September 29, 2011, 1:50 am
What is Swaraj? Rethinking 'Self-Rule' in the New India
By ANANYA VAJPEYI
Passionate and combative reader response to my essay, "The Grammar of
Anarchy" published here on Sept. 17, makes one thing clear: Not only
does the Anna Hazare movement of this past summer evoke strong
reactions among readers, but the diverse legacies of founding figures
like Mohandas Gandhi and Bhimrao Ambedkar, and the meaning of a
defining text like the Constitution of India, also continue to matter
deeply to the way in which Indians conceive of their political life
well over six decades after independence from British rule.
Bhimrao Ambedkar in an undated file photo.Courtesy Columbia
UniversityBhimrao Ambedkar in an undated file photo.
Like any historical account, the narrative about where Mr. Gandhi and
Mr. Ambedkar respectively stood on the question of non-cooperation,
civil disobedience, non-violent resistance and forms of protest like
the hunger strike is not a simple story of a conflict between the
radicalism of the Mahatma and the constitutionalism of Babasaheb, as
Mr. Ambedkar was known, although Mr. Ambedkar's speech of November 25,
1949, would seem to suggest that.
In early stages of his career as a leader of anti-caste and so-called
"non-Brahmin" movements among the Dalits of Maharashtra, Mr. Ambedkar,
too, led mass actions based on the principle of passive resistance.
Thus, he mobilized Untouchables to peacefully try to enter Hindu
temples reserved for upper castes, and to drink water from common
sources like tanks and wells where upper-caste prejudice prevented
Untouchables from drawing water.
However, over time Mr. Ambedkar and other leaders like E.V. Ramaswamy
Naicker, commonly known as Periyar, from southern India concluded that
actions such as these looked too much like lower castes asking to be
treated as equals. In Dalit politics by the late 1920s, the idea of
"self-respect" had displaced an earlier practice of seeking
recognition from what were viewed as disdainful, bigoted and arrogant
upper castes. Mr. Ambedkar increasingly distanced himself from
Hinduism altogether, so deeply did he question the caste system.
Toward the end of his life in 1956 he formally converted to Buddhism
and took with him nearly 400,000 former Untouchables, thoroughly
rejecting the Hindu social order that had for centuries refused to
allow them a space of dignity and equality.
Mr. Gandhi's stance on Untouchability was also extremely complicated.
It combined his commitment to respecting the inalienable dignity of
all human beings, his desire to purify Hinduism by purging it of caste
discrimination, his struggle to cleanse his own conscience of every
last shred of unthinking prejudice, and his belief in the fundamental
dignity of labor – famously exemplified by his insistence that all
inhabitants of the Gandhian "ashram" (cooperative space of life and
work) clean toilets and remove human waste from communal areas,
regardless of caste rules that stipulated some groups as being too
"pure" for such tasks and others as so "polluted" as to have to clean
up everyone else's mess.
However, when the British government proposed separate electorates for
Untouchables, Mr. Gandhi perceived a threat to the unity and thereby
the political efficacy of the Hindu community, and protested by going
on a fast-unto-death. His stubbornness was such that even Mr. Ambedkar
had to capitulate and agree to the "Poona Pact" of 1932, whereby
Untouchables would not be accorded a separate electoral status and Mr.
Gandhi's life would be saved – or, seen differently – his moral
intransigence recognized as paramount in the realm of norms and values
that permeated India's anti-colonial politics.
Mr. Gandhi referred to the Untouchable as "Harijan," which means
"God's Creature." The rival word that eventually evolved through Mr.
Ambedkar's politics and triumphed into common usage today is "Dalit,"
which means "Crushed." The morality inherent in each term is clear –
the Gandhian idea being humane compassion, the Ambedkarite idea,
righteous anger. As the great contemporary social theorist D.R.
Nagaraj put it, these terms capture the conflict between
"self-purification" and "self-respect", where Mr. Gandhi's was the
upper-caste self and Mr. Ambedkar's the Dalit self.
The notion of separate electorates for Mr. Gandhi came out of the
British policy of divide and rule – the same that would ultimately
sever Hindus and Muslims as separate political identities and
partition the British Raj into India and Pakistan in 1947. For Mr.
Ambedkar, without state protection and safeguarded political
representation, weak groups like Untouchables would never gain an
equal footing in hierarchical India. Mr. Gandhi's long fast that broke
the back of the first phase of Untouchable protest in the early 1930s
remains seared in the memory of Indian caste politics even today. Anna
Hazare's fasting is at once a reminder and a trigger of old political
emotions that we as a nation have yet to fully process.
These same emotions bubble up in the subtle politics of nomenclature.
In India it is customary to refer to Mr. Gandhi as "Mahatma" meaning
"Great Soul", or "Bapu" meaning "Father", or "Gandhi ji" meaning
"Respected Gandhi". Similarly Mr. Ambedkar is "Babasaheb" or "Dr.
Ambedkar" – the former emphasizing his stature as an elder of the
social life of Maharashtra, the latter, his unparalleled symbolic
cachet as a Dalit leader with a doctoral degree, as well as other
markers of self-respect, such as erudition, high educational
qualifications, cosmopolitanism and modernity. Indeed, titles, modes
of address, and terms of endearment continue to be important ways to
express political emotion in Indian public life, from the time of the
founding fathers to the present: "Anna" — which means "Elder Brother"
— has been adopted by Kisan Baburao Hazare, the social activist who
led this summer's wave of protests against corruption.
Lastly, the Anna Hazare phenomenon, arising as it did in the summer of
2011, must be read against two separate global developments: one, the
widespread corruption scandals affecting countries from Britain and
Italy to India itself, and two, popular movements for democracy all
across the Middle East from Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt in late
January to all-out war in Libya and Syria even today. Everywhere
citizens seem to want better government, probity in public office,
honest leaders and a state that cares for rather than oppresses its
people. Although they already live in the world's largest democracy,
Indians, too, are in the mood for the change they can believe in.
Ananya Vajpeyi has been teaching at the University of Massachusetts in
Boston since 2007. In 2011-2012 she is visiting at the Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Her book, Righteous
Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India is forthcoming
from Harvard University Press.
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