Saturday, April 17, 2010
Contemporary relevance of Baba Saheb Ambedkar
"Ambedkar's Buddhism was a Buddhism of a minority trying to liberate
the entire nation. Ambedkar opposed separatism but always kept in mind
the unique nature of the oppression of the Dalits."
By Basil Fernando
(April 17, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) Baba Saheb Ambedkar's memory
was celebrated by large numbers of admirers and followers in India and
outside once again this week. Perhaps no other modern contemporary
leader of India is as much remembered by such large numbers of (mostly
much oppressed) people throughout India as Ambedkar is. One-time
untouchables, who now called themselves Dalits, a name that was given
to them by B.R. Ambedkar, remember him as an inspiration in their own
struggles to regain their dignity. Perhaps no people have been put
into such a degraded position in society anywhere as the untouchables
of India. The millions of people who belong to these groups have
fought a battle to re-emerge as people with dignity, and to that
revival Ambedkar has contributed greatly.
Ambedkar's political thought is still very relevant to not only to the
politics of India but also to politics in South Asia in general. South
Asian countries are today facing deep crises, unable to develop
political and social institutions to guarantee stability to their
societies primarily because of centuries of oppressive and social
political systems that were their heritage due to the caste system.
The caste system essentially was a system of domination by a small
group, called Brahmins, who developed most sophisticated forms of
cunning into the social control systems of their time in a way that
even for centuries they could maintain their dominance. The damage
that was done in the process of repression that accompanied the
creation and the maintenance of the caste system have become the
obstacles to the development of the intelligence the creativity and
the capacity of all the people to deal with contemporary problems.
Their past holds them in their bondage. The bonds are so deeply
engrained into the very nervous systems that generation after
generation people are reproduced with mentalities that prevent them
from realizing the capacity for freedom and capacity for deeper social
communion in each other in their social context. Deep divisiveness
inbuilt into the South Asian culture was created by these centuries of
subtle of social control. Methods of control were formulated as rules
of religion and rituals to which the individual life was so deeply
tied up.
The idea of the individual freedom is so alien to this cultural
heritage. The intricate mechanism that entraps people emotionally and
psychologically by various kinds of mythical beliefs got so engrained
in the minds of all due to this past.
"Ambedkar's political thought is still very relevant to not only to
the politics of India but also to politics in South Asia in general.
South Asian countries are today facing deep crises, unable to develop
political and social institutions to guarantee stability to their
societies primarily because of centuries of oppressive and social
political systems that were their heritage due to the caste system. "
.................................
A few great leaders in India understood the depth of the internal
bondage of the Indian mind created by this history. Some saw it purely
as philosophical problem, like for example Sri Aurobindo. Sri
Aurobindo devoted the later part of his life trying to influence the
younger generation to break away from the mindset that has entered
into their society, retarding all, from one generation to another. He
said that the great creativity that India once was had been
devastatingly destroyed at sometime point of time.
It was B.R. Ambedkar that identified the cause of the retardation of
the Indian creativity, which is also the source of the retardation of
the mindsets of people of other South Asian countries. He saw that
purely by way of mental exercises this bondage cannot be broken. What
needed to be broken were the social the social linkages which had tied
up the minds of the people over centuries. To this he gave and for the
understanding of this processes he devoted his time. And his way of
understanding was not by reading into the text of the past but into
the lives of the ordinary folk of India spread in that vast country.
In the poverty of India was the evidence that was necessary to look
into in order to discover the methods by which people lives are
destroyed by this terrible heritage.
Jawaharlal Nehru in the Discovery of India tries to talk about the
glories of India in the past. Ambedkar on the other hand tries to
demonstrate how the glory was lost and how the bondage of the Indian
minds and the Indian spirit and as a result the Indian way of life was
come to what it is today. It is this discovery that has the capacity
and the liberating effect that not only the masses but the entire
country is in need of in order to face the challenges of the modern
times.
Ambedkar was well-versed on history and the political theories which
have been produced in the process of struggles for democracy. He was
also deeply aware of the history of minority problems in the world. He
understood that if a minority problem is not properly resolved entire
civilizations can be destroyed in conflicts which not only destroy the
minorities but entirety of society.
