http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2010/08/the-grammar-of-anarchy/The grammar of anarchy
in Perspective by B R Ambedkar — August 1, 2010 at 12:08 am |
As much defence as could be offered to the Constitution has been
offered by my friends Sir Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar and Mr T T
Krishnamachari, I shall not therefore enter into the merits of the
Constitution. Because I feel, however good a Constitution may be, it
is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it,
happen to be a bad lot. However bad a Constitution may be, it may turn
out to be good if those who are called to work it, happen to be a good
lot. The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly upon the
nature of the Constitution. The Constitution can provide only the
organs of State such as the Legislature, the Executive and the
Judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the
State depend are the people and the political parties they will set up
as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics. Who
can say how the people of India and their parties will behave? Will
they uphold constitutional methods of achieving their purposes or will
they prefer revolutionary methods of achieving them? If they adopt the
revolutionary methods, however good the Constitution may be, it
requires no prophet to say that it will fail. It is, therefore, futile
to pass any judgement upon the Constitution without reference to the
part which the people and their parties are likely to play.
The condemnation of the Constitution largely comes from two quarters,
the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. Why do they condemn the
Constitution? Is it because it is really a bad Constitution? I venture
to say 'no'. The Communist Party want a Constitution based upon the
principle of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. They condemn the
Constitution because it is based upon parliamentary democracy. The
Socialists want two things. The first thing they want is that if they
come in power, the Constitution must give them the freedom to
nationalise or socialise all private property without payment of
compensation. The second thing that the Socialists want is that the
Fundamental Rights mentioned in the Constitution must be absolute and
without any limitations so that if their Party fails to come into
power, they would have the unfettered freedom not merely to criticise,
but also to overthrow the State.
No right to bind succeeding generations
These are the main grounds on which the Constitution is being
condemned. I do not say that the principle of parliamentary democracy
is the only ideal form of political democracy. I do not say that the
principle of no acquisition of private property without compensation
is so sacrosanct that there can be no departure from it. I do not say
that Fundamental Rights can never be absolute and the limitations set
upon them can never be lifted. What I do say is that the principles
embodied in the Constitution are the views of the present generation
or if you think this to be an over-statement, I say they are the views
of the members of the Constituent Assembly. Why blame the Drafting
Committee for embodying them in the Constitution? I say why blame even
the Members of the Constituent Assembly? Jefferson, the great American
statesman who played so great a part in the making of the American
constitution, has expressed some very weighty views which makers of
Constitution, can never afford to ignore. In one place he has said:
"We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a
right, by the will of the majority, to bind themselves, but none to
bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another
country."
In another place, he has said:
"The idea that institutions established for the use of the nation
cannot be touched or modified, even to make them answer their end,
because of rights gratuitously supposed in those employed to manage
them in the trust for the public, may perhaps be a salutary provision
against the abuses of a monarch, but is most absurd against the nation
itself. Yet our lawyers and priests generally inculcate this doctrine,
and suppose that preceding generations held the earth more freely than
we do; had a right to impose laws on us, unalterable by ourselves, and
that we, in the like manner, can make laws and impose burdens on
future generations, which they will have no right to alter; in fine,
that the earth belongs to the dead and not the living;"
I admit that what Jefferson has said is not merely true, but is
absolutely true. There can be no question about it. Had the
Constituent Assembly departed from this principle laid down by
Jefferson it would certainly be liable to blame, even to condemnation.
But I ask, has it? Quite the contrary. One has only to examine the
provision relating to the amendment of the Constitution…I challenge
any of the critics of the Constitution to prove that any Constituent
Assembly anywhere in the world has, in the circumstances in which this
country finds itself, provided such a facile procedure for the
amendment of the Constitution. If those who are dissatisfied with the
Constitution have only to obtain a 2/3 majority and if they cannot
obtain even a two-thirds majority in the parliament elected on adult
franchise in their favour, their dissatisfaction with the Constitution
cannot be deemed to be shared by the general public.
The danger of divisive politics
[But] my mind is so full of the future of our country that I feel I
ought to take this occasion to give expression to some of my
reflections thereon. On 26th January 1950, India will be an
independent country. What would happen to her independence? Will she
maintain her independence or will she lose it again? This is the first
thought that comes to my mind. It is not that India was never an
independent country. The point is that she once lost the independence
she had. Will she lose it a second time? It is this thought which
makes me most anxious for the future. What perturbs me greatly is the
fact that not only India has once before lost her independence, but
she lost it by the infidelity and treachery of some of her own people.
In the invasion of Sind by Mahommed-Bin-Kasim, the military commanders
of King Dahar accepted bribes from the agents of Mahommed-Bin-Kasim
and refused to fight on the side of their king. It was Jaichand who
invited Mahommed Ghori to invade India and fight against Prithvi Raj
and promised him the help of himself and the Solanki kings. When
Shivaji was fighting for the liberation of Hindus, the other Maratha
noblemen and the Rajput kings were fighting the battle on the side of
Mughul Emperors. When the British were trying to destroy the Sikh
Rulers, Gulab Singh, their principal commander sat silent and did not
help to save the Sikh Kingdom. In 1857, when a large part of India had
declared a war of independence against the British, the Sikhs stood
and watched the event as silent spectators.
Will history repeat itself? It is this thought which fills me with
anxiety. This anxiety is deepened by the realisation of the fact that
in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds we are
going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing
political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed or
will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is
certain that if the parties place creed above country, our
independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be
lost for ever. This eventuality we must all resolutely guard against.
