Worshipping False Gods – 27 July 2012
by Arun Shourie
Right till 1946 – that is, till just a year before India became independent – Ambedkar was a vehement opponent of the Freedom Movement, indeed of Freedom being given to India at all. He claimed with pride that it is the people whom he said he represented who had conquered India for the British. He said that he was supporting the demand for Pakistan because this would mean that the British would continue to stay in India. The Freedom Movement is a sham, a ruse, he proclaimed, Gandhi an agent to perpetuate the Nazi-like suppression of the masses, and the British Viceroy the saviour of the Depressed Classes. The British put “suggestions” to him, and reported to each other how well he had acted in accordance with those “suggestions”, they urged each other to strengthen his hands, to put him in positions that would give greater weight to the theses and formulae he was putting forth, theses and formulae which served British imperial interests to the dot. It was because his association with the British was known to all that he and his party were wiped out in every single election he fought – in 1937. 1946,1952.
But today he is Bharat Ratna !
Whereas Gandhiji taught that the way to reform is for each individual, each group to make demands on itself, Ambedkar reared his followers into a demand-and-denounce brigade, he denounced “the cultivation of private virtues” as worse than useless. Whereas Narayan Guru, himself from an oppressed caste that was not just Untouchable but Unapproachable, attained the highest spiritual states, thereby acquired unquestioned authority, and transformed society from within the tradition, Ambedkar heaped calumny on that tradition, and eventually proclaimed a “Buddhism” that had nothing to do with the teachings or life of the Buddha.
The legacy of one kind of reformer – of Narayan Guru, of Gandhiji — is a people transformed and ennobled, the legacy of the other is a people embittered and wallowing in backwardness. The legacy of one is a society at peace and in harmony, that of the other is a society riven. The legacy of one is enlightened and serene discourse, the legacy of the other is intimidation as argument, assault as proof. But today scarcely anyone outside Kerala even knows about Narayan Guru, and Ambedkar’s statues outnumber those of Gandhiji!
What are the consequences when a society repudiates its own gods and idols and adopts instead those of the ones who would put it down, who would tear it up?
A major reconstruction of events in our Freedom Movement, an exhumation of startling facts – the stratagems of the British, and of their associates, the sacrifices of Gandhiji and the nationalists. A withering examination of the myth that Ambedkar wrote the Constitution.
A must for understanding our times, for strengthening our country.
Worshipping False Gods by Arun Shourie
Index
Introduction
The Freedom Fighter
1. The Freedom Fighter
2. Where was Ambedkar in 1942?
How did he get there?
3. The loyal minister
4. The government he joined
5. Confronting that “old rascal”, that “miserable little old man”, that “most successful humbug in the world”
The Social Reformer
6. The British stratagem, and its Indian advocate
7. The way to reform
The Manu of Our Times?
8. Wasn’t Ambedkar telling the truth?
9. Ambedkar’s Constitution
10. The way the Constitution actually evolved
11. Who is the author when decisions are by votes?
12. The folklore of freedom
13. The subsequent journey
14. Which Ambedkar is the author?
15. The tug of events
16. Two over-arching determinants
17. The myth fostered, driven in
Invention, intimidation, assault
18. “It is painful,” “It is shameful,” “It is hateful”
19. Intimidation as argument, assault as proof
“The writings of Ambedkar follow the same pattern. The Maharashtra Government has by now published 14 Volumes of the speeches and writings of Ambedkar. These cover 9996 pages. Volumes up to the 12th contain his speeches and writings up to 1946. These extend to 7371 pages. You would be hard put to find one article, one speech, one passage in which Ambedkar can be seen even by inference to be arguing for India’s Independence. Quite the contrary.
Pause for a minute and read the following:
Allow me to say that the British have a moral responsibility towards the Scheduled Castes. They may have moral responsibilities towards all minorities. But it can never transcend the moral responsibility which rests on them in respect of the Untouchables. It is a pity how few Britishers are aware of it and how fewer are prepared to discharge it. British Rule in India owes its very existence to the help rendered by the Untouchables. Many Britishers think that India was conquered by the Clives, Hastings, Cootes and so on. Nothing can be a greater mistake. India was conquered by an army of Indians and the Indians who formed the amiy were all Untouchables. British Rule in India would have been impossible if the Untouchables had not helped the British to conquer India. Take the Battle of Plassey which laid die beginning of British Rule or the battle of Kirkee which completed the conquest of India. In both these fateful batdes the soldiers who fought for die Bridsh were all Untouchables….
