'There is not one instance, not one single, solitary instance in which Ambedkar participated in any activity connected with that struggle to free the country'
The recent furore following the desecration of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar's statue in Bombay has largely been interpreted as the resurgence of the dalit movement in India. A phenomenon which first saw its genesis in the philosophy and personality of Dr B R Ambedkar 50 years ago.
In his latest book, Worshipping False Gods, Arun Shourie challenges Dr Ambedkar's contribution to Indian Independence. The book has already run into controversy and several dalit organisations in Maharashtra want it banned.
Ambedkar's public life begins in a sense from a public meeting held at the Damodar Hall in Bombay on March 9, 1924. The struggle
for freeing the country from the British was by then in full swing.
Swami Vivekananda's work, Sri Aurobindo's work, the Lokmanya's
work had already stirred the country. Lokmanya Tilak had passed
away in 1920. The leadership of the National Movement had fallen
on Gandhiji. He had already led the country in the Champaran satyagraha, the Khilafat movement, in the satyagraha against the
Rowlatt Act, against the killings in Jallianwala Bagh and the
merciless repression in Punjab. This National Movement culminated
in the country's Independence in 1947.
In a word, a quarter century
of Ambedkar's public career overlapped with this struggle of the
country to free itself from British rule. There is not one instance,
not one single, solitary instance in which Ambedkar participated
in any activity connected with that struggle to free the country.
Quite the contrary--at every possible turn he opposed the campaigns
of the National Movement, at every setback to the Movement he
was among those cheering the failure.
Thus, while the years culminated in the country's Independence,
in Ambedkar's case they culminated in his becoming a member of
the Viceroy's Council, that is -- to use the current terms --
a Minister in the British Cabinet in India.
The writings of Ambedkar following the same pattern. The Maharashtra
government has by now published 14 volumes of the speeches and
writings of Ambedkar. These cover 9,996 pages. Volumes up to the
12th contain his speeches and writing up to 1946. These extend
to 7,371 pages. You would be hard put to find one article, one
speech, one passage in which Ambedkar can be seen even by inference
to be arguing for India's Independence. Quite the contrary.
Pause for a minute and read the following:
All me to say that the British have a moral responsibility towards
the scheduled castes. They may have moral responsibilities towards
all minorities. But it can never transcend the moral responsibility
which rests on them in respect of the untouchables. It is a pity
how few Britishers are aware of it and how fewer are prepared
to discharge it. British rule in India owes its very existence
to the help rendered by the untouchables. Many Britishers think
that India was conquered by the Clives, Hastings, Coots and so
on. Nothing can be a greater mistake. India was conquered by an
army of Indians and the Indians who formed the army were all untouchables.
British rule in India would have been impossible if the untouchables
had not helped the British to conquer India. Take the Battle of
Plassey which laid the beginning of British rule or the battle
of Kirkee which completed the conquest of India. In both these
fateful battles the soldiers who fought for the British were all
untouchables...
Who is pleading thus to whom? It is B R Ambedkar writing on 14
May 1946 to a member of the (British) Cabinet Mission, A V Alexander.
Nor was this a one-of slip, an arrangement crafted just for the
occasion. Indeed, so long as the British were ruling over India,
far from trying to hide such views, Ambedkar would lose no opportunity
to advertise them, and to advertise what he had been doing to
ensure that they came to prevail in practice. Among the faithful
his book What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables
is among the most admired and emulated of his writings. It
was published in 1945, that is just two years or so before India
became Independent.
As we shall see when we turn to Ambedkar's
views on how harijans may be raised, it is an out and out regurgitation
of the things that the British rulers and the missionaries wanted
to be said, of the allegations and worse that they had been hurling
at our civilisation and people. The book has been published officially
by the education department of the government of Maharashtra, and is sold at a subsidised price! It constitutes Volume IX of
the set Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches. It
reproduces the speech Ambedkar made at the Round Table Conference
-- a speech which served the designs of the British rulers to
the dot, and for which, as we shall soon see, they were ever so
grateful to Ambedkar for it became one of the principal devices
for thwarting Gandhiji.
In the speech Ambedkar addresses the prime
minister and says, "Prime minister, permit me to make one
thing clear. The depressed classes are not anxious, they are not
clamorous, they have not started any movement for claiming that
there shall be an immediate transfer of power from the British
to the Indian people.... Their position, to put it plainly, is
that we are not anxious for transfer of power from the British
to the Indian people.... Their position, to put it plainly, is
that we are not anxious for transfer of political power...."
But if the British were no longer strong enough to resist the
forces which were clamouring for such transfer, Ambedkar declared,
then his demand was that they make certain arrangements-- arrangements
which we shall encounter repeatedly in his speeches and writings,
the essential point about which was to tie down the new government
of Independent India.
Excerpted from Worshipping False Gods by Arun Shourie, ASA Publishers, 1997, Rs 450, with the author's permission. Those interested in obtaining a copy of the book can contact the distributor at Bilblia Impex Pvt Ltd, 2/18, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110001or bibimpex@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
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