We must be determined to defend our independence with the last drop of
our blood.
The importance of constitutional methods
On the 26th of January 1950, India would be a democratic country in
the sense that India from that day would have a government of the
people, by the people and for the people. The same thought comes to my
mind. What would happen to her democratic Constitution? Will she be
able to maintain it or will she lose it again. This is the second
thought that comes to my mind and makes me as anxious as the first.
It is not that India did not know what is democracy. There was a time
when India was studded with republics, and even where there were
monarchies, they were either elected or limited. They were never
absolute. It is not that India did not know Parliaments or
parliamentary procedure. A study of the Buddhist Bhikshu Sanghas
discloses that not only there were Parliaments—for the Sanghas were
nothing but Parliaments—but the Sanghas knew and observed all the
rules of parliamentary procedure known to modern times…Although these
rules of parliamentary procedure were applied by the Buddha to the
meetings of the Sanghas, he must have borrowed them from the rules of
the political assemblies functioning in the country in his time.
This democratic system India lost. Will she lose it a second time? I
do not know. But it is quite possible in a country like India—where
democracy from its long disuse must be regarded as something quite
new—there is danger of democracy giving place to dictatorship. It is
quite possible for this new born democracy to retain its form but give
place to dictatorship in fact. If there is a landslide, the danger of
the second possibility becoming actuality is much greater.
If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact,
what must we do? The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold
fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic
objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution.
It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience,
non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for
constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives,
there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods.
But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no
justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are
nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned,
the better for us.
The politics of pedestals
The second thing we must do is to observe the caution which John
Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of
democracy, namely, not "to lay their liberties at the feet of even a
great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert
their institutions." There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great
men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are
limits to gratefulness. As has been well said by the Irish Patriot
Daniel O'Connel, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no
woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be
grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more
necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country.
For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or
hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by
the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world.
Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in
politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to
eventual dictatorship.
Social democracy
The third thing we must do is not to be content with mere political
democracy. We must make our political democracy a social democracy as
well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of
it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way
of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the
principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and
fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They
form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the
other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be
divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor
can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without
equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the
many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative.
Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few
over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual
initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become
a natural course of things. It would require a constable to enforce
them.
We must begin by acknowledging the fact that there is complete absence
of two things in Indian society. One of these is equality. On the
social plane, we have in India a society based on the principle of
graded inequality which we have a society in which there are some who
have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty. On the
26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of
contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and
economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be
recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value.
In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and
economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one
value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?
How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic
life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by
putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this
contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer
from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy
which this Assembly has to laboriously built up.
The second thing we are wanting in is recognition of the principle of
fraternity. What does fraternity mean? Fraternity means a sense of
common brotherhood of all Indians-if Indians being one people. It is
the principle which gives unity and solidarity to social life. It is a
difficult thing to achieve…
To build a nation
I remember the days when politically-minded Indians, resented the
expression "the people of India". They preferred the expression "the
Indian nation." I am of opinion that in believing that we are a
nation, we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided
into several thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realise
that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense
of the world, the better for us. For then only we shall realise the
necessity of becoming a nation and seriously think of ways and means
of realising the goal. The realisation of this goal is going to be
very difficult…The castes are anti-national. In the first place
because they bring about separation in social life. They are
anti-national also because they generate jealousy and antipathy
between caste and caste. But we must overcome all these difficulties
if we wish to become a nation in reality. For fraternity can be a fact
only when there is a nation. Without fraternity, equality and liberty
will be no deeper than coats of paint.
These are my reflections about the tasks that lie ahead of us. They
may not be very pleasant to some. But there can be no gainsaying that
political power in this country has too long been the monopoly of a
few and the many are only beasts of burden, but also beasts of prey.
This monopoly has not merely deprived them of their chance of
betterment, it has sapped them of what may be called the significance
of life. These down-trodden classes are tired of being governed. They
are impatient to govern themselves. This urge for self-realisation in
the down-trodden classes must not be allowed to devolve into a class
struggle or class war. It would lead to a division of the House. That
would indeed be a day of disaster. For, as has been well said by
Abraham Lincoln, a House divided against itself cannot stand very
long. Therefore the sooner room is made for the realisation of their
aspiration, the better for the few, the better for the country, the
better for the maintenance for its independence and the better for the
continuance of its democratic structure. This can only be done by the
establishment of equality and fraternity in all spheres of life. That
is why I have laid so much stresses on them.
I do not wish to weary the House any further. Independence is no doubt
a matter of joy. But let us not forget that this independence has
thrown on us great responsibilities. By independence, we have lost the
excuse of blaming the British for anything going wrong. If hereafter
things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except ourselves. There
is great danger of things going wrong. Times are fast changing. People
including our own are being moved by new ideologies. They are getting
tired of Government by the people. They are prepared to have
Governments for the people and are indifferent whether it is
Government of the people and by the people. If we wish to preserve the
Constitution in which we have sought to enshrine the principle of
Government of the people, for the people and by the people, let us
resolve not to be tardy in the recognition of the evils that lie
across our path and which induce people to prefer Government for the
people to Government by the people, nor to be weak in our initiative
to remove them. That is the only way to serve the country. I know of
no better.?
B R Ambedkar was the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, apart
from being an activist, philosopher, thinker, anthropologist,
historian, orator, prolific writer, economist, scholar, editor, and
revolutionary
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