How the Una protests reflect Ambedkar's great wisdom in the Constituent Assembly

The Dalit icon had said that continued marginalisation would lead to class struggle and noted that fraternity was integral to nation-building.

 

 Image credit:  Sam Panthaky/AFP

Madhav Chandavarkar

India celebrated its 70th Independence Day on August 15 against the backdrop of widespread agitations by Dalits over the increased boldness of cow protection vigilante groups in Gujarat.

But these protests are not just about gaurakshaks, they are another instance of a community rallying against discrimination in society. As one of the most recognisable Dalit icons, BR Ambedkar was aware of this and stated multiple times in the Constituent Assembly Debates that unless this disenfranchisement could be curbed, such sentiments would threaten the stability of the document with which he is most associated – India’s Constitution.

Some people may assume that as the “father of the Constitution”, Ambedkar is its sole author, but the document on the basis of which India is governed was actually the product of the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly comprised leading figures from the Congress party and members of other communities who sat and discussed the provisions of the Constitution, and were assisted in this capacity by various committees.

Though he had other roles, as the head of the drafting committee, Ambedkar was in charge of making sure that decisions made by the Assembly and the various committees were translated into the final draft.

Despite the hegemony of the Congress, the Assembly was remarkably diverse – the party actively sought out non-members (like Ambedkar) and allowed its own members to vote freely. Any given issue elicited a host of conflicting stands and the members would hammer out their differences until they came as close as possible to a unanimous decision.

The idea of India

Reading the proceedings of the Assembly (of which the Debates are just a part) thus provides a more textural understanding to the Constitution and acts as a window to the kind of India its founding fathers wished to create.

Ambedkar, unsurprisingly, is one of the prominent speakers in the Debates. One of his standout speeches was on the eve of the Constitution’s adoption. He spoke on the conditions that he felt would benecessary to ensure that the Constitution would last and that democracy in India would be achieved in reality.

Ambedkar felt that “democracy in India was only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic” and pointed out that ensuring political democracy would be insufficient without creating social democracy.

Granting political equality through voting, without simultaneously ensuring social and economic equality would be creating an unsustainable set of contradictions, he felt. This is why he included Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in the preamble and viewed them as inseparable.

What is paramount

Ambedkar valued fraternity as the most integral part of nation-building and felt that without it, liberty and equality “will be no deeper than coats of paint”. He dubbed castes as “anti-national” as they created social divisions in social life. He must have spoken from personal experience when he said that the historical monopoly of political power reduced many to “beasts of burden” and “beasts of prey” in a manner that sapped their “significance of life”.

He surmised that these subjugated peoples were “tired of being governed” and were impatient for self-governance. He felt that the longer they were denied this urge for self-actualisation, the more likely they were to resort to a class struggle. And in his view, nothing threatened the health of the Constitution more than societal divisions.

However, fraternity is extremely hard to create because unlike liberty and equality, it cannot be secured through laws. One way to achieve it could be to delve more into the founding of our nation as a society. This would mean school lessons that are not a drab timeline of events, well-researched biographies (not hagiographies) as well as plays, movies and stories.

Educating India

Knowledge of the founding of a nation is invariably accompanied by literacy in the core principles that the founders fought for and that the nation holds dear. Sadly, the average constitutional literacy of Indians is a fraction of that of citizens in other countries, such as the United States.

Most Americans are taught about the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights at an early age. Aside from giving the average American a working knowledge of the rights granted to him or her, this education has come to shape public discourse quite remarkably. Almost all civil-rights movements in the US, be it those for women, African-Americans, or more recently, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, draw their legitimacy from the language of the Declaration of Independence.

The remarkable response to the Broadway play Hamilton – a musical about Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the US – shows that the American polity recognises the worth of Constitutional history. However, in India these subjects have historically been handled dryly in Civics classes and a system of rote regurgitation prevents these lessons from having any permanency in children’s minds.

The long road to equality

The flogging of Dalit youth in Gujarat’s Una last month for skinning the carcass of a dead cow and the resultant protests show that India is still a long way off the vision of equality held by our founding fathers. But the longer that certain sections of the society – be it Dalits or Kashmiris – continue to feel marginalised, the greater the threat to the Constitution.

It is to their credit that the protestors in Gujarat followed another tenet of Ambedkar and used constitutional methods to express their dissent. But unless such sections of society feel more included, stability will be difficult to sustain – as Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

It is, therefore, time to inculcate the fraternity Ambedkar spoke of by rediscovering our constitutional history, both inside and outside schools. Not only would this help give Indians a better knowledge of their rights but also a sense of the idea of India. This could be the umbrella under which Indians discover a sense of fraternity – and if nothing else, create public literacy in the rich language of constitutionalism that people looking to reform India can capitalise on.

Madhav Chandavarkar is a research associate at Takshashila Institution, an independent, non-partisan think tank and school of public policy. 

