
the annihilation project.
The
acceptance of Ambedkar does not necessarily equate itself with the spread of an
anti-caste ethos. Today, Ambedkar certainly outshines every other leader in terms
of public acceptance. No other leader can rival him in the number of statues,
pictures, congregations, books, research, organisations, songs, or any other
marker of popularity of/on him. Curiously, his picture has become a fixture
even in movies and television episodes. However, the incidences of casteism as
indicated by cases of caste discrimination, caste atrocities, caste
associations and caste discourses, etc. also show parallel growth. This
paradoxical phenomenon can be explained only by separating the real Ambedkar
from the unreal one, cast into the icons constructed by vested interests to
thwart the consciousness of radical change ever germinating in Dalit masses.
These icons package the enigmatic real Ambedkar into a simplistic symbol: an
architect of the Constitution, a great nationalist, the father of reservations,
a staunch anti-communist, a liberal democrat, a great parliamentarian, a
saviour of Dalits, a bodhisattva, etc. These icons of the harmless, status
quo-ist Ambedkar have been proliferated all over and overshadow a possible,
radical view of the real Ambedkar.
Which Ambedkar?
Notwithstanding the
intrigues behind the promotion of such icons by vested interests with active
support from the state, the evolution of Ambedkar, the pragmatist sans any
ideological fixation, all through his life, makes him intrinsically difficult
to understand. A young Ambedkar who theorised castes as the enclosed classes,
the enclosure being provided by the system of endogamy and exogamy, expecting
the larger Hindu society to wake up and undertake social reforms like
intermarriage in order to open up castes into classes is in contrast to the
post-Mahad Ambedkar, disillusioned by the rabid reactions from caste Hindus,
turning his sights to politics to accomplish his objective. Were his threats of
conversion to Islam for a separate political identity for Dalits, or to force
caste Hindus to consider social reforms? Then there is the Ambedkar of the
1930s, anxious to expand his constituency to the working classes sans castes,
who founded the Independent Labour Party (ILP), arguably the first Left party
in India, and walked with the communists but at the same time one who declared
his resolve to convert to some other religion to escape castes. What about the
Ambedkar of the 1940s, who returns to the caste, dissolves the ILP and forms
the Scheduled Castes Federation, shuns agitational politics and joins the
colonial government as labour minister or the one who wrote States and
Minorities, propounding state socialism be hardcoded into the proposed
Constitution of free India? Or Ambedkar, the staunchest opponent of the
Congress or the one who cooperated with the Congress in joining the all-party
government and accepted its support to get into the Constituent Assembly? Or
even the Ambedkar who developed the representation logic culminating in
reservations, expecting that a few advanced elements from among Dalits would
help the community progress or the one who publicly lamented that educated Dalits
had let him down? Or the Ambedkar who was the architect of the Constitution and
advised Dalits to adopt only constitutional methods for a resolution of their
problems or the one who disowned it in the harshest possible terms and spoke of
being the first person to burn it down? And finally, the Ambedkar who kept
referring to Marx as a quasi benchmark to assess his decisions? Or the one who
embraced Buddhism and created the ultimate bulwark against communism in India
to use the words of one of his scholars, Eleanor Zelliot, or even the one who
would favourably compare Buddha and Marx just a few days before bidding adieu
to the world, saying their goal was the same but that they differed in the ways
of achieving them — Buddha’s being better than Marx’s? These are just a few
broad vignettes of him, problematic in typifying him in a simplistic manner. If
one goes deeper, one is bound to face far more serious problems.
Ambedkar
is surely needed as long as the virus of caste lingers in this land but not as
a reincarnation of the old one as most Dalits emotionally reflect on. Not even
in the way Ms. Roy would want him to come now and urgently. He will have to be
necessarily constructed to confront the far messier problem of contemporary
castes than that obtained in his times.
(Anand Teltumbde is a civil rights activist with CPDR, Mumbai.)
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