Builders of modern India Give Ambedkar his due Kancha Ilaiah

Builders of modern India Give Ambedkar his due

Kancha Ilaiah

Published on February 13, 2007

Ambedkar is not accorded the importance he should be despite his efforts to liberate the oppressed

President Bush in his recent trip to India mentioned Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru in that order as thinkers who shaped the destiny of India. These three names indicate a certain mode of representative ideology of the Indian establishment and also the politics of ideological representation. A few years ago the University Grants Commission of India recognized Gautama Buddha, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru as the epoch making thinkers of India.

It also directed the Indian universities to institute special chairs and research centres in their names. Evidently these names are a product of intensive deliberations. In these four names one can see the globally known positive system built by Buddha, who established an alternative Sangha system, that gradually emerged as the Buddhist religion in ancient India. As against the names of Kautilya and Manu, Buddha alone was seen as a thinker to be recognized as the epoch making thinker of that period.

In the modern period, Gandhi undoubtedly is credited as one of the epoch making thinkers. Even though one may not agree with many of his ideological positions one does not dispute his role as an epoch maker. Ambedkar occupies the second place in the modern period as an epoch maker because he played a political, ideological and philosophical role to abolish caste- slavery and untouchability in India, a role that is comparable to that of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King are seen as epoch makers in American history.

Nehru is recognized as an epoch making thinker because he steered the Indian administrative set-up through a colonial phase into an independent one with administrative acumen. Thus, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru are identified as epoch making thinkers of modern India. How does Rabindranath Tagore figure in President Bushï¿½s speech and how is Ambedkar ignored ?

In Delhi the Bengal lobby is quite strong. It influences the central Governmentï¿½s culture in many ways and Tagore was the tallest figure of Bengal.

Bengali writers projectTagore as the tallest individual of India and deliberately avoid Ambedkar as a significant figure of modern India, leave alone as an epoch making thinker.

The most visible and recent example of such Bengali intellectual tradition is Amartya Senï¿½s international best seller ---The Argumentative Indian. In this book Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru figure as the thinkers who shaped modern India. In Senï¿½s scheme in ancient India it was Ashoka, but not Buddha who figures as an epoch making thinker. In early modern India, Akbar is projected as a thinker of unmatched intellect.

Theory for liberation

The fact that Ambedkar does not merit mention even though he constructed a theory for the liberation of the most exploited underdog of India and sought to liberate that untouchable underdog is a travesty of intellectual representation. Ambedkarï¿½s name is mentioned by Sen on only four times and that too for his position as the chairman of the drafting committee of the constitution -- but not as a visionary.

Tagore is a poet, but not a thinker with a liberative ideology. No one has any objection if he is recognized as a great poet of modern India. Let us not forget the fact that Bush had to mention Martin Luther King even in his speeches, who has played a similar role like that of Ambedkar in India.

Any nation would have a respectable representation of intellectual tradition if the national psyche recognizes those intellectuals who represented the most oppressed people of a given society.

Why do Americans think that Abraham Lincoln was their greatest president and Martin Luther King was their greatest civil libertarian? Both of them got that national and international stature because they stood for abolition of slavery and racial discrimination. Ambedkar should have got a similar stature if the national elite were to develop any sense of shame of the institution of caste and untouchability which have worse characteristics than the racism of America and Europe. But that was not to be so.

Tagoreï¿½s greatest poem is Gitanjali. What liberational message does it have for the oppressed Dalit-Bahujans? A philosophically aesthetic poem like the Gitanjali must have got India the first Nobel prize. But that in itself did not re-shape India.

The millions of suppressed and exploited masses of India do not revere him. If he does not figure in school text books his name would not have been known among the masses at all.

Ambedkarï¿½s name has a different value. That value did not come to him because his name was pushed through the officially written school text books. He is seen as a thinker who keeps on liberating the oppressed masses on a continuous basis.

The projection of this kind of a liberative thinker among the intellectual internationally and socio-political circles would have given an impression that this country has an open mind and principled value for human freedom.

If India does not abolish caste and untouchability using all the ideological tools that Ambedkar had handed down to this country what does freedom that Bush is talking from Purana Qila mean to these oppressed masses?

KANCHA ILAIAH, PROFESSOR AND DALIT RIGHTS ACTIVIST