Ambedkar’s Warning: The Rise of Hindu Rashtra Through Democracy

 

Ambedkar’s Warning: The Rise of Hindu Rashtra Through Democracy

A.G. NOORANI

(Note: This write up elaborately explains the rise of Hindu Rashtra through democracy as apprehended by Dr. Ambedkar- SR Darapuri)

“If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.… Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost,” wrote B.R. Ambedkar in Pakistan or the Partition of India (1946, pages 354-355). He was against majoritarianism, which in the Indian context meant unbridled rule of the majority community, the Hindus. 

Ambedkar wrote in a Memorandum on the Rights of States and Minorities, dated March 24, 1947, which he submitted to the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights set up by the Constituent Assembly’s Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities, etc.: “Unfortunately for the minorities in India, Indian nationalism has developed a new doctrine which may be called the Divine Right of the Majority to rule the minorities according to the wishes of the majority. Any claim for the sharing of power by the minority is called communalism, while the monopolising of the whole power by the majority is called nationalism. Guided by such political philosophy the majority is not prepared to allow the minorities to share political power, nor is it willing to respect any convention made in that behalf as is evident from their repudiation of the obligation (to include representatives of the minorities in the Cabinet) contained in the Instrument of Instructions issued to the Governors in the Government of India Act of 1935. Under these circumstances there is no way left but to have the rights of the Scheduled Castes embodied in the Constitution.” (B. Shiva Rao, Select Documents, volume 2, page 113). 

He was not wrong. One of the finest minds of the Socialist movement, Prem Bhasin, wrote: “The ease with which a large number of Congressmen and women—small, big and bigger still—have walked into the RSS-BJP [Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party] boat and sailed with it is not a matter of surprise. For, there has always been a certain affinity between the two. A large and influential section in the Congress sincerely believed even during the freedom struggle that the interests of Hindu Indians could not be sacrificed at the altar of a united independent India. Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and Lala Lajpat Rai had, for instance, actually broken away from the Congress and founded the Nationalist Party which contested elections against the Congress in the mid-twenties. In later years, in the forties, even Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was sometimes accused of being soft on the Hindu Revanchists, who believe in and practised tit-for-tat in that turbulent and fateful period.”

Events have proved the validity of Prem Bhasin’s assessment in an article entitled “The Congress-BJP Duo” in the Janata (Annual Number 1998). The weekly was founded by Jayaprakash Narayan and has been edited by his devoted follower, Dr. G.G. Parikh. The writer was one of a kind and so is the editor, who renders selfless service to an institution for rural uplift. Prem Babu lived in Aligarh and was general secretary of the Praja Socialist Party. A man of modest means, he would carefully peruse all the national dailies, in English and Hindi, besides magazines at a public library. He was, in this writer’s opinion, far and away the most insightful and honest commentator on the political scene. 

Birla’s letter

Small wonder that one of the leading industrialists, B.M. Birla, wrote to Vallabhbhai Patel on June 5, 1947: “I am so glad to see from the Viceroy’s announcement of the Partition of India that things have turned out according to your desire. It is no doubt a very good thing for the Hindus and we will now be free from the communal canker. 

“The partitioned area, of course, would be a Muslim state. Is it not time that we should consider Hindustan as a Hindu state with Hinduism as the state religion? We have also to strengthen the country so that it may be able to face any future aggression.” Patel’s retort was swift. He replied on June 10, 1947: “I also feel happy that the announcement of 3 June at least settles things one way or the other. There is no further uncertainty.… I do not think it will be possible to consider Hindustan as a Hindu state with Hinduism as the state religion. We must not forget that there are other minorities whose protection is our primary responsibility. The state must exist for all, irrespective of caste or creed.” If a Hindu state was excluded, what other state had Patel in mind but a secular one? (Durga Das edited, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, volume 4, page 56). 

Ambedkar was perceptive. It is not necessary to declare India a Hindu state formally by amending the Constitution and making Hinduism the state religion. The same result can be achieved by administrative measures. The Supreme Court has held secularism to be part of the basic structure of the Constitution which cannot be discarded even by constitutional amendment (S.R. Bommai vs Union of India (1994, 3 SCC 1)). 

