Forgotten facets
Ranjana-Chaube Posted online: Wednesday, Apr 14, 2010 at 0236 hrs
When Stalin decided to shelve Lenin's democratic dream, he put Lenin's
waxed body into a glass case to prove his own fidelity to Leninism.
Had B. R. Ambedkar been alive today, he would have completed 12
decades of his life. He would be surprised to see the adulation that
surrounds his persona today. Few political leaders have continuously
grown in stature in their afterlife more than Ambedkar.
But he would not be happy to see it. The tragic irony surrounding this
great rationalist scholar is that he has been elevated to the rank of
a god by his followers, who call him a Bodhisattva, an earlier
incarnation of the Buddha. By all indications, Ambedkar was an
atheist. His conversion to Buddhism was an act of revolt against the
caste system defining Hinduism. Remember, Buddhism was an atheist
philosophy in origin. The concept of Bodhisattva was bred by the
Mahayana school of Buddhism that evolved in India sometime after the
Buddha's death and smacks of the Manuvadi incarnation theory. The
Theravadi school prevalent in South-East India does not recognize it.
Some Dalit leaders have further Hinduised Ambedkar by calling him
"Babasaheb". This has saved them the embarrassment of going the whole
hog with Ambedkar. It is not clear whether Ms Mayawati or her mentor,
Kanshi Ram, adopted Buddhism. It is not clear whether a declaration to
that effect would gel with the overwhelmingly Hindu electorate they
are courting.
The other thing that Ambedkar may have been embarrassed with would be
the rampant Congress-flogging that is Mayawati's pastime. It is true
that Ambedkar, in his late life, was disgusted with the Congress. But
that disgust was essentially on the general plane of the Congress's
failure to ameliorate the condition of the Dalits; and, on the
specific question of the Congress failure to steer the Hindu Code Bill
drafted by him through the Provisional Parliament.
Ambedkar's difference with the Congress was purely on principles. He
was a responsivist like many other politicians including M.R. Jayakar
and Tej Bahadur Sapru. In the election to the Constituent Assembly of
India in 1946 he was the only candidate of his party, the Scheduled
Caste Federation (SCF), from the Legislative Assembly of Bengal. In
that Assembly alone, in all British India, did the SCF have a member —
and just one member. Had the Dalits had a separate electorate, like
the Muslims and the Sikhs, there would certainly have been more SCF
members in the provincial assemblies. It speaks of the nobility of
Ambedkar's character that, he surrendered this privilege in 1932 in
order to induce Gandhi to end a fast.
According to the requirement of proportional representation a
candidate in Bengal would require three-and-a-half votes of MLAs. The
SCF made an electoral pact with the Communist Party of India (CPI)
that had three seats in the Assembly, for the second preference votes
each of which had half the value of one vote. The second preference
vote of SCF saw the CPI candidate, Somnath Lahiri, through. The three
second preference votes of the CPI made for one and a half votes. It
appears that two other second-preference votes were supplied by the
Muslim League. After Partition the SCF member, Jogendra Nath Mondal,
moved to East Bengal and joined the Muslim League-led government
there.
After Partition, Ambedkar and the CPI member of the Constituent
Assembly lost their seats. This was payback time for the Congress.
From the province of Bombay, M.R. Jayakar resigned from the
Constituent Assembly because of some disagreement with the Congress
and, particularly, with Sardar Patel. The Congress, which had been
keen on building the widest consensus around the Constitution,
nominated Ambedkar to that vacancy. He won and subsequently was made
chairman of the Drafting Committee.
He did his job well. On the final day of the work of the Constituent
Assembly he expressed his profound happiness with the cooperation of
the Congress.
ranjana.chaube@expressindia.com
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