Who is pleading thus to whom? It is B.R. Ambedkar writing on 14 May 1946 to a member of the (British) Cabinet Mission, A.V. Alexander.
It constitutes Volume IX of the set Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar; Writings and Speeches. It reproduces the speech Ambedkar made at the Round Table Conference — a speech which served the designs of the British rulers to the dot, and for which, as we shall soon see, they were ever so grateful to Ambedkar for it became one of the principal devices for thwarting Gandhiji. In the speech Ambedkar addresses the Prime Minister and says, “Prime Minister, permit me to make one thing clear. The Depressed Classes are not anxious , they are not clamourous , they have not started any movement for claiming that there shall be an immediate transfer of power from the British to the Indian people…. Their position, to put it plainly , is that we are not anxious for transfer of political power ….”
“He (Ambedkar) thought that if India became independent it would be one of the greatest disasters that could happen,” Wavell recorded. “Before they left, the British must ensure that the new Constitution guaranteed to the Scheduled Castes the elementary human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that it restored their separate electorates and gave them the other safeguards which they demanded. At present disillusionment was driving his followers towards terrorism and Communism. He was on trial with them for the efficacy of constitutional methods ….”
He had no faith in Indians being able to ensure justice, Ambedkar told the Delegation and the Viceroy — those in the proposed Constituent Assembly who did not belong to the Scheduled Castes were determined to do them in, he maintained, and the members of the Assembly who did belong to the Scheduled Castes “would be bought over to vote against the interests of their communities”.
Therefore, recorded Wavell, “Dr. Ambedkar said he did not want a Constituent Assembly at all.” Instead he wanted the tasks which were being thought of for the Constituent Assembly to be divided into two classes of questions. The first set were constitutional questions properly so-called — relations between the Executive and the Legislature, composition and functions of the Executive etc. “To deal with them was beyond the mental capacity of the type of men whom Provincial Assemblies might be expected to send up, and was a job for experts,” Ambedkar told the Viceroy. Accordingly, Ambedkar said, such questions
“should be referred to a Commission presided over by an eminent constitutional lawyer from Great Britain or the U.S.A. The other members should be two Indian experts and one representative each of the Hindu and Muslim communities.”
The second set of questions, according to Ambedkar, were “communal questions”, that is the rights of and safeguards for “communities”. In regard to these also Ambedkar wanted the ultimate say to be that of the British. These questions “should be referred to a conference of the leaders of the different communities,” he maintained. “If the conference failed to arrive at an agreed solution, His Majesty’s Government would have to make an award. This would no doubt be accepted if it were reasonable.”
Independence came.
For all the venom which he had poured at Gandhiji and the Congress, Ambedkar was back in
the Cabinet, this time Pandit Nehru’s Cabinet of Independent India. How did he get there?
Ambedkar’s own explanation was typical of the man: he had done nothing to seek a position in the new Government, Ambedkar told Parliament later, it was the new Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru who had urged him to join the new Government; the offer had come to him as a surprise, he said, he had been full of doubts, but in the end he had yielded to the call of duty and to the plea that he make his talents available to the new Government — that is how things had gone according to Ambedkar. Recall the pleas to Atlee, and set them against Ambedkar’s reconstruction of the sequence in the speech he made in the Lok Sabha. It was 10 October, 1951 and Ambedkar was explaining his resignation from the Cabinet of Panditji:
It is now 4 years, 1 month and 26 days since I was called by the Prime Minister to accept the office of the Law Minister in the Cabinet. The offer came as a great surprise to me. I was in the opposite camp and had already been condemned as unworthy of association when the Interim Government was formed in August 1946 . I was left to speculate as to what could have happened to bring about this change in the attitude of the Prime Minister. I had my doubts. I did not know how I could carry on with those who had never been my friends. I had doubts as to whether I could, as a Law Member, maintain the standard of legal knowledge and acumen which had been maintained by those who had preceded me as Law Ministers of the Government of India. But I kept my doubts at rest and accepted the offer of the Prime Minister on the ground that I should not deny my co-operation when it was asked for in the building up of our nation…. (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Volume XIV, Part II, p. 1318)
Read more
Caste in India, their mechanism, genesis and development: Ambedkar (1916)