Ambedkar thought that the elaborate constitutional provisions on administration would work. He told the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948, when he moved for the adoption of the Draft Constitution: “While everybody recognises the necessity of the diffusion of constitutional morality for the peaceful working of a democratic Constitution, there are two things interconnected with it which are not, unfortunately, generally recognised. One is that the form of administration has a close connection with the form of the Constitution. The form of the administration must be appropriate to and in the same sense as the form of the Constitution. The other is that it is perfectly possible to pervert the Constitution, without changing its form, by merely changing the form of the administration and to make it inconsistent and opposed to the spirit of the Constitution. It follows that it is only where people are saturated with constitutional morality such as the one described by Grote the historian that one can take the risk of omitting from the Constitution details of administration and leaving it for the Legislature to prescribe them. The question is, can we presume such a diffusion of constitutional morality? Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic” (Constituent Assembly Debates, volume 7, page 38). 

The leaders of the Congress sought to inculcate secularism right from the first Congress held at Bombay in 1885. S. Srinivasa Aiyangar, president of the 41st Congress in 1926, articulated the credo of secularism very ably (see the writer’s article “Roots of Indian Secularism”, Frontline, August 8, 2014). So did Vallabhbhai Patel in the presidential address to the 45th Congress at Karachi in 1931. Hindu-Muslim “unity can only come when the majority takes courage in both hands and is prepared to change places with the minority. That would be the highest wisdom.” 

Revivalist hate

 But by then, forces that did not share the Congress’ ideology, did not participate in the freedom movement and were charged with revivalist hate had come to the fore. 

Lala Lajpat Rai noted their growth in the ninth of a series of 13 articles that he wrote for The Tribune in 1924. “In their own way, Hindu revivalists have left nothing undone to create a strictly exclusive and aggressive communal feeling. Early in the eighties of the last century, some of the Hindu religious leaders came to the conclusion that Hinduism was doomed unless it adopted the aggressive features of militant Islam and militant Christianity. The Arya Samaj is a kind of militant Hinduism. But the idea was by no means confined to the Arya Samaj. Swami Vivekananda and his gifted disciple Sister Nivedita, among others, were of the same mind. The articles which she wrote on aggressive Hinduism are the clearest evidence of that mentality. 

“It must be remembered in this connection that Western knowledge, Western thought, and Western mentality took hold of the Hindu mind at a very early period of British rule. The Brahmo Samaj was the first product of it. In the early sixties the Brahmo Samaj was a non-Hindu body, and under its influence Hindu scholars, thinkers and students were becoming cosmopolitans. Some became Christians; others took to atheism and became completely westernised. Thus, a wave of indifferentism about Hinduism spread over the country. The Arya Samaj movement, and aggressive Hinduism, was a reaction against that un-Hinduism and indifferentism. Most of the early Hindu leaders of the Indian National Congress were in this sense non-Hindus. What did Mr. S.N. Banerjea or Lal Mohan Ghosh or Ananda Mohan Bose care for Hinduism? Even Mahadev Govind Ranade was but an indifferent Hindu. G.K. Gokhale was not a Hindu at all.” Intellectual integrity here went hand in hand with communal bias. In 1899 Lajpat Rai asserted that “Hindus are a nation in themselves”. On December 14, 1924, he advocated in TheTribune partition of India and partition of Punjab. 

Revivalism and nationalism

Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s novel Ananda Math, in which occurs the song Vande Mataram, is intensely religious. The novel was anti-Muslim and pro-British. J.N. Farquhar recorded that from 1895 to 1913, “a frightful portent flamed up in India, anarchism and murder inspired by religion… that in all the best minds the new feeling and the fresh thought are fired by religion, either a furious devotion to some divinity of hate and blood, or a self-consecration to God and India…” He went further to connect this “anarchism” with the work of Dayananda Saraswati, Vivekananda and others: “It is as clear as noonday that the religious aspect of anarchism was merely an extension of that revival of Hinduism which is the work of Dayananda, Ramkrishna, Vivekananda and the Theosophists.” 

Another scholar opined: “One may not wholly agree with such views, yet there is some element of truth in them. That truth is that Hindu revivalism had a powerful influence upon the ‘revolutionaries’ of India. Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Ananda Math had a very powerful impact upon the revolutionaries of the day. His depiction of future Mother India was singularly religious; Future Mother India was Durga, the goddess with resplendent face, wearing all sorts of weapons of force in her hands, and in the left hand seizing the hair of the Asura, her enemy, and in the right hand assuring all not to be afraid. The revolutionaries who moved incognito as ‘Sanyasins’ were like the characters in Ananda Math. Durga, the goddess and the mother, became one with the country, the greater goddess and the mother. His Bande Mataram became the hymn for the revolutionaries. 

