Caste, Civilisation, Contradiction: Ambedkar And Savarkar Cannot Be Reconciled
Sameer Prashanth Rao
Savarkarite and Ambedkarite positions are totally incompatible despite shared concerns.
Attempts to absorb Ambedkar into the Hindutva fold are intellectually dishonest and undermine its coherence.
He diagnosed caste as an essential feature of Hinduism and called for its destruction. Savarkar, instead, saw it as a historical aberration. No sleight of hand can paper over this foundational difference.
The ongoing discourse about the reconciliation between Ambedkarite and Savarkarite positions within the broader Hindutva movement was long overdue. There has been a tendency on the Right to incorporate Ambedkar and his philosophies into the ecosystem, primarily for electoral gains. This Hindutva-isation of Ambedkar, however, harms Hindutva in a subtle yet devastating way.
I came across an article written by Mr Aravindan Neelakandan, which attempted to harmonise Ambedkarite philosophies into the broader Hindutva movement, and was stunned to read that the author referred to Ambedkar as a 'civilisational surgeon'. This particular framing of Ambedkar is especially problematic, as it does more harm to the Hindutva movement than Hindutva does to Ambedkarism.
There are very clear fundamental differences between the Ambedkarite and Savarkarite positions. These are two distinct worldviews, with two different premises and thus two different approaches to society. Whilst one can find commonality in the problems pointed out by both of them, it is very obvious that their perspectives, methodologies and diagnoses were totally distinct. These differences shape the most fundamental aspects of their ideologies, rendering the two totally incompatible despite shared concerns.
The Ambedkarite Diagnosis: Caste as the Essence of Hinduism
Let us start with the contentious topic of caste.
Ambedkar's position is that caste is an essential and fundamental feature of Hinduism. For Ambedkar, there is no Hinduism without casteism, and vice versa. Ambedkar has repeatedly argued across most of his works that Hindu society itself is a myth. For him, there was no 'Hindu society' but rather a collection of unequal castes, each interacting with the other based on the principles of graded inequality. In Annihilation of Caste, he states:
Indeed, the ideal Hindu must be like a rat living in his own hole, refusing to have any contact with others. There is an utter lack among the Hindus of what the sociologists call 'consciousness of kind'. There is no Hindu consciousness of any kind. In every Hindu, the consciousness that exists is the consciousness of his caste. That is the reason why the Hindus cannot be said to form a society or a nation.
Ambedkar's socio-political philosophy begins with the fundamental diagnosis that the rigid birth-based caste system is the foundational backbone of Hindu society. It is neither an accidental corruption nor a degradation of the Varnashrama, but an intrinsically embedded concept granted divine justification through scriptures, ritual practices and historical institutions, forming a coherent moral and social order that fully legitimises inequality.
For the annihilation of caste, therefore, the annihilation of Hinduism becomes necessary. In Annihilation of Caste, he states:
But whether the doing of the deed takes time or whether it can be done quickly, you must not forget that if you wish to bring about a breach in the system, then you have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and the shastras, which deny any part to reason; to the Vedas and shastras, which deny any part to morality. You must destroy the religion of the shrutis and the smritis. Nothing else will avail. This is my considered view of the matter. What is this Hindu religion? Is it a set of principles, or is it a code of rules? Now the Hindu religion, as contained in the Vedas and the Smritis, is nothing but a mass of sacrificial, social, political, and sanitary rules and regulations, all mixed up. What is called religion by the Hindus is nothing but a multitude of commands and prohibitions. I have, therefore, no hesitation in saying that such a religion must be destroyed, and I say there is nothing irreligious in working for the destruction of such a religion. Indeed, I hold that it is your bounden duty to tear off the mask, to remove the misrepresentation that is caused by misnaming this law as religion.
The Ambedkarite view of Hinduism thus reflects a deep scepticism about the prospects of internal reform, combined with a belief that only a total civilisational rejection of the Hindu shrutis—the Shruti corpus comprising the four Vedas along with their associated Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads—could create the necessary social rupture to annihilate caste.
The logical conclusion of such a conception of Hinduism was not reform but withdrawal. Since, according to Ambedkar, caste hierarchy was embedded into Hinduism, emancipation meant rejecting Hinduism at the core. This philosophical trajectory reached its logical end on 14 October 1956, when Ambedkar led a mass conversion ceremony in Nagpur, officially embracing Buddhism whilst simultaneously rejecting Hinduism. At the time, however, this move was hardly a surprise. About two decades earlier, Ambedkar had famously declared at the Yeola conference: "I was born a Hindu, but I will not die a Hindu."
In this mass conversion ceremony, Ambedkar also introduced the '22 Vows' to be taken by all his followers, which explicitly called for a rejection of belief in Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Rama, Krishna, Ganesha and Gauri. The vows also call for a total rejection of Hinduism and Hindu thought. Vow 19 reads: "I renounce Hinduism, which is harmful to humanity and impedes the advancement and development of humanity, and adopt Buddhism as my religion."
This declaration was not a mere theological disagreement with Hinduism. It was a normative judgement on Hindu civilisation itself, portraying it as ethically deficient and structurally incapable of reform and progress.
