On the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, the country is witness to fresh movements inspired by his egalitarian and emancipator vision. The country is also witness to a two-pronged offensive by the communal fascist forces – that are attacking activists inspired by Ambedkar on the one hand, and seeking to appropriate Ambedkar on the other. The most stark example of this is the fact that the RSS and BJP hounded the Ambedkarite activist Rohith Vemula to his death by branding him anti-national; while RSS journals Organiser and Panchjanya hail Ambedkar as the ‘Ultimate Unifier’ and ‘Craftsman of Samrasta (Harmony),’ and the Modi Government plans to celebrate Ambedkar’s birth anniversary as ‘Samajik Samrasta Diwas’ (Social Harmony Day).
Delta Meghwal, a young Dalit woman student in BJP-ruled Rajasthan, was recently raped and murdered by a teacher in her college who used to demand that she clean his room. Her dead body was then transported in a garbage van. The very silence of PM Modi on this atrocity, even as he talks of ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ (Save and Educate Daughters), speaks very loudly about his hypocritical claims of ‘fulfilling Ambedkar’s vision’.
For the RSS and BJP, ‘Samajik/Samrasta/Social Harmony’ is a code for the existing caste hierarchy; and any anti-caste assertion by the oppressed castes, is branded as a challenge to the ‘harmonious’ coexistence of the castes. This point is illustrated by the fact that the Modi Government Minister Bandaru Dattatraya branded the activities of the Ambedkar Students’ Association and Rohith Vemula, as ‘casteist’. For the BJP, the persecution of Dalit students in campuses and schools is not ‘casteist’, but organizing and agitating against such persecution is ‘casteist.’
The RSS student outfit ABVP brands it ‘casteist’ for students to walk in Ambedkar’s footsteps and burn the Manusmriti. Meanwhile, Modi seeks to appropriate and ‘harmonise’ Ambedkar with Sangh ideology, by terming Ambedkar a ‘modern Manu’!
For the RSS and BJP, leaders like Jitan Ram Manjhi, Ram Vilas Paswan or Udit Raj are examples of ‘Samajik Samrasta’ – because they are willing to maintain ‘harmony’ with the BJP that funded the Ranveer Sena and has the blood of Dalits on its hands. But for the BJP-backed Ranveer Sena, the Dalits who asserted their social, economic and political rights and challenged feudal hegemony must be killed for “breaking the social fabric of caste harmony.” Ranveer Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh had defended the massacres of Dalits with the words, “Violence for the restoration of peace and harmony is not a sin.” The ‘Samajik Samrasta’ of the RSS and BJP is nothing but the subservience and subjugation of the oppressed castes. Ambedkar called for the annihilation of castes – not for harmonious continuation of caste hierarchy.
Dr Ambedkar was clear that the taboo on eating beef was of Brahminical origin and that “There is no community which is really an Untouchable community which has not something to do with the dead cow. Some eat her flesh, some remove the skin, some manufacture articles out of her skin and bones.” Why are the RSS magazines and BJP leaders silent on Dr Ambedkar’s historical analysis of the beef ban?
Also significant is the fact that the RSS and BJP try to appropriate Ambedkar as a ‘Hindu nationalist’ – a ‘unifier’ of Hindus across caste boundaries. The Organiser’s write-up on Ambedkar this year suggests that Ambedkar made his famous ‘castes are anti-national’ statement because he felt castes prevented Hindus from uniting as a nation. This is a travesty of Ambedkar’s thought. The RSS conveniently omits to quote a crucial sentence from Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Castes, “A caste has no feeling that it is affiliated to other castes except when there is a Hindu-Muslim riot.” The RSS and BJP idea of ‘unity’ of castes is precisely a violent unity against the Muslim citizens. The same RSS and BJP backs feudal forces that kill Dalit men who marry non-Dalit women or are accused of killing cows, will appeal to Dalits to unite with non-Dalit castes against inter-faith marriages of Hindu women with Muslim men!
The fact is that Dr Ambedkar was crystal clear in his rejection of the Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation) espoused by the RSS and BJP: “If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will no doubt be the greatest calamity for this country. It is a menace to liberty, equality and fraternity. On that account it is incompatible with democracy. Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost.” (Pakistan or Partition of India, 1945) It is obvious that the RSS and BJP brand Rohith and his comrades as ‘anti-national’ for their anti-communal activism, their solidarity with Muslims and their rejection of ‘Hindu Raj’. ‘Samajik Samrasta’ demands that Dalits accept ‘Hindu Raj’ meekly.
If the RSS magazines strive to poison Dalits against unity with Muslims, they also display their discomfort with the emerging unity of Ambedkarites and Marxists, branding such unity as ‘heinous.’ Such statements by the RSS are in fact confirm that the communal fascists are rattled by the inspiring unity of progressive forces uniting to resist the attempts to impose ‘Hindu Raj’ on the campuses and the country.
For every section of India’s fighting people, Dr Ambedkar’s writings are an inspiration and a resource. Workers defending labour laws remember Ambedkar as a robust defender of the right to strike and form independent unions. All those who defend caste-based reservations or special laws protecting the rights of workers and women against the allegation of ‘inequality’ take strength from Ambedkar’s insight that “Equality is not necessarily equity. In order that it may produce equity in society, in order that it may produce justice in society, different people have to be treated unequally.” Civil libertarians and al citizens demanding justice in fake encounters and police/army firings recall Dr Ambedkar’s assertion that “so far as the law is concerned, there is no difference between an ordinary citizen and a police officer or a military officer,” and that freedom for India must not mean the freedom of Indian policemen or soldiers to shoot Indian citizens with impunity. Defenders of the rights of LGBT people, of the rights of citizens to express rationalist ideas, and of women’s freedoms all draw strength from Dr Ambedkar’s emphasis on the need to cultivate “constitutional morality” as opposed to the dominant social notions of morality. Ambedkar’s insights into the fundamental contradiction of capitalism with democracy, and his advocacy of state-ownership and redistribution of all agricultural land, along with his call for the annihilation of caste, are a marker of his radical socio-economic vision.
At this juncture, when the fundamental principles of the Constitution drafted by Dr Ambedkar, as well as his broader socio-economic vision are under attack as never before, the unity of fighting forces to defend Ambedkar’s vision of a truly democratic and egalitarian India would indeed be the best tribute to that great visionary.
