Rise & Rise of Ambedkar as an icon
The fracas over an insult to Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar leading to fisticuffs between the members of the ruling coalition and the opposition within the parliament complex underlined two distinctive trends.
First, the level of discourse between the mainline Indian political parties has touched an unprecedented low even within parliament. Second, over the last few decades, Ambedkar has emerged as the only leader whom all political outfits - regional and national, cutting across ideological barriers - are competing to appropriate in contemporary India.
It’s undoubtedly a fascinating journey for someone born a Dalit in a caste-ridden society during colonial rule, who suffered terrible abuse and discrimination as a child and was forced to the margins of the Indian political scene by the contemporary establishment before his demise in 1956.
Today, Ambedkar almost looms larger than anyone else in the political lexicon of India. While the BJP and the Congress - the two old political formulations with pan-India footprints today - are vying with each other to claim his legacy, Ambedkar’s photographs invariably form the backdrop in the newer outfit Aam Aadmi Party’s offices, along with that of Bhagat Singh.
Shunning their earlier antipathy, communists of various hues have emerged as his supporters, too. In the highly fractured Indian socio-political spectrum, no organisation of consequence is critical of Ambedkar. From being a sectional leader of depressed classes, Ambedkar has emerged as a national icon - a status only Mahatma Gandhi has had in the recent Indian narrative.
Gandhi and Ambedkar enjoyed a unique relationship. They clashed and collaborated as well. Each one was true to his wont. While Gandhi was fighting for India’s freedom, Ambedkar’s prime concern was to save his people, the Dalits, from oppression - an ignoble part of the centuries-old, corrosive caste system.
The two stalwarts intensely engaged with each other when the British brought about the divisive Communal Award in 1932, which proposed separate electorates for Dalits.
Ambedkar supported the proposal, believing it would allow them to advance their interests. However, Gandhi opposed the idea of separate electorates. He saw it as another attempt by the wily Britishers to perpetuate social divisions and strengthen their precarious grip over the country. An imprisoned Gandhi began a fast unto death on September 18 that year to protest the proposal.
The Mahatma ended the near-fatal fast after what came to be called the Poona Pact was signed between the two on September 24 at Yerawada Central Jail. It increased Dalit representation within the Hindu electorate, instead of creating separate electorates.
The confrontation over the Communal Award played a catalytic role in fostering a relationship between Gandhi and Ambedkar during the final phase of Gandhi’s life.
At Gandhi’s instance, Jawaharlal Nehru invited Ambedkar to serve as the law minister in his first cabinet, leading to his appointment as chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution.
Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948; on December 15, 1950, Sardar Patel breathed his last. After the departure of these two stalwarts from the national scene, Nehru’s attitude towards Ambedkar changed utterly.
In 1952, Ambedkar, after quitting Nehru’s cabinet, contested for the Lok Sabha from North Bombay. The Congress fielded Narayan Kajrolkar, a Gandhian social worker who sold milk, as its candidate against him. To add to Ambedkar’s woes, the Communist Party led at the time by Shripad Amrit Dange labelled him a “traitor”. In saying so, Dange wasn’t being original. On January 26, 1946, writing to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Nehru had said Ambedkar “had allied himself with the British government and against the Congress”.
Ambedkar lost the election by approximately 14,000 votes, while 78,000 votes were declared invalid. There were serious allegations that the poll was rigged.
This is what Savita Ambedkar, Bhimrao’s second wife, wrote about the 1952 elections in her autobiography: “Prime Minister Nehru was keeping a sharp eye on the constituency… What we had heard then was that Nehru, S K Patil and Dange had decided that they would do all that was required, use whatever strategy suited the occasion, but they were determined not to let Dr Ambedkar win.”
Ambedkar’s defeat gave Nehru a sense of victory. On January 16, 1952, he wrote to Edwina Mountbatten: “In Bombay city and to a larger extent in Bombay province, our success has been far greater than expected. Ambedkar has been dropped out.”
The Hindutva strain of the Indian political scene and Ambedkar had much in common, too.
A number of the Hindutva icons had fought against untouchability. Veer Savarkar backed Ambedkar’s agitations against this affliction through his articles, arguing untouchability was against the basic tenets of Hinduism. Ambedkar also recognised Savarkar’s activism and even congratulated him in personal correspondence.
Apart from the shared commitment to eradicate untouchability, the Hindutva clan and Ambedkar were both wary of radical Islam, suspicious of the communists and disapproving of Nehru’s misplaced trust in China. All these factors created an ideological affinity between the two.
No wonder, when Ambedkar again tried his luck in the 1954 by-poll from Bhandara, Maharashtra, he leaned on Dattopant Thengadi, then a young RSS pracharak, who later shaped up as one of the tallest RSS ideologues. Thengadi, who was Ambedkar’s polling agent in the by-election, has detailed the meetings between RSS leaders and Ambedkar in his book Dr Ambedkar aur Samajik Kranti ki Yatra.
By 1967, the country’s socio-political scene had considerably changed. The Congress hegemony was over and regional parties had replaced it in many parts of the country. Subaltern identities were coming to the fore. Indian politics was in flux. The ideas of social and economic justice, coupled with identity politics, were the prime movers of those times.
A silent revolution was also sweeping across those communities that were termed Harijan by Gandhi, the depressed classes by Ambedkar and are now known as Dalits. After Gandhi, this vast section of the population had been completely ignored and reduced to a mere vote bank. Kanshi Ram, the founder of Bahujan Samaj Party, brought this anomaly to the fore when he coined the slogan “Vote hamara, raj tumara - nahi chelega”.
It was the starting point of the consolidation of the Dalit vote bank and the emergence of Ambedkar as its natural brand ambassador. No wonder, even those who vilified him in his lifetime are in the race to own him today. The rest is history.
(Views are personal)
(punjbalbir@gmail.com)