BR Ambedkar: Icon of many parts, everyone wants one

On Hinduism, Hindu nation

“Hindu society is a myth… Hindu society as such does not exist. It is only a collection of castes. Each caste is conscious of its existence… Castes do not even form a federation. A caste has no feeling that it is affiliated to other castes except when there is a Hindu-Muslim riot… There is no Hindu consciousness of any kind. In every Hindu the consciousness that exists is the consciousness of his caste. That is the reason why the Hindus cannot be said to form a society or a nation.”

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On Muslims, Christian missionaries

“Supposing a Hindu wished to do what the Christian missionary is doing for these aborigines (tribals), could he have done it? I submit not. Civilising the aborigines means adopting them as your own, living in their midst, and cultivating fellow-feeling, in short, loving them. How is it possible for a Hindu to do this? His whole life is one anxious effort to preserve his caste… The Hindus criticise the Mohammedans for having spread the religion by the use of the sword. They also ridicule Christianity on the score of the inquisition. But really speaking who is better and more worthy of our respect — the Mohammedans and Christians who attempted to thrust down the throats of unwilling persons that they regarded as necessary for their salvation or the Hindu who would not spread the light, who would endeavour to keep others in darkness… I have no hesitation in saying that if the Mohammedan has been cruel, the Hindu has been mean, and meanness is worse than cruelty.”

On the tolerance of Hindus

“The Hindus claim to be a very tolerant people. In my opinion this is a mistake. On many occasions they can be intolerant and if on some occasions they are tolerant this is because they are too weak to oppose or too indifferent to oppose. This indifference of the Hindus has become so much a part of their nature that a Hindu will quite meekly tolerate an insult as well as a wrong… With the Hindu gods all forbearing, it is not difficult to imagine the pitiable condition of the wronged and the oppressed among the Hindus.”

On Vedic religion

“Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules it ceases to be religion… What is this Hindu religion? Is it a set of principles or is it a code of rules? …Hindu religion, as contained in the Vedas and the Smritis, is nothing but a multitude of sacrificial, social, political and sanitary rules and regulations all mixed up. What is called religion by the Hindus is nothing but a multitude of commands and prohibition.”

On eating beef

“That the Aryans of the Rig Veda did kill cows for purposes of food and ate beef is abundantly clear from the Rig Veda itself. In Rig Veda (X. 86.14) Indra says: ‘They cook for one 15 plus twenty oxen.’ ”

Cong, left, BJP, all have a reason and a need to jump in

Ambedkar radicalised Dalits, and is the one icon who unites them across India. Dalits are a politically conscious community, and an electoral constituency no party can ignore. Besides Dalit outfits — natural claimants to his legacy — the Congress has tried to include him in its pantheon by virtue of having invited him to chair the Constitution Drafting Committee, and join Nehru’s cabinet. The communists, who competed with Ambedkar’s Independent Labour Party and the Scheduled Castes Federation for the support of the working class, need to endorse him to escape the criticism that they refuse to recognise the centrality of caste discrimination in India. And the Sangh Parivar sees the need to appropriate him because its Hindu unification project includes assimilation of Dalits. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism as an act of revolt against Hinduism — the BJP has focused on his preference for a religion of Indian origin over semetic faiths.

Over the years, republican ideals espoused by Ambedkar have gained acceptance in large sections of society. To embrace Ambedkar is now seen as an endorsement of progressive and democratic values. Political parties may not work for the annihilation of caste, but are unlikely to endorse caste discrimination for fear of being branded regressive and anti-Dalit. The political cost of such branding is huge, since Dalits constitute 16 per cent of India’s population, and number over 20 crore.

— AMRITH LAL

Bapu and Baba

Gandhi is the Father of the Nation, an icon of peace who gave India and the world the mantra of non-violence; Ambedkar is god to India’s most wretched, the great liberator who gave them a voice against centuries of caste oppression. Gandhi gave India freedom; by helming its Constitution, Ambedkar shaped the future of free India. Ambedkar’s aggressive Dalit assertion clashed with Gandhi’s faith in the overarching umbrella of Hinduism, and his discomfort with the idea of a Dalit identity outside of it. Their differences were apparent from the beginning, and Gandhi’s Poona Pact ‘victory’ over Ambedkar has been seen as ‘moral blackmail’. In What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, Ambedkar let loose his bitterness; in 1939, he called “the Gandhi age” the “dark age of India”. Gandhi called Ambedkar’s 1935 rejection of Hinduism “unbelievable”, and in a letter to C F Andrews in 1936, fretted that “the poor Harijans have no mind, no intelligence, no sense of difference between God and not-God. It is absurd for a single individual to talk of taking all the Harijans with himself. Are they all bricks that they could be moved from one structure to another?” (Quoted in Gail Omvedt, Ambedkar)  — ENS