“Hindu revivalism has influenced the development of Indian nationalism both positively and negatively. We reach a stage here when it must be pointed out that the positive contribution of revivalism to Indian nationalism becomes feeble and the negative role of revivalism becomes more prominent.

“With the growth of the Mahasabha and RSS ideologies, a new current of nationalism—the Hindu Nationalism—grew powerful in the country. Hindu nationalism, instead of supplementing the forces of Indian nationalism, tried even to supplant it. The opposition of Indian nationalism by ‘Hindu Rashtravad’ was detrimental to the steady growth of the former. Hindu revivalism reached its high-water mark under the aegis of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.” (B.R. Purohit, Hindu Revivalism and Indian Nationalism, Madhupriya, Bhopal, 1990, pages 171-173; a neglected work of rich insights.) 

Majority rule for Hindu Raj

The leaders of these dark forces knew how to instal Hindu Raj—using the majority to establish it. In 1942 Shyama Prasad Mookerjee made a bid for power by a deal with the British in order to instal Hindu Raj. His innermost thoughts, bared to the pages of his Diary, expose the parivar’s motivations and also illustrate the central problem of all plural societies: “As seventy-five per cent of the populations were Hindus, and if India was to adopt a democratic form of government, the Hindus would automatically play a major role in it” (page 106). He and his political heirs sought to utilise the vote for the ends of power using the Hindutva card. 

L.K. Advani said in Ayodhya on November 19, 1990: “Henceforth only those who fight for Hindu interests would rule India.” On October 2, 1990, he complained that “secular policy is putting unreasonable restrictions on Hindu aspirations”. And what is one to make of this gem from his successor, Murli Manohar Joshi? “Hindu Rashtra need not be a formal structure. It is the basic culture of this country. I say that all Indian Muslims are Mohammadiya Hindus; all Indian Christians are Christi Hindus. They are Hindus who have adopted Christianity and Islam as their religion.”

If a Hindu Rashtra was propounded during British rule, after Independence began the drive for a Hindu state for that Hindu Rashtra. The RSS boss M.S. Golwalkar’s reply to the question “Do you opt for a Hindu state?” is revealing: “The word Hindu state is unnecessarily misinterpreted as a theocratic one which would wipe out all other sects. Our present state is in a way a Hindu state. When the vast majority of people are Hindus, the state is democratically Hindu. It is also a secular state and all those who are now non-Hindus have also equal rights to live here. The state does not exclude anyone who lives here from occupying any position of honour in the state. It is unnecessary to call ours a Hindu state or a secular state.” A Hindu state can be called by any name, once the administration is run by Hindutvaites.

Hostile state discrimination

The classic on hostile discrimination by the state is a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1886 (Yick Wo vs Hopkins 118 US. 356). Yick Wo, an emigrant from China, ran a laundry in San Francisco. A city ordinance required laundry owners to obtain a licence if the building was constructed of wood. Of the 320 laundries in the city, 240 were owned by persons of Chinese origin. Three hundred and ten were constructed of wood as, indeed, were nine-tenths of the houses in San Francisco. Yet, all applications for a licence by Chinese laundrymen were refused. Applications by all others, bar one, were granted. About 150 Chinese laundrymen were arrested for violating the ordinance. 

The Supreme Court of California rejected Yick Wo’s petition for habeas corpus . An appeal to the Federal Circuit Court was also unsuccessful. The petitioner took his case to the Supreme Court and made legal history. The court spoke of “an administration directed so exclusively against a particular class of persons as to warrant and require the conclusion that whatever may have been the intent of the ordinances as adopted they are applied by the public authorities charged with their administration, and thus representing the state itself, with a mind so unequal and oppressive as to amount to a practical denial by the state of that equal protection of the laws which is secured to the petitioners, as to all other persons, by the broad and benign provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” 

‘An evil eye and an unequal hand’

 The Supreme Court then uttered these ringing words: “Though the law itself be fair on its face and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by a public authority with an evil eye and unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution.” This is the test— “an evil eye and an unequal hand”. (To Golwalkar, Savarkar and Co., the land belongs only to Hindus. Muslims and Christians came as immigrants if not as invaders. The ones who live today are converts awaiting purification by the RSS.) 

