Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (16 page)

Angered by Ambedkar’s display of independence, the communists denounced him as an ‘opportunist’ and an ‘imperial stooge’. In his book
History of the Indian Freedom Struggle
,
E.M.S. Namboodiripad, the (
Brahmin) former Chief Minister of Kerala and head of the first ever democratically elected communist government in the world, wrote about the conflict between Ambedkar and the left: “However, this was a great blow to the freedom movement. For this led to the diversion of the peoples’ attention from the objective of full independence to the
mundane cause
of the uplift of
Harijans [Untouchables].”
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The rift has not mended and has harmed both sides
mortally. For a brief period in the 1970s, the
Dalit Panthers in Maharashtra tried to bridge the gap. They were the progeny of Ambedkar the radical (as opposed to Ambedkar the writer of the Constitution). They gave the Marathi word ‘Dalit’—oppressed, broken—an all-India currency, and used it to refer not just to Untouchable communities, but to “the working people, the landless and poor peasants, women and all those who are being exploited politically and economically and in the name of religion”.
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This was a phenomenal and politically confident act of solidarity on their part. They saw Dalits as a Nation of the Oppressed. They identified their friends as “revolutionary parties set to break down the caste system and class rule” and “Left parties that are left in the true sense”; and their enemies as “Landlords, Capitalists, moneylenders and their lackeys”. Their manifesto, essential reading for students of radical politics, fused the thinking of Ambedkar, Phule and Marx. The founders of the Dalit Panthers—
Namdeo Dhasal,
Arun Kamble and
Raja Dhale—were writers and poets, and their work created a renaissance in Marathi literature.

It could have been the beginning of the revolution that India needed and is still waiting for, but the Dalit Panthers swiftly lost their bearings and disintegrated.

The caste–class question is not an easy one for political parties to address. The
Communist Party’s theoretical obtuseness to caste has lost it what ought to have been its natural constituency. The Communist Party of India and its offshoot, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), have more or less become bourgeois parties enmeshed in parliamentary politics. Those that split away from them in the late 1960s and independent Marxist-Leninist parties in other states (collectively known as the ‘
Naxalites’, named after the first uprising in the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal) have tried to address the issue of caste and to make common cause with Dalits, but with little success. The few efforts
they made to seize land from big zamindars and redistribute it to labourers failed because they did not have the mass support or the military firepower to see it through. Their sidelong nod to caste as opposed to a direct engagement with it has meant that even radical communist parties have lost the support of what could have been a truly militant and revolutionary constituency.

Dalits have been fragmented and pitted against each other. Many have had to move either into mainstream parliamentary politics or—with the public sector being hollowed out, and job opportunities in the private sector being denied to them—into the world of NGOs, with grants from the
European Union, the
Ford Foundation and other funding agencies with a long, self-serving history of defusing radical movements and harnessing them to ‘
market forces’.
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There is no doubt that this funding has given a few Dalits an opportunity to be educated in what are thought to be the world’s best universities. (This, after all, is what made Ambedkar the man he was.) However, even here, the Dalits’ share in the massive NGO money-pie is minuscule. And within these institutions (some of which are generously funded by big corporations to work on issues of caste discrimination,
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like
Gandhi was), Dalits can be treated in unfair and ugly ways.

In his search for primitive communism,
S.A. Dange would have been better advised to look towards indigenous Adivasi communities rather than towards the ancient Vedic
Brahmins and their
yagnyas. Gandhi too could have done the same. If anybody was even remotely living out his ideal of frugal village life, of stepping lightly on the earth, it was not the Vedic Hindus, it was the
Adivasis. For them, however, Gandhi showed the same level of disdain that he did for Black Africans. Speaking in 1896 at a public meeting in Bombay, he said: “The Santhals
of
Assam will be as useless in South Africa as the natives of that country.”
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On the Adivasi question,
Ambedkar too stumbles. So quick to react to slights against his own people, Ambedkar, in a passage in
Annihilation of Caste
, echoes the thinking of colonial missionaries and liberal ideologues, and adds his own touch of
Brahminism:

Today, Adivasis are the barricade against the pitiless march of modern
capitalism. Their very existence poses the most radical questions about modernity and ‘progress’—the ideas that Ambedkar embraced as one of the ways out of the caste system. Unfortunately, by viewing the Adivasi community through the lens of Western
liberalism, Ambedkar’s writing, which is otherwise so relevant in today’s context, suddenly becomes dated.

