Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (47 page)

164
Quote from Burke’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790), in which he launched a bitter attack on the French Revolution.

165
Dewey,
Democracy and Education
, chapter 7.

166
Sanatan literally means eternal, everlasting; sanatan dharm (also rendered as sanatana dharma) is the religion that is said to have no beginning nor end. An orthodox person in the nationalist period would prefer to describe himself as someone who belonged to the ‘sanatan dharm’, the everlasting religion. The Anglicised terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ do not capture the conservative fundamentalism inherent in sanatan dharm. While the Arya Samaj or Brahmo Samaj advocated reforms, the sanatani Hindus (the orthodoxy) believed in an eternal/sanatan Hinduism without any need for reforms. Ambedkar discusses Gandhi’s sanatani tendencies in Appendix 9.30.

167
Much before right-wing Hindutva ideologue Arun Shourie (1997) suggested that Ambedkar was a ‘stooge’ of the British and cast aspersions on his ‘nationalist’ credentials, the newspapers of Ambedkar’s time constantly doubted his credentials. In
What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables
(BAWS 9, 200), Ambedkar writes: “[The Untouchables] have no Press and the Congress Press is closed to them. It is determined not to give them the slightest publicity. They cannot have their own Press. It is obvious that no paper can survive without advertisement revenue.… The staff of the Associated Press in India, which is the main news distributing agency in India, is entirely drawn from Madras Brahmins—indeed the whole of the Press in India is in their hands and who for well-known reasons are entirely pro-Congress and will not allow any news hostile to the Congress to get publicity. These are reasons beyond the control of the Untouchables.” For a documentation of the insensitive way in which the so-called nationalist press reported on Ambedkar, see Ramnarayan Rawat (2001, 128–9).

168
The import here is that caste has contaminated even the new faiths that emerged from within India (such as Sikhism) as it did religions that came to India (Islam and Christianity). For an account of how caste affects Sikhism, see Mark Juergensmeyer (2009); on caste among Muslims in India, see Imtiaz Ahmad (1978); and among Christians, see Kenneth Ballhatchet (1998), and the more recent study focused on Tamil Nadu by David Mosse (2012).

169
Swaraj, literally ‘self-rule’, was the term used by the Congress party and other nationalist leaders to refer to the struggle for independence from British rule. The conservative leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak famously declared in 1899: “Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!” However, it was Gandhi who popularised the term, especially with his manifesto-like
Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule
(1909). According to Gandhi, “It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.” For an annotated edition of
Hind Swaraj
, see Parel (1997). According to Lelyveld (2011, xiv), swaraj for Gandhi was bigger than the struggle for mere independence from British rule. “As used by Gandhi, poorna [complete] swaraj put the goal on yet a higher plane. At his most utopian, it was a goal not just for India but for each individual Indian; only then could it be poorna, or complete. It meant a sloughing not only of British rule but of British ways, a rejection of modern industrial society in favor of a bottom-up renewal of India, starting in its villages …”

170
Echoing a similar sentiment in 1927, when he led the civil rights struggle for Untouchables’ access to the Chavadar Tank in Mahad, Ambedkar said: “The satyagraha movement started by Gandhi was backed by the people as it was against foreign domination. Our struggle is against the mass of caste Hindus and naturally we have little support from outside.” Excerpts of Ambedkar’s speech in Mahad, where he compares the event to the storming of the Bastille, can be found in Arjun Dangle (1992, 223–33) and in Satyanarayana and Tharu (2013, 22–31). For an account of the Mahad struggle, see Zelliot (2013, 78–82) and Rao (2009, 83–8).

The readers will recall the fact that Dr Ambedkar was to have presided last May at the annual conference of the
Jat-Pat Todak Mandal of Lahore. But the conference itself was cancelled because Dr Ambedkar’s address was found by the reception committee to be unacceptable. How far a reception committee is justified in rejecting a president of its choice because of his address that may be objectionable to it is open to question. The committee knew Dr Ambedkar’s views on caste and the Hindu scriptures. They knew also that he had in unequivocal terms decided to give up Hinduism. Nothing less than the address that Dr Ambedkar had prepared was to be expected from him. The committee appears to have deprived the public of an opportunity of listening to the original views of a man who has carved out for himself a unique position in
society. Whatever label he wears in future, Dr Ambedkar is not the man to allow himself to be forgotten.

Dr Ambedkar was not going to be beaten by the reception committee. He has answered their rejection of him by publishing the address at his own expense. He has priced it at 8 annas, I would suggest a reduction to 2 annas or at least 4 annas.
²

No reformer can ignore the address. The orthodox will gain by reading it. This is not to say that the address is not open to objection. It has to be read only because it is open to serious objection. Dr Ambedkar is a challenge to Hinduism. Brought up as a Hindu,
³
educated by a Hindu potentate,
⁴
he has become so disgusted with the so-called
savarna Hindus or the treatment that he and his people have received at their hands that he proposes to leave not only them but the very religion that is his and their common heritage. He has transferred to that religion his disgust against a part of its professors.