Apply this to the Modi government at the Centre and the BJP-ruled States and you will appreciate why and how they work the way they do. With an RSS pracharak, Narendra Modi, known for his antipathy towards Muslims, as Prime Minister, and Yogi Adityanath chosen by him as Chief Minister of India’s largest State, Uttar Pradesh, we have crossed the threshold to a Hindu state. The BJP’s presidential candidate, Ram Nath Kovind, is “deeply rooted in the ideological stream of the RSS,” an RSS man certified in the Organiser of July 2, 2016. A brand new rubber stamp has been manufactured for the Rashtrapati Bhavan, 25 years after the last rubber stamp, R. Venkataraman. 

What The New York Times wrote in an editorial on February 27, 2017, on Donald Trump’s silence on the killing of an Indian engineer in Kansas applies to Modi’s wilful and sustained silence on acts of violence against Muslims. The editorial’s title “Who Belongs in Trump’s America?” is applicable to Modi’s vision, too. It said: “If Trump does nothing, he will enable the perpetrators of hate crimes and he will damage the vitality and strength of the country.” The editorial slammed Trump for being “shockingly slow” to condemn acts of hate perpetrated across the country following his election, saying his “denunciations of and policies” targeting Mexicans, Muslims, and others have “reawakened and energised the demons of bigotry”. Modi’s remarks on June 28 deprecating the lynchings of Muslims were feeble and belated, instead of an early and stern condemnation that should have come from the Prime Minister. 

Professor Donald Eugene Smith exposed the double talk in his classic India As a Secular State (1963). He noted: “Golwalkar also demonstrated great dexterity in dealing with the concept of the secular state. ‘To a Hindu, the state is and has always been a secular fact. It was only a departure from the Hindu way of life that brought about, for the first time, a non-secular theocratic concept of state under Ashoka…. 

“Nehru once remarked that Hindu communalism was the Indian version of fascism, and, in the case of the RSS, it is not difficult to perceive certain similarities. The leader principle, the stress on militarism, the doctrine of racial-cultural superiority, ultra-nationalism infused with religious idealism, the use of symbols of past greatness, the emphasis on national solidarity, the exclusion of religious or ethnic minorities from the nation-concept—all of these features of the RSS are highly reminiscent of fascist movements in Europe.”

Attack on Christians

The regime of the day spawns a clime which fosters hate and crime. The late Archbishop of Delhi, Alan de Lastic, wrote to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in May 2000, drawing his attention to the atmosphere of hate and violence. The All-India Christian Council laid the blame for the spurt in attacks on Christians squarely where it belonged—the Government of India. Its president, Dr Joseph D’Souza, said on June 16 in Chennai: “We are intrigued by the response of the Central and State governments who refuse to see the pattern of the violence.” The Bajrang Dal’s Gauleiter (Sah-Sahayojak) for the Braj region, Dharmendra Sharma, declared that Christians were now “bigger enemies” than Muslims. 

We now have a Prime Minister whose Hindutva puts Vajpayee’s Hindutva in the shade. Lynchings of Muslims has become common. So are cries for a Hindu state. On June 18, 2017, a convention of 150 Hindu outfits met in Goa to urge that India and Nepal be converted into “Hindu Rashtras”. On June 7, Yogi Adityanath said on the Hindu Swaraj Diwas that no Indian should be hesitant about being proud of his or her Hindu identity (Hindustan Times, June 8). 

The drive will pick up speed. Modi made blatantly communal speeches during the Uttar Pradesh election campaign, as 65 former civil servants recalled in their open letter. He will do worse for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. He aims to claim that he has fulfilled the BJP’s triple demand. His Kashmir adventure had “solved” the problem. For a uniform civil code, the first steps are being taken. No other Prime Minister has so relentlessly campaigned for a reform of Muslim law. It is a pity that the Chief Justice of India Justice J.S. Khehar rushed post haste to unprecedentedly set up a Bench during the vacation to hear the matter. As far as the Ram temple at Ayodhya is concerned, he will say: “have patience, I have crossed the threshold to a Hindu state in India. Can’t you see the dread on the faces of Muslims, Christians, Dalits and other minorities?”

Courtesy: frontline.com

 

Squandered Heritage

 

Squandered Heritage

For 65 years, media and academia have failed to do justice to the towering intellect that Ambedkar was. Successive governments have undermined the Constitution he so admirably piloted and his role in its framing has been either exaggerated or underestimated. And now, in a cruel irony, the Sangh Parivar is seeking to usurp his legacy, distorting everything he stood for.

Published : Jun 10, 2015 12:30 IST

A.G. Noorani

 

                         

Dr B.R. Ambedkar.