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin

How the Una protests reflect Ambedkar's great wisdom in the Constituent Assembly

The Dalit icon had said that continued marginalisation would lead to class struggle and noted that fraternity was integral to nation-building.

 

 Image credit:  Sam Panthaky/AFP

Madhav Chandavarkar

India celebrated its 70th Independence Day on August 15 against the backdrop of widespread agitations by Dalits over the increased boldness of cow protection vigilante groups in Gujarat.

But these protests are not just about gaurakshaks, they are another instance of a community rallying against discrimination in society. As one of the most recognisable Dalit icons, BR Ambedkar was aware of this and stated multiple times in the Constituent Assembly Debates that unless this disenfranchisement could be curbed, such sentiments would threaten the stability of the document with which he is most associated – India’s Constitution.

Some people may assume that as the “father of the Constitution”, Ambedkar is its sole author, but the document on the basis of which India is governed was actually the product of the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly comprised leading figures from the Congress party and members of other communities who sat and discussed the provisions of the Constitution, and were assisted in this capacity by various committees.

Though he had other roles, as the head of the drafting committee, Ambedkar was in charge of making sure that decisions made by the Assembly and the various committees were translated into the final draft.

Despite the hegemony of the Congress, the Assembly was remarkably diverse – the party actively sought out non-members (like Ambedkar) and allowed its own members to vote freely. Any given issue elicited a host of conflicting stands and the members would hammer out their differences until they came as close as possible to a unanimous decision.

The idea of India

Reading the proceedings of the Assembly (of which the Debates are just a part) thus provides a more textural understanding to the Constitution and acts as a window to the kind of India its founding fathers wished to create.

Ambedkar, unsurprisingly, is one of the prominent speakers in the Debates. One of his standout speeches was on the eve of the Constitution’s adoption. He spoke on the conditions that he felt would benecessary to ensure that the Constitution would last and that democracy in India would be achieved in reality.

Ambedkar felt that “democracy in India was only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic” and pointed out that ensuring political democracy would be insufficient without creating social democracy.

Granting political equality through voting, without simultaneously ensuring social and economic equality would be creating an unsustainable set of contradictions, he felt. This is why he included Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in the preamble and viewed them as inseparable.

What is paramount

Ambedkar valued fraternity as the most integral part of nation-building and felt that without it, liberty and equality “will be no deeper than coats of paint”. He dubbed castes as “anti-national” as they created social divisions in social life. He must have spoken from personal experience when he said that the historical monopoly of political power reduced many to “beasts of burden” and “beasts of prey” in a manner that sapped their “significance of life”.

He surmised that these subjugated peoples were “tired of being governed” and were impatient for self-governance. He felt that the longer they were denied this urge for self-actualisation, the more likely they were to resort to a class struggle. And in his view, nothing threatened the health of the Constitution more than societal divisions.

However, fraternity is extremely hard to create because unlike liberty and equality, it cannot be secured through laws. One way to achieve it could be to delve more into the founding of our nation as a society. This would mean school lessons that are not a drab timeline of events, well-researched biographies (not hagiographies) as well as plays, movies and stories.

Educating India

Knowledge of the founding of a nation is invariably accompanied by literacy in the core principles that the founders fought for and that the nation holds dear. Sadly, the average constitutional literacy of Indians is a fraction of that of citizens in other countries, such as the United States.

Most Americans are taught about the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights at an early age. Aside from giving the average American a working knowledge of the rights granted to him or her, this education has come to shape public discourse quite remarkably. Almost all civil-rights movements in the US, be it those for women, African-Americans, or more recently, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, draw their legitimacy from the language of the Declaration of Independence.

The remarkable response to the Broadway play Hamilton – a musical about Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the US – shows that the American polity recognises the worth of Constitutional history. However, in India these subjects have historically been handled dryly in Civics classes and a system of rote regurgitation prevents these lessons from having any permanency in children’s minds.

The long road to equality

The flogging of Dalit youth in Gujarat’s Una last month for skinning the carcass of a dead cow and the resultant protests show that India is still a long way off the vision of equality held by our founding fathers. But the longer that certain sections of the society – be it Dalits or Kashmiris – continue to feel marginalised, the greater the threat to the Constitution.

It is to their credit that the protestors in Gujarat followed another tenet of Ambedkar and used constitutional methods to express their dissent. But unless such sections of society feel more included, stability will be difficult to sustain – as Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

It is, therefore, time to inculcate the fraternity Ambedkar spoke of by rediscovering our constitutional history, both inside and outside schools. Not only would this help give Indians a better knowledge of their rights but also a sense of the idea of India. This could be the umbrella under which Indians discover a sense of fraternity – and if nothing else, create public literacy in the rich language of constitutionalism that people looking to reform India can capitalise on.

Madhav Chandavarkar is a research associate at Takshashila Institution, an independent, non-partisan think tank and school of public policy. 

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin

Ambedkar vs Dronacharya: Why Gurugram is just the RSS telling us who's boss

Opinion

Changing the name of Gurgaon is a decision taken after due deliberation.

