Remembering Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and his
lifelong struggle against the caste system
Sixty years
since Dr Ambedkar, caste continues to remain a part of India’s social reality.
May it be the discrimination that members of socially-backward castes undergo,
or the subtler issues of matchmaking during marriages, the question of caste
continues to haunt our society. Dr Ambedkar’s life and legacy, however, remains
an inspiration for many who believe that caste hierarchy should cease to exist,
and formation of an equal society is the way forward.
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) was born into a
Mahar (‘Untouchable’/ Dalit) family. His father served in the British
Indian Army at the Mhow cantonment in the Central Provinces (now in Madhya
Pradesh). Unlike most children of his caste, young Bhim attended school.
However, he and his Dalit friends were not allowed to sit inside the class.
Teachers would not touch their notebooks. When they pleaded to drink water, the
school peon (who belonged to the upper caste) poured water from a height
for them to drink. On days the peon was unavailable, young Bhim and his friends
had to spend the day without water.
Due
to his deep interest in learning, Bhim went on to become the first Dalit to be
enrolled into the prestigious Elphinstone High School in Bombay. He later
won the Baroda State Scholarship for three years and finished his postgraduate
education from Columbia University in New York. He passed his M.A. exam in
June 1915 and continued his research. In his thesis on Castes in India (1916) presented at the Columbia
University, he wrote –
“The
caste problem is a vast one, both theoretically and practically. Practically,
it is an institution that portends tremendous consequences. It is a local
problem, but one capable of much wider mischief, for as long as caste in India
does exist, Hindus will hardly intermarry or have any social intercourse with
outsiders; and if Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would
become a world problem.”
After
completing three important theses that dealt with Indian society, economics,
and history, Dr Ambedkar enrolled at the London School of Economics where he
started working on a doctoral thesis. He stayed in London for the next four
years and finished two doctorates. He was conferred with two more honorary
doctorate degrees much later in the fifties.
After
returning to India in 1924, Dr Ambedkar decided to launch an active movement
against untouchability. In 1924, he founded the Bahishkrut Hitkaraini
Sabha, aimed at uprooting caste system in India. The organisation ran free
schools and libraries for all age groups. Dr Ambedkar took the grievances of
the Dalits to court, and brought them justice.
Over
the following years, Dr Ambedkar organised marches demanding Dalit’s rights to
drinking water from public resources, and their right to enter temples. Despite
severe attacks from the upper-caste Hindu men, Dr Ambedkar walked with fellow
Dalits into public tanks and reservoirs and drank from its water.
In
a conference in late 1927, Dr Ambedkar publicly condemned the Manusmriti
for justifying caste discrimination and untouchability. On December 25, 1927,
Dr Ambedkar led thousands of Dalits and burnt copies of the text.
Dr
Ambedkar continued to ferociously protest the caste system. In 1935, at a
conference at Nasik, he asked Dalits to convert to a religion where there is no
hierarchy. In his undelivered speech titled Annihilation of
Caste (1936), Dr
Ambedkar claimed that political reform without social reform is a farce. He
sought social equality and believed that political freedom from the British
will automatically follow. He also claimed that caste is not a division of
labour, but a division of labourers. He called the idea of racial purity
absurd, and argued that inter-caste dining and inter-caste marriages are not
sufficient to annihilate the caste system. “The real method of breaking up the
Caste System was not to bring about inter-caste dinners
and inter-caste marriages but to destroy the religious notions on
which Caste was founded,” he wrote.
Mahatma
Gandhi, unlike Dr Ambedkar, was a believer of the Varna System. He accepted
untouchability as a serious problem, and advocated for Dalits to gain
acceptance as the fifth caste. In a newspaper article titled Dr Ambedkar & Caste (1933), Gandhi wrote –
“The present joint fight is
restricted to the removal of untouchability, and I would invite Dr Ambedkar and
those who think with him to throw themselves, heart and soul, into the campaign
against the monster of untouchability. It is highly likely that at the end of
it we shall all find that there is nothing to fight against in Varnashram. If,
however, Varnashram even then looks an ugly thing, the whole of Hindu Society
will fight it.”
In
1937, when the British government agreed to hold elections on the provincial
level, Dr Ambedkar’s Independent Labor Party won in the Bombay province with a
thumping majority. Dr Ambedkar led many social, labour, and agricultural
reforms in the region in the years that followed.
Post-independence,
Dr Ambedkar was invited by Congress to serve as the nation’s first Law
Minister, which he accepted. He was soon appointed the Chairman of the Drafting
Committee formed to write India’s new Constitution. Article 11 of the
Constitution abolished untouchability in every form. Granville Austin in his
famous book The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone
of a Nation (1964)
described the Constitution of India as one of the most progressive and
revolutionary political documents of its time.
During
the fifties, Dr Ambedkar drifted away from politics. His writings at this stage
seem to be addressing the moral void Mahatma’s assassination had created in the
Indian politics. A believer of non-violence, satyagraha, and dhamma, Dr
Ambedkar was deeply moved by the ideas of Buddhism. He travelled to Sri Lanka
and Rangoon to attend conferences of the World Fellowship of Buddhists. He
finished his final book The Buddha and His Dhamma(1956),
which was published posthumously. As promised, he converted to Buddhism after
writing the book.
Dr
Ambedkar was a reformer whose legacy and relevance continues to grow. His
message of social equality continues to reverberate and resonate with passing
time. In his last but incomplete essay, The Buddha or Karl Marx,
Dr Ambedkar reiterated his belief in the slogan of the French Revolution and
claimed that equality will be of no value without fraternity or liberty. His
message, although approached differently, was a repetition to what he had
written 20 years ago in The Annihilation of Caste (1936)
–
“Political tyranny is nothing
compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more
courageous man than a politician who defies Government.”
Credit:
http://social.yourstory.com/2016/04/bhimrao-ambedkar/
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