Ambedkar needs to be studied much more by the younger generations who
are in search of solutions to the kinds of problems that they very
often which they feel that there are no solution to. The easy
solutions many have sought have not worked. There is a depth that
needs to be explored in order to be able to explore all the
possibilities of getting over these severe problems. In the work of
Ambedkar there are great insights that are yet to be explored and in
that exploration the real glories of the past of the sub-continent
could reemerge. Pseudo respect for Buddhism today was challenged by
Ambedkar who himself became a Buddhist by trying to rediscover the
actual history of Buddhism in India. The destruction of Buddhism in
India was a result of the caste struggles in India and in that
struggle the certainties that the Brahmins had developed to get
victory and to win back their dominance were also constantly exposed
by Ambedkar.
Without doubt, Baba Saheb Ambedkar is the greatest political leader in
modern South Asian history, with regard to his understanding of the
linkage between social controls exercised by religion and its
influence in the contemporary history. While Mahatma Ghandi saw the
meaning of freedom in terms of getting rid of the colonial power and
passing the power to local elites, Ambedkar saw freedom of Indians
from the point of view of getting rid of cultural inhabited bondage of
created by the caste system. He saw centuries old practices in which
social control of the masses has been done mainly by the use of
language, rituals and 'ethical codes' reinforcing the caste domination
over the masses.
Ambedkar also saw moments of liberation in Indian history. That was
the way he saw Buddhism. He called Buddha his guru. He said that he
didn't learn principles of democracy from Western philosophers but
from his guru, Gautama Buddha.
"My Personal Philosophy"
"Positively, my social philosophy may be said to be enshrined in three
words: liberty, equality and fraternity. Let no one, however, say that
I have borrowed my philosophy from the French Revolution. I have not.
My philosophy has roots in religion and not in political science. I
have derived them from the teachings of my master, the Buddha. In his
philosophy, liberty and equality had a place: but he added that
unlimited liberty destroyed equality, and absolute equality leaves no
room for liberty. In his philosophy, law had a place only as a
safeguard against the breaches of liberty and equality; but he did not
believe that law could be a guarantee for breaches of liberty or
equality. He gave the highest place to fraternity as the only real
safeguard against the denial of liberty or equality or fraternity
which was another name for brotherhood or humanity, which was again
another name for religion.
"Law is secular, which anybody may break while fraternity or religion
is sacred which everybody must respect. My philosophy has a mission. I
have to do the work of conversion: for, I have to make the followers
of Triguna theory to give it up and accept mine. Indians today are
governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set out in
the preamble to the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality
and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion, denies
them." Dr. B.R.Ambedkar( From All-India Radio broadcast of a speech on
Oct. 3, 1954)
In this famous radio broadcast, he summarized the fundamentals of his
belief in democracy as having its roots in the teaching of Buddha. He
also devoted many years of his life studying Buddhism and wrote large
volumes on the teachings of the Buddha. In 1936, in a speech which now
remains as a political classic, entitled 'Annihilation of Caste', he
attributed the roots of caste to be based on the ideals of religion
created by Brahminism. He declared that though he himself was born to
that tradition, he will not die within it. Fulfilling this promise, 20
years later he converted himself publically to Buddhism, with over
500,000 followers in a public ceremony held in Nagaland, India.
Ambedkar's Buddhism was a Buddhism of a minority trying to liberate
the entire nation. Ambedkar opposed separatism but always kept in mind
the unique nature of the oppression of the Dalits. However, he
understood that unless the entire nation rejects the traditions which
keep its masses under oppressive social control, the minority cannot
find liberation. He was fully aware of his capacity to create
political chaos if he wished to do so. He consciously avoided that
path, despite of the difficulties involved. He was the only Indian
leader who openly opposed Mahatma Ghandi on his limited approach to
deal with the problem of Dalits. However, he shared the common burden
of Indian liberation from the British and even became the law minister
in Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet. In fact, he was the chief draftsman of
the committee which drafted the Indian constitution. He understood
that the minority cannot win its right by destroying democracy. He
also understood that by suppressing the minorities' struggle, the
majority are ruining themselves also. How true, even in the modern
context of South Asian countries.
To the struggle for enlightenment in South Asia, Ambedkar has made a
lasting contribution. And this contribution needs to be understood to
further the process of trying to deal with the contemporary problems
within all South Asian nations.
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