A group of people, with placards showing Dr BR
Ambedkar, staged a demonstration in Delhi a few days ago against Anna
Hazare’s proposals on the Lokpal and the methods used by his team.
More often than not Dalits look with suspicion on any attempt to
tamper with the Constitution. Team Anna has however suggested that its
Lokpal Bill would benefit Dalits more than anyone else. This led me to
look at Dr Ambedkar’s position as compared to the mode of agitation
being deployed by Anna Hazare and his team.
In his last, visionary speech after the submission of
the Draft Constitution on November 25, 1949, Dr Ambedkar warned of
three possible dangers to the newborn democracy. These related to
social and economic inequalities, the use of unconstitutional methods
and hero worship.
Dr Ambedkar first pointed to the contradiction between
equality in politics in the form of one-person-one-vote and the
inequalities in social and economic life. He argued that for political
democracy to succeed, it needed to be founded on the tissues and
fibres of social and economic equality. He warned that we must remove
this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who
suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political
democracy. Although we in India are trying hard to reduce the vast
inequalities that exist, the working of political democracy is already
under heavy stress due to discontent in some parts of the country.
Dr Ambedkar’s second, and more important, warning in
the present context related to the methods to achieve social and
economic objectives. He urged the people to abandon bloody as well as
coercive methods to bring about change. This means abandoning methods
of civil disobedience, non-cooperation, coercive forms of satyagraha
and fasts. Referring to the use of these methods during the British
period, Dr Ambedkar observed: “When there was no way left for
constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives,
there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods.”
But using them since that period, in his view, was “nothing but the
Grammar of Anarchy”. He advocated that “the sooner they are abandoned,
the better for us” as a nation.
Dr Ambedkar’s third warning related to “hero worship”.
He was immensely concerned about the political culture of laying
“liberties at the feet of even a great man or to trust him with powers
which enable him to subvert their institutions”. He believed that
there was nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have
rendered lifelong services to the country. But there are limits to
gratefulness. No man can be grateful at the cost of his honour and no
nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far
more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other
country, for in India, bhakti, or what may be called the path
of devotion or hero worship, plays a part in politics unequalled in
magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in
the world, argued Dr Ambedkar. He went on to add that bhakti in
religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul but in politics, bhakti, or
hero worship, is a sure road to degradation and to eventual
dictatorship.
These views of Dr Ambedkar also evolved through a much
deeper commitment to constitutional methods and their use in the anti-untouchability
movement during the 1920s and the 1930s. The 1920s and the 1930s saw a
series of agitations led by Dr Ambedkar to get public wells, tanks and
Hindu temples opened to “untouchables”. In the present context,
recalling two such incidents is very relevant, namely the agitation
for access to a water tank in Mahad and for entry into the famous
Kalaram temple in Nashik. In both cases, Dr Ambedkar was up against
violent high-caste Hindus, with the British sitting on the fence.
Dr Ambedkar started the Mahad agitation in 1927 but
the “untouchables” got access to the tank only in 1937 through a court
order. The people of the high castes had managed to get a court order
banning “untouchables” from using the tank on the grounds that it was
a private tank. Dr Ambedkar accepted the court order and discontinued
a second march to the tank. But he fought through the courts and got
justice in 1937, almost 10 years later. He did this using legal
instruments and a peaceful mass movement, without the coercive means
of fasts and hunger strikes.
Similarly, the agitation for entry into the Kalaram
temple went on for four years, from 1930 to 1934. He discontinued the
agitation in 1934 following opposition by priests, notwithstanding the
support extended by Gandhiji. But he fought a legal battle, along with
a peaceful agitation, for the next five years and in 1939 ultimately
secured entry into the temple for “untouchables.”
During the 1920s and the 1930s Dr Ambedkar combined
mass mobilisation with legal methods in the anti-untouchability
movement but never allowed unconstitutional and coercive methods to
take hold despite instances of violent attacks on “untouchables”. Once
he came face to face with Gandhiji with the latter’s fast unto death
and he had to compromise on the demand for a separate electorate with
what is the present-day political reservation. Coercive means forced
him to surrender the demand for a separate electorate, the
consequences of which are visible today.
Team Anna should realise that the Indian Constitution
provides ample opportunities for advocacy, through discussion and
lobbying with parliamentary standing committees, groups of ministers,
the ministers concerned, the prime minister, courts and above all
through a peaceful agitation. With several political parties on their
side, the possibility of reaching a middle ground is high. Experience
with constitutional means shows that civil society activists, through
their constant struggles, have persuaded the two successive United
Progressive Alliance governments to acknowledge several basic rights
and convert these into laws. The right to employment through the
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the
right to information, rights under the Forest Act, the right to
education and now the right to food are some of the revolutionary
measures that civil society has been able to accomplish through
constitutional methods.
This is an opportunity for Team Anna to use
constitutional methods and enhance the faith of people in these;
otherwise, Team Anna will convey the message that only coercive and
unconstitutional methods work.
As Dr Ambedkar observed, due to certain aspects of
Indian culture, our people are highly vulnerable to hero worship. How
a yoga teacher could convert yoga devotees into religious devotees and
finally into political supporters within a few years’ time is a
classic example of what hero worship and bhakti can do. Another
religious preacher has threatened that he would use his religious
followers for political ends which he thinks does not require
discussion with them, as they follow him in whatever he tells them to
do.
Anna and his team should recognise that in a new
democracy like ours, which is operating within the framework of
undemocratic relations based on the caste system, constitutional
methods and social morality need to be cultivated and promoted with a
purpose. The Lokpal Bill is too important a piece of legislation to be
passed under threat and unreasonable deadlines. All its aspects need
to be discussed with extreme care and with consensus among all
sections. Dalits have begun to express concern about its implications
for them. In a society where the anti-caste spirit and prejudices are
present in abundance, they feel that given its proposed wide-ranging
powers, it may be misused.
The Commission for Scheduled Castes reported about
11,469 complaints by Dalit government employees during the period from
2004 to 2010 that were linked to caste prejudice. Several thousand
more complaints under the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and the
Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, such as giving
“false or frivolous information to any public servant and thereby
[causing] such public servant to use his lawful power to the injury or
annoyance of a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe”, are
waiting for justice. Therefore Dalits have begun to seek safeguards
against the complaints emanating from caste prejudices in the Lokpal
Bill. I think the government has rightly brought the bill for an open
discussion before the standing committee that comprises MPs from all
parties so that the bill is discussed by all sections in a peaceful
milieu and not under duress and force.
Anna Hazare knows that the road to social change is a
difficult one. He has helped Dalits in a number of ways, including by
repaying loans taken by Dalits with contributions from villagers. Yet
he could not bring about fraternity between them – Dalits continue to
stay in segregated localities in his village. Corruption, like
untouchability, is deeply embedded in the social fabric of our
society. Therefore besides legislation, its eradication requires
changes through education and moral regeneration.