Apr 20, 2016 · 04:30 pm      Updated Apr 21, 2016 · 10:51 am

Kancha Ilaiah

Changing the name of Gurgaon to Gurugram is clearly a decision taken after due deliberation. It is no coincidence that its announcement was timed with the celebrations of Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary.

We are reminded once again of the Mahabharata story based on mythological Guru Dronacharya, who trained the Pandavas and Kuarvas in archery, but had to remain with Kaurvas as he was duty bound when it came to the crunch.

The contestation between the Kauravas and the Pandavas is generally projected as a battle between Dharma and Adharma, but it could well be read as war between majority (Kauravs ) and minority (Pandavs) basically over land rights and political power.

Historically, the Brahmin gurus always stood by the minority that constituted Brahmins and Kshatriyas (not even Vaisyas) in ancient times. The 6th century BC Buddhist literature shows us enough evidence how the Brahmins were against the majority that constituted of Shudras and Vaisyas. India had a massive tribal population at that time, which did not come into the orbit of the caste system. The Brahmins-Kshatriys were against the tribals, whom the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh refers to as Vanavasis, or the forest-dwellers.

The Brahmin gurus worked out the theories with an upside down ideology of Dharma and Adharma as that suited them very well. At that time they approved whatever the minority did as Dharma and whatever the majority did as Adharma based on Varna division.

Eklavya and Karna

Two stories that tell us about the absolute casteist nature of Dronacharya are those of Eklavya and Karna. That Dronacharya asked for tribal Eklavya’s thumb as guru-dakshina, so as to impair his archery skills is too well-known to need recounting. But let’s not forget that he also refused to teach Karna for not being a Kshatriya, insulting him for being a suta-putra or the son of a charioteer and therefore not fit for learning warfare.

In present day terminology, Dronacharya can thus easily be seen as being against the Dalit-Bahujan classes, also known as other backward classes and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.

If we map the Dronacharya’s cultural ideology on the present social relations it should not allow Narendra Modi to become the prime minister of the country, as he happens to be an OBC. The RSS’s inner ideology is that of Dronacharya but its posture is that it is for all, including Eklavya and Karna.

It should not really be a surprise therefore for Narendra Modi to be saying that he became the prime minister because of BR Ambedkar and the Constitution he gave India. Modi also repeatedly invokes the name of Gautam Buddha, at least in his foreign tours, just as he invokes Ambedkar’s name at home. It should also not be a surprise that no Brahmin or Kshatriya leader from the Bharatiya Janata Party or the RSS takes the names of Buddha and Ambedkar as frequently as Modi does.

Which is what explains the name change. The caste culture works both ways. Just as Modi appealed to the SC/ST/OBCs, Haryana Chief Minister Khattar was brought in to assuage the upper castes, the BJP-RSS’s core constituency. It is meant to be a signal to the old faithful that the core ideology has not changed. In its intent, Khattar’s move in changing the name to Gurugram and invoke Dronacharya is of a piece with the Vande Mataram controversy and Maharashtra’s Brahmin Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ recent pronouncements. “There is still a dispute over saying ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ ,” he was quoted as having said recently. “Those opposed to say it should not have any right to stay in India. Those living here should say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai”.

These are not accidental pronouncements. The short point is that as the BJP goes about appropriating Dalit icons such as Ambedkar in search of newer vote-banks, it needs to reassure its old and ideological votaries too.

Casteist soul

The Brahmin and upper caste intellectuals – be they right wing, left wing or of liberal persuasion – have a tacit understanding of such hegemonic cultural agenda. They have common views about opposite icons like Mahisasur and Dronacharya. This is not a recent phenomenon and was no different under the earlier Congress governments either. Let’s not forget that the top most sports award too is named after Dronacharya.

The problem is that there is no strong Shudra intellectual force that could re-read the Brahmin mythology and fight them back with their own cultural symbols. For example, the Jats in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh did not produce qualitative English educated intellectuals. So is the case with Patels of Gujarat and Gujjars of Rajasthan.

There is some amount of re-reading of the Indian Brahmin mythology from the Dalit point of view because of Ambedkar, but there is no serious re-reading from Shudra point of view. So long as there is no strong Shudra intellectual force in the country, the productive people’s history and narratives will not get their due recognition in the cognitive map of the country.

Till then, the RSS roadmap is clear. Its pracharak chief ministers can be called upon to moderate and balance all the praise showered on Ambedkar in search of newer vote banks. The timing of the re-naming of Gurgaon as Gurugram tells the story more effectively than anything else as it was changed in the midst of the Ambedkar Jayanthi celebrations.

The RSS’s inner soul belongs to Dronacharya – not to Eklavya and Karna. It is delusional therefore to expect any real progress towards an egalitarian nation from a government that is controlled by them. Their idea of sab kaa saath, sab kaa Vikas has to be true to its soul – and pay obeisance to their casteist idols.
We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin