I conflict in Parliament between the BJP and opposition parties over Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s allegedly insulting BR Ambedkar remarks has highlighted the ruling party’s acceptance of India’s first Law Minister who insulted the nation’s Hindus with his attacks on the caste system and his conversion to Buddhism late in his life.
In recent decades, the BJP and RSS movement to celebrate Ambedkar, who was called Babasaheb by his followers, has been driven by political determination. Rising from the vacuum left by the increasingly weak Congress, the BJP has tried to bring all sections of Hindus, including Dalits, under Hindutva – always ascribing its position to Ambedkar.
What is the relationship between Ambedkar and Hindu nationalism?
BR Ambedkar shocked the Hindu nationalists by announcing at the Depressed Classes Conference in Bombay on October 13, 1935, that although he was born a Hindu, he “will not die in Hinduism”. The following year, at a conference of Mahars (the Dalit community he belonged to), Ambedkar again challenged Hinduism by repeating his advocacy of conversion.
Keith Meadowcroft of St Thomas University in Canada, in his 2006 paper “The All-India Hindu Mahasabha, untouchable politics, and the ‘denationalising’ revolution: the Moonje-Ambedkar Pact”, captures the confusion of the rejection of Ambedkar Hinduism was caused among the Hindu tribes.
The paper reveals how ND Savarkar, the younger brother of former Mahasabha president VD Savarkar, arranged a meeting between Ambedkar and the “renowned Hindu preacher” Masurkar Maharaj. The 17th session of the Mahasabha, held in Poona a few months after Ambedkar’s 1935 terror attack, sought to devise strategies to counter the threat of reform.
Such was the opposition to Ambedkar and his views that in early 1936, the Jat Pat Todak Mandal, a Lahore-based organization affiliated with the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha, withdrew Ambedkar’s “Annihilation of Caste” speech in early 1936 due to opposition. from Ambedkar. senior Punjab Hindu Mahasabhites, including Bhai Parmand. Ambedkar went on to publish his speech as a book, which to this day is considered a book about caste.
Congress member Priyanka Gandhi Vadra came face-to-face with BJP member Hemang Joshi as both parties led a protest march in Parliament on Thursday. (Photo: PTI)
The Mahasabha leaders had to swallow their differences and, in June 1936, supported the former president of the outfit, BS Moonje, in talks with Ambedkar to resolve the issue.
Ambedkar, however, was in touch with one Mahasabha leader: VD Savarkar. The latter, while praising his work, also wanted some kind of collaboration but it happened.
“Through his comments and articles, published in various newspapers, Savarkar supported Ambedkar’s first agitation in Mahad and Nashik saying that untouchability was against Hindu morality and humanity. Ambedkar was aware of Savarkar’s work and activism in Ratnagiri district, where he was imprisoned. At times, he even congratulated her – through her personal letters and his letters – on her work. However, this did not translate into a political alliance, and the 1951 manifesto of Ambedkar’s Scheduled Castes Federation clearly stated that the party would not have an alliance with ‘opposition forces’ like the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS,” said Prabodhan Pol of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. , whose doctoral thesis was on Ambedkar.
What happened when the Hindu Code Bill was introduced?
Hindu nationalists’ deep suspicion of Ambedkar continued after Independence, when, as Law Minister, he sought changes in Hindu personal laws through the Hindu Code Bill. Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the RSS saw the Bill as a “threat to Hindu culture”.
In a series of articles and editorials, the Editor of an RSS-affiliated magazine presented a negative commentary on the Bill. “We oppose the Hindu Code Bill. We oppose it because it is a contemptible act based on bad and immoral principles. It is not the Hindu Code Bill. It is something other than Hinduism. We condemn it because it is gross contempt and ignorance of Hindu laws, Hindu culture and Hindu Dharms,” said an editorial in the Organizer in 1949.
In 1951, when Parliament stalled its draft Bill under pressure from Hindu nationalists and Congress members, Ambedkar resigned from Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet. Even after the Jana Sangh was shut down after its merger with the Janata Party in 1977, it did not ask for Ambedkar. However, Vajpayee supported Jagjivan Ram as Prime Minister when the Janata Party won the election – something that, if accepted, would have given India its first Dalit Prime Minister.
How did we begin to change the status of RSS in Ambedkar?
The RSS always had Hindu unity as its ideal but it took decades for it to fully embrace institutional protections for marginalized groups. While the massive conversion of Dalits led by Ambedkar was an obstacle to this vision, Ambedkar’s appeal to Dalits began after the Meenakshipuram incident in 1981, when hundreds of lower caste Hindus in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu converted to Islam.
In 1981, the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), the highest decision-making body of the RSS, convened a special committee of “impartial social intellectuals” to examine who should be included in the reservation and for how long. ABPS both accepted the reservation for now and asked for it to be passed in the future.
The Sangh also started organizing Hindu Samagams, or gatherings, in different places. In a ceremony held in Maharashtra on April 14, 1983, the RSS marked both the birthdays of Ambedkar and its founder KB Hedgewar. In 1990, the Sangh celebrated the centenary of Ambedkar and Dalit reformer Jyotiba Phule and the ABPS passed a resolution saying “these two great leaders dealt a fatal blow to the evils and conventions prevailing in the Hindu society”.
What was the political context in which this change took place?
It happened at a time when the Congress started to weaken in north India. In 1989, VP Singh, with the support of the BJP, came to power and his government started building Ambedkar to take the Dalit votes away from the Congress.
Ram Vilas Paswan, a former powerful minister in VP Singh’s Janata Dal-led government, recounted how it took a series of steps in quick succession to recognize Ambedkar’s legacy, including installing his portrait in the Great Hall of Parliament, awarding him the Bharat Ratna. posthumously, and bring in the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
How does BJP see Ambedkar now?
The celebration of Ambedkar has continued on a grand scale under the present government. The BJP’s success in the Modi years is, to a large extent, due to its ability to hold together its upper-class base and provide greater representation to Dalits, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and Adivasis. The key to this is the appeal to support Ambedkar’s legacy.
In the Lok Sabha on Saturday, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said the Modi government had “given prominence to five (visiting places) associated with Dr Ambedkar”, including his birthplace in Mhow in Madhya Pradesh, the house in London where he lived, the existing Babasaheb Ambedkar International Memorial, and and development of Chaitya Bhoomi in Mumbai. “A 430 feet statue of Ambedkar is coming to Mumbai. It will also be visible from 25-30 km away,” he said.
Almost a decade ago, during the 2015 Bihar elections, when RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat took the 1981 line and called for a review of reservations by a panel of “impartial observers”, it was seen as damaging to the BJP. With two phases of voting and three more phases to come, Bhagwat quickly corrected the lessons and praised Ambedkar in the RSS chief’s traditional Vijayadashami address. He concluded the speech with the slogan “Hindu-Hindu ek rahein, bhed-bhaav ko nahi sahein (All Hindus must unite, they must not tolerate discrimination)”.
On September 6 this year, Bhagwat said in Nagpur that reservation should continue as long as there is discrimination in society.
Portions of this definition have previously appeared in articles by Ravish Tiwari and Shyamlal Yadav
Why should you buy our Subscription?
You want to be the smartest in the room.
You want access to award-winning journalism.
You don’t want to be misled and misinformed.
Choose your subscription package