What if Ambedkar not made Law Minister by Nehru in his first Cabinet!

 

What if Ambedkar not made Law Minister by Nehru in his first Cabinet!

Bhimrao Ambedkar had suffered indignities and the most humiliating treatment at the hands of caste Hindus, right from his childhood and through adulthood, because he belonged to the Mahar community of ‘untouchables’. This piece is an attempt to understand Ambedkar and the myth surrounding him. The narrative and the inferences are largely based on the book Ambedkar: A Life by Shashi Tharoor.

 

Bhim was enrolled at a school in Dapoli, Ratnagiri district. He was segregated  from the other students, made to sit in a corner of the classroom on a gunny sack- which he had to bring from home and take back at the end of the day, since the school peon, would not touch it;  he was not permitted to touch the water tap when thirsty, as his touch would ‘defile’ it; he had to wait for the school peon to open the tap for him, and if the peon was not available , he had to leave his thirst unquenched. And if he touched the tap he was beaten up.  He suffered this humiliation even after he returned from abroad, receiving extensive academic qualifications- MA, MSc, DSc, DLitt, Bar-at-Law- from the most prestigious institutions- the Columbia University and the London School of Economics- that no Indian had received, thanks to the generous scholarship from the Maharaj of Baroda, Sayaji Rao Gaekwad, and the stipend from the Maharaja of Kolhapur, Shahu Maharaj.

 

Ambedkar was appointed as a Professor of Economics at Sydenham College, Bombay, in 1918. He was popular with his students, but his fellow professors refused to share their water jug with him. He was appointed military secretary to the Maharaja of Baroda, but when he failed to find a single landlord willing to rent him accommodation, he bribed the receptionist at a Parsi-owned inn and got his name entered in the register as a Parsi. And when the deception was found out, he was given an ultimatum to leave the inn immediately. He left the inn. Despite his Columbia degree, this was what life in Baroda had reduced him to.  Since his application for a state bungalow was not acted upon, he was ultimately forced to resign from the service of the Maharaja. And when he was appointed the first Principal of Government Law College, Mumbai, in 1935, his peon refused to touch the papers and files handled by him.  All these indignities and humiliation had deep impact on his life and work, making him a bitter critic of the caste system, Hinduism and Hindu Society.

 

He was the champion of the untouchables, whom he called the Depressed Classes. He held the Hinduism responsible for sanctioning the caste system and the practice of untouchability. At the Mahad Conference of the Depressed Classes in 1927, a resolution was adopted repudiating the authority of the Hindu scriptures that upheld the doctrines of social inequality.  It was resolved that the ancient Hindu law book, the Manusmriti, that justified caste discrimination and untouchability, and which reduced the Shudras and the outcastes to slavey, be publicly burnt.  Accordingly, on 25 December 1927, the Manusmriti was placed on a pyre and burned.  To Ambedkar ‘Hindu civilization is a diabolical contrivance to enslave humanity.’

 

Ambedkar attended the first Round Table Conference held in London on 12 November,1930, representing the Depressed Classes. The Conference was opened by the King-Emperor George V, presided over by the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald. Ambedkar, unfazed by the occasion, declared: “I am voicing the viewpoint of one-fifth of the total population of British India- a population as large as the population of England or France- which has been reduced to a position worse than that of serfs or slaves.”  The Indian National Congress, the pre-eminent nationalist organization, with most of its leadership in jail for having led a civil disobedience movement, following the Salt Satyagraha, boycotted the Conference. To Ambedkar, who spoke on behalf of 20 per cent of the population of the British Empire in India, emancipation of the Depressed Classes-the downtrodden- was equally important as India’s call for self-government.

He was a bitter critic of Gandhi. He declared: “Gandhi is the most determined enemy of the untouchables.” He rejected Gandhi’s claims to represent the interests of the Depressed Classes.: “We feel nobody can remove our grievances as well as we can and we cannot remove them unless we get political power in our hands.” It is like Jinnah saying that the Congress, which he called a Hindu Organisation, could not represent the interests of the Indian Muslims, except the Muslim League headed by him. Ambedkar was saying that, as the sole leader representing the Depressed Classes, he alone can represent their interests better, not Gandhi or the Congress. He was carving out a special position for himself among the Depressed Classes.    

 

Gandhi tried to mollify Ambedkar hailing him ‘a patriot of sterling worth in the struggle for the homeland’. To which Ambedkar replied: “I have no homeland. No self-respecting untouchable worth the name will be proud of the land. How can I call this land my own homeland wherein we are treated worse than cats and dogs, wherein we cannot get water to drink?”

 

In 1932, the new conservative British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin announced a Communal Award. According to the Award, there would be separate electorate for Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Europeans, while the Hindus would contest for the general seats, and the Depressed Classes would have a double vote, one to elect their own representatives and the other to participate in the general polls that would elect Hindu legislators. It was a divide and rule policy.  Had the Communal Award been accepted by the Congress, the country would have been divided into many nations on communal lines. Ambedkar welcomed the Award.

 

Gandhi announced a fast-unto death until the Award was withdrawn. Ambedkar stubbornly declared: “To save Gandhi’s life, I will not be a party to any proposals that would be against the interest of my people.” But when the fast began on 20 September 1932, some senior leaders arranged for Ambedkar to visit Gandhi at Yerawada jail, Pune. He visited him on 22 September. This world-renowned saintly figure and hero to hundreds of millions, was at death’s door and the eyes of the world were on whether Ambedkar would make it possible to save his life. Ambedkar spoke and the Mahatma heard: “You have my fullest sympathy; I am with you. You are untouchable by birth, I am untouchable by adoption.  We must be one and indivisible. I am prepared to give up my life to prevent the break-up of Hindu community.” Gandhiji’s fast ended on 24 September with the signing of the Poona Pact.

Ambedkar collaborated with the British, hankering for office. He supported the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan that earned him the sobriquet of ‘anti-national’.  He opposed the ‘Quit India’ movement and served as a labour member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council during 1942-46 when the entire Congress leadership and Gandhiji were incarcerated.  Arun Shourie in his book Worshipping False Gods, accused Ambedkar as an ‘anti-national’ agent of British imperialism. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose remarked that” Ambedkar had had his leadership thrust upon him by benign British government because his services were necessary to embarrass the nationalist leaders.”

Ambedkar’s hostility towards Gandhiji stands in contrast to Gandhiji’s extensive record of striving for the abolition of untouchability.  He could not rise above his antagonism.  Gandhiji set a personal example by adopting an untouchable girl, cleaning latrines, living and sharing meals with untouchables, attending marriages only when one of the parties belonged to them.  The Mahatma’s American biographer, Louis Fischer, described Ambedkar as ‘the bitterest man I met in India, anti-Gandhi, pro-Pakistan and the most pro-British Indian I encountered.’

 

Shashi Tharoor writes: “The image of Ambedkar, in his suit and tie, issuing ‘progressive’ modern diktats to ignorant dhoti-clad bigots covered in the dust and grime of their rural backwardness, is not a reassuring one, evoking the authoritarian fantasies of other modernizing autocracies, rather than the evolutionary change, anchored in local realities, that a democracy requires for its development. Ambedkar once even suggested that the best way to summarily   eradicate the caste system and untouchability was if India could produce an Ataturk or a Mussolini.” Interestingly, he wore Western suits, both on formal and informal occasions, in rejection of the traditional trappings of a society.

 

Ambedkar, throughout his public life, had represented nobody’s interest, except that of the Depressed Classes, called Scheduled Castes or Dalits in today’s India. He was more communal than the Sangh Parivar. He spoke with language bordering on prejudice and racism about the Adivasis. His obsession with annihilation of caste system, made him blind to the plight of the Adivasis.  “Adivasis-India’s aboriginals, now classified as Scheduled Tribes-who deserved his support as others ostracized by Indian society as Dalits were, but whom he tended to regard as ‘savages in need of civilizing.’ He refers to them leading the life of ‘hereditary animals’, and even warns ‘the Hindus’ that the ‘aborigins are a source of potential danger."  

 

In 1946, Ambedkar was elected as a member of the Constituent Assembly from undivided Bengal with the support of the Muslim League.  He dismantled the Independent Labour Party (ILP) founded by him in 1930s. His other party- Scheduled Castes Federation (SCF)- fared poorly in the elections of 1946, winning only two of the 151 reserved seats, himself getting defeated. On 2 September, 1946 an interim government, headed by Pandit Nehru, was established. Babu Jagjivan Ram of the Congress was a Minister in Nehru’s cabinet, representing the Scheduled Castes. Ambedkar travelled to England  to pressurise the British government to have more representation for his community, but failed. And after the partition of India, he lost the membership of the Constituent Assembly. The Congress obliged by getting him elected in 1947 from the general category to the Constituent Assembly from the Provincial Assembly of Bombay, against the vacancy caused by the resignation of  M.R.Jayakar from the Constituent Assembly, making G.V. Mavalankar (the first Speaker of Lok Sabha) to withdrawm from the contest. .  .  

 

There is another interesting episode.   Jagjivan Ram's wife Indrani wrote in her memoir that Ambedkar persuaded her husband to ask Mahatma Gandhi for his inclusion in Nehru's cabinet in independent India. Initially, Jagjivan Ram consulted Vallabhbhai Patel before asking Gandhi to recommend Ambedkar to Nehru for inclusion in cabinet, adding that Ambedkar had "given up his antagonism to Congress and Gandhiji".

 

Nehru invited Ambedkar to join his cabinet as Law Minister. And soon after, being the Law Minster, he was made the Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee which consisted of seven eminent jurists. It was B.N. Rau, Advisor to the Constituent Assembly, who produced the first draft of the Constitution. Therefore, calling Ambedkar the ‘Father of the Constitution’ or the ‘Architect of the Constitution’ is flattering, amounts to undermining the collective wisdom of the Constituent Assembly, the role of various Committees and the sub-committees, and the contribution of the best brains that India ever had, particularly when all the amendments to the draft were debated at length and every Article was adopted by consensus. In fact, Ambedkar wanted the American Model of Presidential system of government. He wanted the trifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir. There were many changes that he wanted to incorporate in the constitution, but they were rejected.

 

It is ironical that the man who was a bitter critic of Gandhi and the Congress all his life had to seek help and depend on their support to attain the position that he achieved in independent India. He contested and lost the first general election in 1952. He was elected to Rajya Sabha with the support of the Congress Party. He was defeated twice in the Lok Sabha elections as the candidate of a Dalit Party.  His third political party, the Republican Party of India (RPI) also miserably failed. All the three parties-ILP, SCF and RPI-have failed to make a mark. The Dalits preferred supporting the Congress Dalit candidates rather than the parties founded by Ambedkar. Inspired by the abolition of the slavery by the Republican Party of America, during the Civil War in 1860s, Ambedkar founded the RPI. Today, the RPI is tattered, divided into several factions led by ambitious political leaders, like Ramdas Athawale, Prakash Ambedkar etc. promoting their personal aggrandizement.   

 

And in 1953, Ambedkar invited a big controversy repudiating the Constitution, in an ill-tempered and emotional speech in the Rajya Saha in which he called himself a ‘hack’ in its drafting. “People always keep saying to me, Oh! You are the maker of the Constitution. My answer is: I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.” Then he burst out: “Sir, my friends tell that I made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody.” He was disillusioned.

 

What if Ambedkar wasn’t made the Law Minister by Nehru in his first cabinet! Ambedkar would have remained an insignificant individual, and not attained the cult status that he enjoys today, He owes it Gandhi and the Congress for ensuring a place in Independent India’s first cabinet and in being awarded the chairmanship of the Constitution Drafting Committee, which he refused to acknowledge. Ambedkar’s” ungracious and conspicuous silene on the Mahatma’s death was unworthy of a man of education and sensitivity.”

 

And by converting to Buddhism in 1956, days before his death, Ambedkar moved away from his community, whose cause he espoused. He thought the conversion would liberate the Dalits (Scheduled Cates) from the caste discrimination and the stigma of birth. But the fact is that his followers, who got converted to Buddhism, continue to be treated as untouchables and atrocities against the Dalits are on the rise today. And instead of integrating into the mainstream, the Dalits continue to be isolated and discriminated against. The stigma of birth can be erased by refusing to identify the caste, not by conversion, and living a dignified life, rising up in the social ladder by dint of hard work and self-effort, and not seeking anybody’s mercy.