IT is not amusing but highly reprehensible to see the Sangh Parivar lay claim to B.R. Ambedkar and his rich intellectual and political legacy. Twenty-five years ago it tried the same trick with Gandhi, whom its mentor, M.S. Golwalkar, and L.K. Advani had scorned. Now the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) Sarkaryawah, Bhaiyaji Joshi, proclaims that Ambedkar was a “Mahamanav” who “needs to be studied and understood in totality” (sub-text: discard elements in the whole which the RSS cannot accept). This one takes the cake: “We should collectively create a harmonious society for which he fought throughout his life.” He went so far as to compare RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar with Ambedkar and assert that “the objectives of both were same” ( Organiser ; April 26, 2015). 

The Parivar attacked Ambedkar for his Hindu Code Bill and was up in arms when his work, Riddles in Hinduism , was published. ( Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches , Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, Vol. 4. This entire series is ably compiled from his published and unpublished writings; cited volume wise herein.) 

Ambedkar, on his part, was unsparing in his critiques in that and in other works. “Hindu society is a myth. The name Hindu is itself a foreign name. It was given by the Mohammedans to the natives for the purpose of distinguishing themselves. It doesn’t occur in any Sanskrit work prior to the Mohammedan invasion…. Hindu society as such does not exist. It is only a collection of castes…. Castes don’t even form a federation. A caste has no feeling that it is affiliated to other castes except when there is a Hindu-Muslim riot” ( Annihilation of Caste , Chapter VI, Vol. 1). Volume 12 contains this dissertation for the M.A. Examination in Columbia University (1913-15). 

The Sangh Parivar is unlikely to be pleased by his understanding of India’s history as these extracts suggest: “It is a mistake to suppose that the Mussalman sovereigns of India were barbarous and despots. On the other hand, majority of them were men of extraordinary character. Mohammed of Ghazni ‘showed so much munificence to individuals of eminence that his capital exhibited a greater assemblage of literary genius than any other monarch in Asia has ever been able to produce. If rapacious in acquiring wealth, he was unrivalled in the judgment and grandeur with which he knew how to expend it….’

“Babar, the founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, found the country in a prosperous condition and was surprised at the immense population and the innumerable artisans everywhere. He was a benevolent ruler and public works marked his statesmanship. Sher Shah, who temporarily wrested the throne from the Moghul, was, excepting Akbar, the greatest of Mohammedan rulers and, like Babar, executed many public works….

“With the advent of the English, things began to change. Prosperity bade fair to India and perched itself on the Union Jack. The evil forces were set forth both on the side of the Parliament and the East India Company. The Rule of the Company was anything but wise, it was rigorous, it gave security but destroyed property…. India contributed or rather was made (to) contribute to the prosperity of England in many ways.” Had he lived, Ambedkar would have denounced the Parivar for the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

But neither can the Congress claim him as one of its own. Volume 9 in that series published his excellently documented works, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done To The Untouchables and Mr. Gandhi and the Emancipation of the Untouchables . 

It is trite to say that praise of Ambedkar has tended to obscure his contributions as a constitutionalist. However, even this recognition does less than full justice to that tower of intellect. He was head and shoulders above constitutional lawyers like Tej Bahadur Sapru. For, he was steeped in history—Indian, English European and American—in Hinduism, in the Vedas and the Upanishads, and in Economics. His erudition in constitutional law was rooted in these intellectual disciplines and raised him above the mere constitutional lawyer, however famous. In this, he was peerless. Learning was harnessed to a razor-sharp mind, skilled in logic and dialectics.

Neither academia nor the media have acquitted themselves creditably. Even half a century after his death, a definitive biography has not been written. The media revels in trivia, of which the most ridiculous is the persistent statement, even in leading dailies, that he “wrote” the Constitution at Wayside Inn, a restaurant in the Kala Ghoda neighbourhood of Mumbai. He did go there when he practised at the High Court. But from 1942 he lived mostly in New Delhi—moreover, one cannot write a Constitution on the dining table of a restaurant.

Enriched mind On the other hand, his notable efforts on India’s behalf are ignored; for example, his searching cross-examination of Winston Churchill at the Round Table Conference (RTC) in London. Indeed, his role at the RTC itself is underplayed, with attention focussed almost exclusively on his differences with Gandhi and his advocacy of the cause of the untouchables, as they were then known. This is of a piece with neglect of the RTC’s proceedings themselves. They were a preparation for the drafting of the Government of India Act, 1935, which served as India’s Constitution from April 1, 1937, to August 14, 1947 (minus the federation part), and, with adaptations, from August 15, 1947, to January 25, 1950. The Constitution of India came into force the next day and it is based largely on the Act of 1935. Debates in the RTC’s committees were better informed than those in the Constituent Assembly since the former had the best of India’s legal talent. On some of the provisions of our Constitution, notably the moribund Inter-State Council, it is from the deliberations in London, rather than those in New Delhi, that one acquires an understanding of their raison d’etre . Uniquely, Ambedkar was an active participant in both. 