This conception of Buddhism, popularly known as Navayana Buddhism, was not an ancient revival of the Dhamma of the Buddha but a new moral and political project explicitly defined as a sincere opposition to Hinduism. Navayana Buddhism was not meant to be a parallel spiritual tradition harmoniously co-existing with Hinduism but a rival political project meant to disrupt and replace it.
Ambedkar expressed this belief in unmistakable terms when he said that he believed his followers would sacrifice everything to 'establish Buddhism in India'. In this sense, Ambedkar's conversion movement represented a deliberate attempt to construct a post-Hindu framework, grounded in the principles he believed Hindu civilisation could never provide.
The Savarkarite Diagnosis: Caste as a Historical Aberration
Having examined Ambedkar's diagnosis of the caste system as an essential feature of Hinduism, the contrast with the Savarkarite position becomes impossible to ignore. For if caste is understood as intrinsic to Hinduism, emancipation from the caste system necessarily means a total rejection of Hinduism. But if the rigid birth-based caste system is understood as a historical degeneration of an earlier dharmic and just ideal, the possibility of reform opens up. It is precisely on this foundational question that Savarkar and Ambedkar diverge.
For Savarkar, caste was not a constitutive feature of Hinduism but rather a social aberration that had emerged from the wrongful understanding, misinterpretation and social stagnation of the principles laid out in the Vedas. Unlike Ambedkar, Savarkar believed in the concept of a unified Hindu nation that was being held back by caste. In Essentials of Hindutva, Savarkar writes:
The activities of so intrepid a people as the Sindhus or Hindus could no longer be kept cooped or cabined within the narrow compass of the Panchanad or the Punjab. The vast and fertile plains farther off stood out, inviting the efforts of some strong and vigorous race. Tribe after tribe of the Hindus issued forth from the land of their nursery, and led by the consciousness of a great mission and their Sacrificial Fire that was the symbol thereof, they soon reclaimed the vast, waste and but very thinly populated lands. Forests were felled, agriculture flourished, cities rose, kingdoms thrived — the touch of the human hand changed the whole face of the wild and unkempt nature… The day when the Horse of Victory returned to Ayodhya unchallenged and unchallengeable, the great white Umbrella of Sovereignty was unfurled over that Imperial throne of Ramchandra, the brave, Ramchandra the good, and a loving allegiance to him was sworn, not only by the Princes of Aryan blood but Hanuman, Sugriva, Bibhishana from the south — that day was the real birth-day of our Hindu people. It was truly our national day: for Aryans and Anaryans, knitting themselves into a people, were born as a nation.
This singular excerpt stands in direct opposition to the Ambedkarite view of Hindu society as a collection of unequal castes. Savarkar envisions the Hindu nation—divided by tribe and race, but united by a dharmic spirit—whilst Ambedkar recognises no such intrinsic unity.
Savarkar continues:
And no word can give full expression to this racial unity of our people as the epithet, Hindu, does. Some of us were Aryans and some Anaryans… We feel we are a jati, a race bound together by the dearest ties of blood and therefore it must be so. After all there is throughout this world so far as man is concerned but a single race — the human race kept alive by one common blood, the human blood. All other talk is at best provisional, a makeshift and only relatively true. Nature is constantly trying to overthrow the artificial barriers you raise between race and race. To try to prevent the commingling of blood is to build on sand. Sexual attraction has proved more powerful than all the commands of all the prophets put together. Even as it is, not even the aborigines of the Andamans are without some sprinkling of the so-called Aryan blood in their veins and vice versa. Truly speaking all that any one of us can claim, all that history entitles one to claim, is that one has the blood of all mankind in one's veins. The fundamental unity of man from pole to pole is true, all else only relatively so.
As one can observe, Savarkar undoubtedly believed in the fundamental unity of Hinduism. For him, the Hindu nation was a unified historical and cultural unit that allowed a huge diversity of thought within it. Despite the many differences that may exist at the surface level—in dress, language and dietary habits—Savarkar maintained that from the earliest beginnings of our Bharatavarsha, every single tribe and race in our subcontinent had been deeply integrated into the larger Hindu ethos, whilst allowing each tribe to maintain its own autonomy and customs.
In this view, inter-caste marriages were noble and honourable within the Hindu fold. Savarkar doubled down on this in Essentials of Hindutva:
The word jati, derived from the root Jan to produce, means a brotherhood, a race determined by a common origin, possessing a common blood. All Hindus claim to have in their veins the blood of the mighty race incorporated with and descended from the Vedic fathers, the Sindhus… Nay, is not the very presence of these present castes a standing testimony to a common flow of blood from a Brahman to a Chandal? Even a cursory glance at any of our Smritis would conclusively prove that the Anuloma and Pratiloma marriage institutions were the order of the day and have given birth to the majority of the castes that obtain amongst us… This is true not only in the case of those that are the outcome of the intermarriages between the chief four castes, or between the chief four castes and the cross-born, but also in the case of those tribes or races who somewhere in the dimness of the hoary past were leading a separate and self-centred life. Witness the customs prevalent in Malabar or Nepal where a Hindu of the highest caste is allowed to marry a woman of those who are supposed to be the originally alien tribes but who, even if the suggestion be true, have by their brave and loving defence of the Hindu culture been incorporated with and bound to us by the dearest of ties — the ties of a common blood.