But this is not to be wondered at. After all, one can only judge
a system or an institution by the conduct of its representatives. What is more, Dr Ambedkar found that the vast majority of savarna Hindus had not only conducted themselves inhumanly against those of their fellow religionists whom they classed as Untouchables, but they had based their conduct on the authority of their scriptures, and when he began to search them he had found ample warrant for their beliefs in
untouchability and all its implications. The author of the address has quoted chapter and verse in proof of his three-fold indictment—inhuman conduct itself, the unabashed justification for it on the part of the perpetrators, and the subsequent discovery that the justification was warranted by their scriptures.

No Hindu who prizes his faith above life itself can afford to underrate the importance of this indictment. Dr Ambedkar is not alone in his disgust. He is its most uncompromising exponent and one of the ablest among them. He is certainly the most irreconcilable among them. Thank god, in the front rank of the leaders he is singularly alone, and as yet but a representative of a very small minority. But what he says is voiced with more or less vehemence by many leaders belonging to the
Depressed Classes. Only the latter, for instance Rao Bahadur M.C. Rajah and Dewan Bahadur Srinivasan,
⁵
not only do not threaten to give up Hinduism,
but find enough warmth in it to compensate for the shameful persecution to which the vast mass of Harijans are exposed.

But the fact of many leaders remaining in the Hindu fold is no warrant for disregarding what Dr Ambedkar has to say. The savarnas have to correct their belief and their conduct. Above all, those who are, by their learning and influence, among the savarnas have to give an authoritative interpretation of the scriptures. The questions that Dr Ambedkar’s indictment suggests are:

I must reserve for the next issue my own answer to these questions and a statement of the (at least some) manifest flaws in Dr Ambedkar’s thesis.

Harijan
, 11 July 1936

The Vedas,
Upanishads, smritis and
puranas, including the
Ramayana and the
Mahabharata, are the Hindu scriptures. Nor is this a finite list. Every age or even generation has added to the list. It follows, therefore, that everything printed or even found handwritten is not scripture. The smritis, for instance, contain much that can never be accepted as the word of God. Thus many of the texts that Dr Ambedkar quotes from the smritis cannot be accepted as authentic. The scriptures, properly so called, can only be concerned with eternal verities and must appeal to any conscience, i.e., any heart whose eyes of understanding are opened. Nothing can be accepted as the word of God which cannot be tested by
reason or be capable of being spiritually experienced. And even when you have an expurgated edition of the scriptures, you will need their interpretation. Who is the best interpreter? Not learned men surely. Learning there must be. But religion does not live by it. It lives in the experiences of its saints and seers, in their lives and sayings. When all the most learned commentators of the scriptures are utterly forgotten, the accumulated experience of the sages and saints will abide and be an inspiration for ages to come.

Caste has nothing to do with religion. It is a custom whose origin I do not know, and do not need to know for the satisfaction of my spiritual hunger. But I do know that it is harmful both to spiritual and national growth. Varna and ashrama
⁶
are institutions which have nothing to do with castes. The law of varna teaches us that we have each one of us to earn our bread by following the ancestral calling. It defines not our rights but our duties. It necessarily has reference to callings that are conducive to the welfare of humanity and to no other. It also follows that there is no calling too low and none too high. All are good, lawful and absolutely equal in status. The callings of a
Brahmin—spiritual teacher—and a scavenger are equal, and their due performance carries equal merit before God, and at one time seems to have carried identical reward before man. Both were entitled to their livelihood and no more. Indeed one traces even now in the
villages the faint lines of this healthy operation of the law.
⁷

Living in Segaon
⁸
with its population of six hundred, I do not find a great disparity between the earnings of different tradesmen, including Brahmins. I find too that real Brahmins are to be found, even in these degenerate days, who are living on alms freely given to them and are giving freely of what they have of spiritual treasures. It would be wrong and improper to judge the law of varna by its caricature in the lives of men who profess to belong to a varna, whilst they openly commit a breach of its only operative rule. Arrogation of a superior status by and of a varna over another is a denial of the law. And there is nothing in the law of varna to warrant a belief in
untouchability. (The essence of Hinduism is contained in its enunciation of one and only God as truth and its bold acceptance of
ahimsa as the law of the human family.)

I am aware that my interpretation of Hinduism will be disputed by many besides Dr Ambedkar. That does not affect my position. It is an interpretation by which I have lived for nearly half a century, and according to which I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to regulate my life.

In my opinion the profound mistake that Dr Ambedkar has made in his address is to pick out the texts of doubtful authenticity and value, and the state of degraded Hindus who are no fit specimens of the faith they so woefully misrepresent. Judged by the standard applied by Dr Ambedkar every known living faith will probably fail.

In his able address, the learned doctor has over-proved his case. Can a religion that was professed by
Chaitanya, Jnyandeo,
Tukaram, Tiruvalluvar,
Ramakrishna Paramahansa,
Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Maharshi Devendranath Tagore,
Vivekananda,
⁹
and a host of others who might be easily mentioned, be so utterly devoid of merit as is made out in Dr Ambedkar’s address? A religion has to be judged not by its worst specimens but by the best it might have produced. For that and that alone can be used as the standard to aspire to, if not to improve upon.

Harijan
, 18 July 1936

Shri Sant Ramji of the
Jat-Pat Todak Mandal of Lahore wants me to publish the following:
¹⁰