However, well before that he had enriched his mind with a deep study of constitutionalism. Unlike other constitutional lawyers, his study of history, political science and economics had shaped his outlook considerably.

Even as far back as January 27, 1919, he revealed the depth of his knowledge in his written statement and evidence before the Southborough Committee on Franchise. He differed from the British as well as the simplistic Indian approach. He reckoned with India’s social diversities, which the Congress steadfastly refused to do. He said, “Except the Hindus, the rest of the divisions are marked by such complete freedom of communication from within that we may expect their members to be perfectly like-minded with respect to one another. Regarding the Hindus, however, the analysis must be carried on a little further. The significant fact about the Hindus is that before they are Hindus they are members of some caste. The castes are so exclusive and isolated that the consciousness of being a Hindu would be the chief guide of a Hindu’s activity towards non-Hindus. But as against a Hindu of a different caste, his caste-consciousness would be the chief guide of activity. From this, it is plain that as between two Hindus, caste like-mindedness is more powerful than the like-mindedness due to their both being Hindus.” (Vol. 1, page 249.)

The problem was to devise an electoral system that would enable the minorities—religious and caste—to be properly represented in the legislature. “The Untouchables are usually regarded as objects of pity but they are ignored in any political scheme on the score that they have no interests to protect. And yet, their interests are the greatest. Not that they have large property to protect from confiscation. But they have their very persona confiscated. The socio-religious disabilities have dehumanised the untouchables and their interests at stake are therefore the interests of humanity. The interests of property are nothing before such primary interests…. The Congress is largely composed of men who are by design political Radicals and social Tories. Their chant is that the social and the political are two distinct things having no bearing on each other. To them the social and the political are two suits and can be worn one at a time as the season demands” (Vol. 1, pages 255 and 263). He proposed his own scheme in a supplementary written statement.

Ambedkar was in no condition to boycott the Simon Commission. His counsel was not sought by the Motilal Nehru Committee, which was appointed by the All Parties Conference to prepare a draft Constitution of India (1928). He prepared a detailed report for the Simon Commission. One is struck by his nationalist fervour in advocating a powerful Centre with power “to coerce a recalcitrant or rebellious Province acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the country”. This was two decades before the provision for President’s rule in the States was adopted by the Constituent Assembly.

At the RTC in London, he attacked the princes’ claims and spoke up for the rights of Indians. In the real sense of those hackneyed words, Ambedkar was a freedom fighter. The Secretary of State for India, Sir Samuel Hoare, was put in a corner when he deposed before the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform.

“Dr B.R. Ambedkar: I think there is a general agreement that the ultimate goal of India’s Constitution is to be Dominion status?

Sir Samuel Hoare: It has constantly been so stated.

Dr B.R. Ambedkar: So that on the question of the ultimate goal, there is really no dispute?

Sir Samuel Hoare: That would be so, yes.

Dr B.R. Ambedkar: Now what I want to ask you is this: in view of that, would you be prepared to put this in the Preamble to the Government of India’s Constitution that India would be Dominion status, leaving the question of the time and the pace to be determined by circumstances as they arise?

Sir Samuel Hoare: I do not think here and now I would like to give a pledge as to what is or is not put in the Preamble of an Act of Parliament. I, myself, am prejudiced against Preamble of Acts of Parliament, for reasons good or bad, and I would rather say neither yes nor no to Dr Ambedkar’s question.”

At one point, Hoare acknowledged that “Dr Ambedkar’s very acute mind has discovered a gap in the White Paper…. It is an omission that we propose to set right in any final draft”.

The majority and the minorities Ambedkar was rightly oppressed by the reality that Indian society had a permanent communal majority and permanent communal minorities. Sample these comments: “People who rely upon majority rule forget the fact that majorities are of two sorts: (1) Communal majority and (2) Political majority. A political majority is changeable in its class composition. A political majority grows. A communal majority is born. The admission to a political majority is open. The door to a communal majority is closed. The politics of a political majority are free to all to make and unmake. The politics of a communal majority are made by its own members born in it. 