Notice the words Savarkar uses to describe the fundamental unity of Hindus. It is not a literal biological understanding of race and blood but rather a feeling of oneness and unity, one that could only be established very deeply through the process of inter-caste marriages.
For Savarkar, the present-day rigid caste system—which bars inter-caste marriage, inter-dining and other activities required to build social cohesion and modern political consensus for the ultimate defence of the larger Hindu civilisation—was an obstacle to be overcome as soon as possible.
He sought to establish a modern pan-Hindu unity, which he believed had been lost due to centuries of wrongful understanding of our sacred texts.
It is in this regard that Savarkar and Ambedkar disagree most heavily, whilst simultaneously agreeing on the necessity of inter-caste marriages. Savarkar repeatedly argues that inter-caste marriages can happen within the Hindu fold, whilst Ambedkar posits that inter-caste marriages will never happen until Hinduism rejects the authority of the shastras. In Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar argues:
No wonder that such efforts have not produced any results. You also seem to be erring in the same way as the reformers working in the cause of removing untouchability. To agitate for and to organise inter-caste dinners and inter-caste marriages is like forced feeding brought about by artificial means. Make every man and woman free from the thraldom of the shastras, cleanse their minds of the pernicious notions founded on the shastras, and he or she will inter-dine and intermarry, without your telling him or her to do so.
And this is exactly why Ambedkarite and Savarkarite philosophies stand at loggerheads with each other. One seeks social justice by exiting the Hindu fold, whilst the other believes in the modernisation and rebuilding of a larger Hindu community within our grand civilisational framework.
This is why Savarkar believed that the rigid birth-based caste system was not essential to Hinduism. He believed that Hinduism could not be merely reduced to the caste system but represented a larger civilisational framework rather than a set of legal documents to be followed by the various castes. This is perhaps best expressed in his essay Jatyuchchedak Nibandha (Essays on the Abolition of Caste, Samagra Savarkar Vangmaya, Vol. 3, p. 444), where he writes:
Both chaturvarnya and caste divisions are but practices. They are not coterminous with Sanatana Dharma. The practice of caste division arose from a tectonic change in the practice of chaturvarnya. As the Sanatana Dharma did not die due to this tectonic change, so too it will not die if the present-day distortion that is caste division is destroyed. The true Sanatana Dharma, those true philosophical ideas expounding the character of ishwar-jeev-jagat (God–individual–creation) and the First Principle can never die… No one should ever think that a certain Hindu caste is high or that another is low. The notion of high and low will be determined by the overt merit of individuals. Every Hindu child has but one caste at birth — Hindu. Other than that, consider no other sub-caste. 'Janmanaa jaayate Hinduhu' ('every one is a Hindu by birth')!
This civilisational understanding of Hindu unity also explains Savarkar's persistent willingness to challenge orthodox thought. His primary concern was the total political, cultural, and social consolidation of Hindus under the re-ignited banner of a Hindu civilisation that transcended caste, sectarian, and ritual divisions. In his view, Hindu society must not be organised around a rigid ritual hierarchy, but around a shared civilisational consciousness that could accommodate diverse points of view and thought, as was the essence of Hindu civilisation since the Vedic period. He wanted to build a pan-Hindu consensus within the Hindu fold itself.
This is why he opened the famous Patit Pavan Mandir (Temple of the Saviour of the Downtrodden) in Ratnagiri, which allowed Hindus of all castes to visit and pray together, at a time when temple entry was heavily restricted on the basis of caste. Savarkar believed that the very first step towards fundamental Hindu unity was to establish common places of worship, dining, and exchange of ideas.
It is interesting to note that Savarkar invited Ambedkar to the inauguration of this temple. In a letter dated 18 February 1933, Ambedkar expressed sincere regret at his inability to attend owing to prior commitments. At the same time, he acknowledged and appreciated Savarkar's efforts to challenge caste-based discrimination. However, Ambedkar also articulated his continuing disagreement with Savarkar's support for the chaturvarnya framework, which he regarded as incompatible with genuine social equality.
Two diagnoses, two destinations
There is a very clear difference between the Savarkarite position and the Ambedkarite position on nearly everything. The attempt to reconcile these two very different philosophies into a unified ideological framework reflects a certain intellectual malpractice.
While such efforts may appear inclusive on the surface, they do a great disservice to both intellectual traditions. Ambedkar and Savarkar began with two different diagnoses of Hindu society. Though both acknowledged caste as a problem and recognised its destructive social consequences, they diverged irreconcilably on its origins, meaning, and remedies.
Efforts to fuse these two philosophies — by extracting the agreeable elements and ignoring the structural contradictions — produce neither theoretical clarity nor any practical coherence. Conflating them weakens both, and clarifies neither.
Courtesy: swarajyamag.com
(https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/caste-civilisation-contradiction-ambedkar-and-savarkar-cannot-be-reconciled)
