Based on What Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Wrote, How I
Reassessed Myself
I
give below the context in which B. R. Ambedkar prepared his speech to have been
given at a conference organized by Jat-Pat Todak Mandal, a grouping of
caste-Hindu reformers. He was to have presided over the conference. Dr. Ambedkar
wrote down his speech in the tone that carried his animus towards the evil of
caste, no punches pulled. The conference was cancelled and Dr. Ambedkar forked
out the money and printed out a thousand copies of his essay Annihilation of
Caste. The whole essay, as given in full runs to 111 pages, including the
extensive footnotes. I cherry-picked a few statements that hit me really hard.
If
the reader wishes to understand how the uncompromising stance of Dr. Ambedkar made
me intensely miserable, dig in.
‘To the Untouchables,
Hinduism is a veritable Chamber of horrors’
I started looking at socially divisive issues from
the viewpoint of people who were at the receiving and losing end. This was in
my late 20s. My eyes were opened to it as I read about how Blacks
(Negros/African Americans) were treated by the white people. Then I realized that
the benefits that came my way for much of my life were because of the privileges
my caste enjoyed, unjustifiably. I learned the meaning of empathy, way beyond
sympathy. The above statement made me live those moments of mental anguish that
changed my worldview wholesale.
‘A comparative study of
Gandhi’s Gujarati and English writings will reveal how Mr Gandhi was deceiving
people’
One could not have been sharper in criticizing the
actions of M. K. Gandhi. During my PG studies, I learned about the conflict
between B. R. Ambedkar and M. K. Gandhi when the latter was in Yerawada jail
(Pune). This was in a newspaper article and the subject pulled me into a mental
maelstrom. I understood that Gandhi was blackmailing Ambedkar−yes, there was no
other honest way to say what happened−and the shine of the former faded
somewhat. Dr. Ambedkar was not the only one who felt the whiplash of Gandhi;
Subhash Chandra Bose was another one. Bose was ready to a deal with one devil
only to try to succeed against another, as more Nationalist than Gandhi (?). I
could excuse Bose’s thinking and his ignorance (who am I to judge Bose’s
intelligence as I just did? Yet, I did. Unfortunate.). All these thoughts
coursed through my mind as I read the above quoted lines. I realized Gandhi as
less than a Mahatma.
‘I shall be satisfied if
I make the Hindus realize that they are the sick man of India, and that their
sickness is causing danger to the health and happiness of other Indians’
I am glad that Dr. Ambedkar
was one of those who made me realize how morally sick I was. He was not a
leftist but one whose morality was grounded in egalitarian principles. My blind
spot on this issue was the cocoon my parents built around me, whether in Madras
or Kanchipuram. Most of my friends in Kanchipuram were TamBrahms or Jains and
the latter did not make me feel the religious distance as there was hardly any.
Kanchipuram was a centre of learning of and
devotion to Mahavira (Vardhamana), the 24th Tirthankara of the Jain
pantheon. There are Jain temples in the south western extensions (across River
Palar) of the town, and one could see idols of Goddess Sarawathi and perhaps
others in it. The above may sound as my mental alibi, but it is not; just honest
recounting. Thanks to Dr. Ambedkar I am cured of my sickness.
‘[T]he caste system is not merely a
division of labour. It is also a division of labourers’ (Emphasis in the original)
This is like the gas-cutting machine that we saw
demonstrated to us, about 57 years ago. It cut through an inch-thick steel
plate like a hot knife cuts through a slab of butter. The above statement
brings that kind of intense clarity, makes you see the cut surfaces of the
society, on either side, each drastically different from the other.
The way I understood this statement is the mantra
of efficient production that has been suborned to the millennia old master of
slavery, the forward castes (caste is a form of slavery, indeed it is worse as
the most obvious mark, skin colour, has almost indistinguishable gradations). In
one of the multi-nation jamborees, India argued that caste system is not any
version of apartheid. I was repelled by this position of my government.
No non-forward castes can interact and a critical
mass could be achieved against the forward caste. Merely to avoid such
cooperation, labourers had to be divided.
‘Reason and morality are
the two most powerful weapons in the armoury of a reformer’
Dr. Ambedkar may be
accused of tooting his own horn. He is not saying, “I have it and you don’t”. He,
in my opinion, is setting down the standards for a reformer-to-be. One has to
have a reason for doing something and that reason cannot be anchored to one’s
benefit. No, this does not mean that a reformer cannot benefit by his thoughts
and actions, but it cannot be directed solely at oneself.
The reason for
reformation has to lie in the uplifting of society, as a whole. The reformer’s
reason must encompass humanity, not any particular section of society. It is
likely to uplift some materially, and others, morally. Better yet, some may
benefit both ways!
An upper caste may, upon
throwing the social fetters that tie her to her caste is bound to find a wide
open field of freedom, of thought and action. Reason and morality, in my
understanding of what Dr. Ambedkar said, are not two distinct ideas but an
integrated whole.
The above are my low
level understanding revealed to me upon reading Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s
undelivered speech. I consider myself a lucky one to have vigorously sought out
this essay.
Raghuram Ekambaram
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