“How can a communal majority run away with the title deeds given to a political majority to rule? To give such title deeds to a communal majority is to establish a hereditary government and make the way open to the tyranny of that majority. This tyranny of the communal majority is not an idle dream. It is an experience of many minorities.” On another occasion, he wrote: “In India, the majority is not a political majority. In India the majority is born; it is not made. That is the difference between a communal majority and a political majority. A political majority is not a fixed or a permanent majority. It is a majority which is always made, unmade and remade. A communal majority is a permanent majority fixed in its attitude. One can destroy it, but one cannot transform it. If there is so much objection to a political majority, how very fatal must be the objection to a communal majority?... My proposals do not ask the Hindus to accept the principle of unanimity. My proposals do not ask the Hindus to abandon the principle of majority rule. All I am asking them is to be satisfied with a relative majority. Is it too much for them to concede this?… Without making any such sacrifice, the Hindu majority is not justified in representing to the outside world that the minorities are holding up India’s freedom. This false propaganda will not pay. For, the minorities are doing nothing of the kind. They are prepared to accept freedom and the dangers in which they are likely to be involved; provided they are granted satisfactory safeguards.”

In a memorandum on “States and Minorities”, he wrote: “Unfortunately for the minorities in India, Indian nationalism has developed a new doctrine which may be called the Divine Right of the Majority to rule the minorities according to the wishes of the majority. Any claim for the sharing of power by the minority is called communalism, while the monopolising of the whole power by the majority is called nationalism.”

In the plenary session of the RTC, he declared: “We hold that the problem of the depressed classes will never be solved unless they get power in their own hands .” That alone, rather than mere safeguards, can assure protection to the minorities—a share in power. 

It was formidable intellectual equipment that Ambedkar brought to bear on his tasks in the Constituent Assembly from 1946. He understood better than most what was demanded of its members and, later, of those who worked it. In 1943 he approvingly quoted these wise words of Balfour: “If we would find the true basis of the long-drawn process which has gradually converted medieval monarchy into a modern democracy, the process by which so much has been changed and so little destroyed, we must study temperament and character rather than intellect and theory. This is a truth which those who recommend the wholesale adoption of British institutions in strange lands might remember with advantage. Such an experiment can hardly be without its dangers. Constitutions are easily copied; temperaments are not and if it should happen that the borrowed Constitution and the native temperament fail to correspond, the misfit may have serious results. It matters little what other gifts a people may possess if they are wanting in these which, from this point of view, are of most importance. If, for example, they have no capacity for grading their loyalties as well as for being moved by them; if they have no natural inclination to liberty and no natural respect for law; if they lack good humour and tolerate foul play; if they know not how to compromise or when; if they have not that distrust of extreme conclusions which is sometimes misdescribed as want of logic; if corruption does not repel them; and if their divisions tend to be either too numerous or too profound, the successful working of British institutions may be difficult or impossible. It may indeed be least possible where the arts of parliamentary persuasion and the dexterities of party management are brought to their highest perfection. ” The stratagems available in the parliamentary system are used without respect for its true spirit. 

Constitutional morality Ambedkar’s three warnings in the Constituent Assembly as it completed its labours in November 1949 are often quoted—the perils of hero worship; satyagraha or civil disobedience; and neglect of social and economic uplift. All three have gone unheeded, though. But even more tragic is the utter indifference to the far more insightful remarks he made in the Constituent Assembly on November 4 while introducing the Draft Constitution: 

“I agree that administrative details should have no place in the Constitution. I wish very much that the Drafting Committee could see its way to avoid their inclusion in the Constitution. But this is to be said on the necessity which justifies their inclusion. Grote, the historian of Greece, has said: ‘The diffusion of constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of government at once free and peaceable; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of a free institution impracticable, without being strong enough to conquer ascendancy for themselves.’

“By constitutional morality Grote meant ‘a paramount reverence for the forms of the Constitution, enforcing obedience to authority acting under and within these forms yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts combined too with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen amidst the bitterness of party contest that the forms of the Constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own.’

“While everybody recognises the necessity of the diffusion of constitutional morality for the peaceful working of a democratic Constitution, there are two things interconnected with it, which are not, unfortunately, generally recognised. One is that the form of administration has a close connection with the form of the Constitution. The form of the administration must be appropriate to and in the same sense as the form of the Constitution. The other is that it is perfectly possible to pervert the Constitution, without changing its form by merely changing the form of the administration and to make it inconsistent and opposed to the spirit of the Constitution. It follows that it is only where people are saturated with constitutional morality such as the one described by Grote that one can take the risk of omitting from the Constitution details of administration and leaving it for the legislature to prescribe them. The question is, can we presume such a diffusion of constitutional morality? Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic ” ( Constituent Assembly Debates ; Vol. 7, page 38).Now, 67 years later, constitutional morality is far weaker than it was then. It barely exists. 

