Barely two months after his rebirth as a Buddhist at Nagpur on October 16, 1956, Dr B R Ambedkar died of a heart attack on December 6. Born as a Dalit, his titanic war against caste discrimination finding closure with his taking refuge in the Buddha must have released in him the pent-up tension of a lifetime and perhaps mentally prepared him for his death. When at its most wound up, a spring can only uncoil.
A prolific writer himself, Ambedkar’s life is an industry now. There are hundreds of books on him. And the latest on the subject is by Shashi Tharoor (Ambedkar, A life), a warm and highly readable evaluation of a great Indian leader-and rebel.
This note is not a review of Tharoor’s book. It is a glance, caused by reading it, at the value and problem of dissent at the innermost circle of Independence politics offered by a man who, in the end, was not happy with the Constitution he authored or the country that he intimately fought against if only for its greater destiny.
Ambedkar will be even more written about as October 16 and December 6 approach. Close to seventy years after his death, Indian political parties though still vying with each other to appropriate him, have no idea how to accommodate the heroic spirit of (his) dissidence. This aspect, the aspect of individualism in public life, neither the BJP nor the Congress is equipped to meet. This is an acquired drawback of Indian democracy.
It is one of those ironies that Tharoor himself is facing some kind of conversion on October 16 when the election for the AICC presidency takes place. He, like his great subject, is a dissident. Except Tharoor disguises it well in intellectual fineries. In the best and truest sense, Tharoor is not a Congressman, though he has won his parliamentary seat on the party ticket from Trivandrum thrice in a row.
One of the main reasons for Ambedkar’s apprehensions regarding democracy in India was that our social structure is ‘incompatible with parliamentary democracy.’ By social structure, he meant the varna theory and the politics and grief associated with casteism.
To a great extent, the worst of that social structure has given way to greater inclusion. In the choice of India’s president to quota reservations and cultural awards and national honours, the ‘depressed classes’ have a greater share now than in Ambedkar’s times. The Group is better off.
But how many outspoken Dalit individuals do we hear about besides those who do well in competitive examinations? Their integration has been at the expense of individualism. If Ambedkar were alive and well now, he would still be rebelling against powerful, oppressive group formations. In his time, it was Congress, representing the oppressed and, curiously, at the same time, the rich and the powerful. That mantle has now fallen on the BJP. Neither party knows what to do with individual dissidence besides extinguishing it.
The crowning achievement of Ambedkar’s career is widely seen to be the authoring of the Indian Constitution, a handiwork which he later disowned in the Rajya Sabha in an ‘ill-tempered and emotional speech’ that Tharoor quotes in his book: ‘People always keep on 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. Sir, my friends tell me 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.”
Apart from the fact that words like these, if spoken now, would spell immediate trouble and, therefore, indicate the state of free speech in India, the outburst is a true measure of the man: Ambedkar did not observe decorum. When he was pissed off, he was pissed off. And he remained pissed off to the last. In the interviews he gave to the BBC and others, he is almost contemptuous of the credentials of Indian democracy and Mahatma Gandhi. His cynicism goaded him to challenge the Establishment and often disprove it to improve it. It is precisely this, too, that the Establishment continues to ignore in appropriating him.
The separate electorate that Ambedkar wanted for Dalits would have come to fruition and ended up dividing the Hindu society had he not given in to the will of Mahatma Gandhi. Given his unique sensibility, he suspected that the ultimate Hindu, the Hindu to end all Hindus was not, say, a Savarkar but Mahatma Gandhi. Recall often Mahatma Gandhi described himself as a ‘sanatani Hindu’; he thought the Gita was his ‘eternal mother,’ and he swore by the varna theory.
A very astute leader like Prime Minister Narendra Modi owns up Mahatma Gandhi and his legacy at the expense of almost everyone else of the Nehruvian stock and tradition because the Mahatma was the closest the RSS could aspire to outside the RSS.
In ‘What the Congress & Gandhi have done to the Untouchables, Ambedkar writes: ‘Much is written about the Congress, far more about Mr Gandhi. But no one has so far told the story of what they have done about the Untouchables …’ The reason why Mahatma Gandhi’ bared his fangs’ to Ambedkar, of course, is that he did not want Dalits to exit from the Hindu fold. And only one man could point his finger at the Father of the Nation and tell it as it is: Ambedkar.
As Congress founders and the BJP entrenches its position, one wishes for a rebel hero like Ambedkar. Because it is from his revolt that his people and the country have benefited the most. There is value to dissidence. But it is fast becoming an extinct tradition in Indian politics.
(cpsurendran@gmail.com)
C P SURENDRAN
Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is
One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B