Ambedkar’s opinions about Adivasis betrayed a lack of information and understanding. First of all, Hindu evangelists like the
Hindu Mahasabha had been working to ‘assimilate’ the
Adivasis since the 1920s (just like they were Balmiki-ising castes that were forced into cleaning and scavenging work). Tribes like the Ho, the
Oraon, the
Kols, the Santhals, the
Mundas and the
Gonds did not wish to be ‘civilised’ or ‘assimilated’. They had rebelled time and again against the British as well as against zamindars and
Bania moneylenders, and had fought fiercely to protect their land, culture and heritage. Thousands had been killed in these uprisings, but unlike the rest of India, they were never conquered. They still have not been. Today, they are the armed, militant end of a spectrum of struggles. They are waging nothing short of a civil war against the Indian state which has signed over Adivasi homelands to infrastructure and mining corporations. They are the backbone of the decades-long struggle against big dams in the Narmada Valley. They make up the ranks of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army of the
Communist Party of India (Maoist) that is fighting tens of thousands of paramilitary forces that have been deployed by the government in the forests of Central India.

In a 1945 address in Bombay (“The Communal Deadlock and a Way to Solve It”), discussing the issue of proportionate representation, Ambedkar brought up the issue of Adivasi rights once again. He said:

This unfortunate way of describing a community was sometimes aimed at non-Adivasis too, in an equally troubling manner. At one point in
Annihilation of Caste
Ambedkar resorts
to using the language of
eugenics, a subject that was popular with European fascists: “Physically speaking the Hindus are a
C3 people. They are a
race of pygmies and dwarfs, stunted in stature and wanting in stamina.”
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His views on Adivasis had serious consequences. In 1950, the Indian
Constitution made the state the custodian of Adivasi homelands, thereby ratifying British colonial policy. The Adivasi population became squatters on their own land. By denying them their traditional rights to forest produce, it criminalised a whole way of life. It gave them the right to vote, but snatched away their livelihood and dignity.
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How different are Ambedkar’s words on Adivasis from Gandhi’s words on Untouchables when he said:

Gandhi said this at the Second Round Table Conference in London in 1931. It was the first public face-to-face encounter between Ambedkar and Gandhi.

The Congress had boycotted the First Round Table Conference in 1930, but nominated Gandhi as its representative in the second. The aim of the conference was to frame a new constitution for
self-rule. The princely states and representatives of various
minority communities—Muslims, Sikhs,
Christians, Parsis and Untouchables—were present.
Adivasis went unrepresented. For Untouchables, it was a historic occasi
on. It was the first time that they had been invited as a separately represented constituency. One of the several committees that made up the conference was the Minority Committee, charged with the task of finding a workable solution to the growing communal question. It was potentially the most inflammable and, perhaps for that reason, was chaired by the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald.

It was to this committee that Ambedkar submitted his memorandum, which he described as
A Scheme of Political Safeguards for the Protection of the
Depressed Classes in the Future Constitution of a Self-Governing India
. It was, for its time, within the framework of liberal debates on rights and citizenship, a revolutionary document. In it, Ambedkar tried to do in law what he dreamt of achieving socially and politically. This document was an early draft of some of the ideas that Ambedkar eventually managed to put into the Constitution of post-1947 India.

Under “Condition No. 1: Equal Citizenship”, it says:

The memorandum went on to delineate what would constitute Fundamental Rights and how they were to be protected. It gave Untouchables the right to access all public places. It dwelt at length on social
boycotts and suggested they be declared a criminal offence. It prescribed a series of measures by which Untouchables would be protected from social boycotts
and caste Hindus punished for instigating and promoting them. Condition No. 5 asked that a Public Service Commission be set up to ensure Untouchables “Adequate Representation in the Services”. This is what has eventually evolved into the system of reservation in educational institutions and government jobs, against which privileged castes in recent times have militantly a
gitated.
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The most unique aspect of Ambedkar’s memorandum was his proposal for a system of positive discrimination within the electoral system. Ambedkar did not believe that universal adult franchise alone could secure equal rights for Untouchables. Since the Untouchable population was scattered across the country in little settlements on the outskirts of Hindu villages, Ambedkar realised that within the geographical demarcation of a political constituency, they would always be a minority and would never be in a position to elect a candidate of their own choice. He suggested that Untouchables, who had been despised and devalued for so many centuries, be given a separate electorate so that they could, without interference from the Hindu orthodoxy, develop into a political constituency with a leadership of its own. In addition to this, and in order that they retain their connection with mainstream politics, he suggested that they be given the right to vote for general candidates too. Both the separate electorate and the double vote were to last for a period of only ten years. Though the details were not agreed upon, when the conference concluded, all the delegates unanimously agreed that the Untouchables should, like the other
minorities, have a separate electorate.
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