The authors of the Constitution opted for the British parliamentary system as a matter of course. At the very outset of their deliberations, at a joint meeting, on June 5, 1947, of the Union Constitution Committee and the Initial Constitution Committee. Vallabhbhai Patel announced the decision in the Constituent Assembly on July 15, 1947: “Both these committees met and they came to the conclusion that it would suit the conditions of this country better to adopt the parliamentary system of Constitution, the British type of Constitution with which we are familiar” ( CAD , Vol. IV, page 578). 

However, as Gladstone said, the British Constitution “presumes more boldly than any other, the good faith of those who work it”. As a parliamentary committee said, the “understandings and habits of mind” by which the Constitution functions are “bound up with the growth of mutual confidence between the great parties of the State, transcending the political differences of the hour”. The Constitution is rooted in a national consensus. It works on the understanding that the system is more important than the immediate political gain. Public opinion acts as a referee.

Flouted from the outset India’s leaders began flouting the Constitution from the very outset. President Rajendra Prasad raised a hue and cry over the imposition of President’s Rule in Punjab in June 1951. The office of the President, and later the judiciary, suffered. The civil service was suborned. Governors became dalals of the political party in power at the Centre. 

It had all begun fairly early; as far back as 1937, when the Congress had its first taste of power in the provinces. The issue was whether the Speaker of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, P.D. Tandon, should resign from the Congress. Both Gandhi and Nehru strongly asserted that he should not. That was the beginning of the departure from British conventions. They have been abandoned now, reducing the Constitution to a skeleton denuded of life and blood. The judiciary was no less eager to ignore British judicial culture. One gets a flavour of the gap between the Indian and British judicial cultures from an erudite work, The English Judges: Their Role in the Changing Constitution by Robert Stevens. He is a practising barrister, a Bencher of Gray’s Inn, to which Ambedkar belonged, and an academic as well. Two quotes from it suffice to drive the point home. The Times (London) criticised in these terms on March 10, 2004, one of the finest Lords, Chief Justice Lord Woolf. It said he “cannot quite make up his mind whether he is a liberal reformer or the shop steward for the only trade union in the country whose members wear wigs and not hard hats or cloth caps”. 

Sometime back this writer said in these pages that the Army is the country’s most powerful trade union. I should add that judges of the Supreme Court have been as ardently trade unionist. Stevens sharply remarks, “Judges choosing judges is the antithesis of democracy” (page 144). We have had this obscenity for nearly a quarter of a century thanks to the ipse dixit of the Supreme Court in blatant violation of the Constitution. It passed muster because we have had weak governments since 1991. As Lord Bingham said in 2001: “The courts tend to be most assertive…when political organs of the state are least effective.” 

On November 1, 1948, Ambedkar said: “I feel that it [the Constitution] is workable, it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the country together both in peace time and in war time. Indeed, if I may say so, if things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was Vile” ( CAD , Vol. 7, pages 43-44). 

He resigned from the Union Council of Ministers on September 27, 1951, fought the first general election in 1952 in opposition to the Congress, and lost. Differences with the ruling party widened to the extent that he delivered an embittered and unflattering disavowal in the Rajya Sabha on September 2, 1953. “People always keep on saying to me, ‘Oh you are the maker of the Constitution’. My answer is I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.” He added: “I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody….”

Ambedkar’s role in the framing of the Constitution has been either exaggerated or underestimated. The style and content of his performance in the Constituent Assembly as the prime mover of the Draft Constitution have been neglected completely.

He was capable of a shocking factual error on a defining moment in Canada’s constitutional history, the Governor-General’s refusal of a dissolution to Prime Minister Mackenzie King in 1926. He tended to be perfunctory, even testy and short, in his replies ( CAD ; Vol. 7, page 270). His health was failing. 

It is, however, not so much his admirable piloting of the Constitution in the Constituent Assembly as his vision, the spirit behind the entire enterprise, and the fundamentals he propounded, which alone make the text meaningful, which compel admiration.

The vision was abandoned and the fundamentals were flouted. Lesser men came after him.

Courtesy: Frontline