IN What Congress And Gandhi Have Done To The Untouchables, Ambedkar wrote:

“the governing class in India has placed itself in the vanguard of the Congress movement and it strives to bring everybody within the Congress fold. …[it] is aware that a political campaign based on class ideology, class interests, class issues and class conflicts will toll its death knell. It knows that the most effective way of side tracking the servile classes and fooling them is to play upon the sentiment of nationalism and national unity and realizes that the Congress platform is the only platform that can most effectively safeguard the interest of the governing class.”

Replace Congress with BJP/Sangh Parivar. Don’t you get a fair approximation of today’s scenario, with the additional aspect that that the BJP/Sangh Parivar, in the name of nationalism, defines that nationalism in terms of an aggressive Hindu majority united against minorities and dissenting voices?

 

Annihilation of Castes As A Must For Real Democracy

While Ambedkar advocated many much-needed reforms including the Hindu Code Bill and caste-based representation and reservations, the question of the annihilation of caste was most crucial to Ambedkar’s conception of democracy. The key text where Ambedkar dealt with question has been dealt in greatest detail and most radical terms is Annihilation of Caste(1936) (Henceforth Annihilation) - a speech scheduled to be delivered at a talk organized by Jat-Pat Todak Mandal (Forum for the Break-up of Caste System) of Lahore, an offshoot of the Arya Samaj -- but later cancelled by the organizers. Here we find Ambedkar mercilessly tearing apart the varna-caste kernel of Brahmanism, in the process demolishing familiar apologetic arguments like (a) casteism is bad but varnavyavastha is good, (b) caste is necessary but untouchability is bad and so on.

In Annihilation, Ambedkar noted,

“Hindu society as such does not exist. It is only a collection of castes. Each caste is conscious of its existence. Its survival is the be all and end all 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. On all other occasions each caste endeavours to segregate itself and to distinguish itself from other castes. Each caste not only dines among itself and marries among itself but each caste prescribes its own distinctive dress.”

In Annihilation Ambedkar appreciates attempts to promote intercaste marriages, since “Fusion of blood can alone create the feeling of being kith and kin and unless this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount, the separatist feeling, the feeling of being aliens created by Caste will not vanish.” However, he also added,

“criticising and ridiculing people for not inter-dining or intermarrying or occasionally holding inter-caste dinners and celebrating inter-caste marriages, is a futile method of achieving the desired end. The real remedy is to destroy the belief in the sanctity of the Shastras…

Reformers working for the removal of untouchability, including Mahatma Gandhi, do not seem to realize that the acts of the people are merely the results of their beliefs inculcated upon their minds by the Shastras and that people will not change their conduct until they cease to believe in the sanctity of the Shastras on which their conduct is founded. No wonder that such efforts have not produced any results. To agitate for and to organise inter-caste dinners and inter-caste marriages is like forced feeding brought about by artificial means. Make every man and woman free from the thralldom of the Shastras, cleanse their minds of the pernicious notions founded on the Shastras, and he or she will inter-dine and inter-marry, without your telling him or her to do so.”

Hence, he went on to organize the public burning of the Manusmriti, and, rejecting the Hindu faith, embraced the Buddhist faith.

 

“Educate, Agitate, Organise”

These words, in the order given here (which is often misplaced), appeared as the mast for Bahishkrit Bharat -- India Excluded or Ostracized India -- the first magazine Ambedkar published. In fact this was the motto of the utopian socialist Fabian society, about which he came to learn from his Oxford teacher John Dewey. “My final words of advice to you,” he said at the end of his speech at the All-India Depressed Classes Conference (Nagpur, July 1942), “are - educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself.”

Ambedkar never saw himself as the messiah of dalits and always insisted on independent rational thinking instead of blind faith on any supreme leader, including himself. “You must abolish your slavery yourself”, he said. “Do not depend for its abolition upon God or a Superman.” This approach, which stood in stark contrast against the guru worship prevalent in our country, found expression in his favourite maxim from Buddhism -- atmo deep bhavo (Be a torch unto thyself or be your own guide).

Dalits must educate themselves, fight independently for their rights and dues, and get organised to achieve their goal - this principle, very close as it is to the Marxist principle that the proletariat must secure its emancipation by itself - had its polar opposite in Gandhi’s views and modus operandi among the untouchables.