When Independence came, the Congress with which Ambedkar was at odds, could have marginalised him. But it is to the credit of Mahatma Gandhi that he persuaded Jawaharlal Nehru to take the dalit leader in his cabinet. His contribution to the making of free India's first Constitution is too well known for eleboration.

It is somewhat intriguing that the 117th birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar on April 14 passed off quietly without much notice taken of it by the media. There was, of course, the mandatory flower offerings to his portrait in Parliament by our cynical political leaders who obviously had one eye on the forthcoming elections and another on the rising influence of Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh and the power of the dalit vote. If one forgives the phony nature of the icon worship indulged in by many, there still remains the question of the role of Babasaheb Ambedkar in re-moulding Hindu-and Indian-society.

It is a far cry from the last decade of the 19th century when Ambedkar was born in a Mahar family to the present times, and while caste-ism, and its vilest aspect, untouchability, is still practised in rural areas, India has nevertheless moved, if in elephantine steps towards the Golden Age envisioned by the first dalit leader in history. What Ambedkar did was to hasten the movement. Ambedkar, it is well to remember, came from a family that was by no means poor or illiterate. his father, Ramji Maloji Sakpal was a Subedar in the British Army. Ambedkar's maternal grandfather and six grand uncles were Subedar-majors, and all women in the family were literate. And while the practice of untouchability made a deep wound on Ambedkar's psyche, he could, in part because of his own talent, recognised and encouraged by a brahmin teacher and in part because of the support he received from the Maharaja of Baroda and later from the Maharaja of Kolhapur, attain educational heights undreamt of even by high caste students. By the time he was in his early thirties he had won a doctorate from Columbia University in the US, a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a British degree in law as well. And if he was to give up his legal practice, he was well on his way to be a fighter for social justice.

When he appeared on the public scene in Maharashtra, the ground had already been prepared for the emergence of a social and political consciousness among the lower castes, but he certainly made his contribution quite early by launching a journal Mook Nayak (Leader of the Dumb) with the financial support of the Maharaja of Kolhapur, Shahu Maharaj. In 1924, he initiated an organisation called Bahishkrit Hitakarani Sabha (Association for the Welfare of the Ostracised) which was to last till 1928. Almost half a century earlier, Jotirao Phule had set up the Satyashodak Samaj in 1873, so Ambedkar already had something solid to base his own fight for removal of untouchability. In Kerala there was another dalit leader, Narayan Guru (1854-1928) on the thankless job. In fact, much as one admires Ambedkar, he was not the first to fight casteist wrongs, but he was practically the first to get the maximum mileage in the media.

Three things stand in his favour. One, he did not use violence, as present-day Naxalites do, which won him the admiration of Mahatma Gandhi; two, while he maintained a long and close association with the British (for a time he was a member of the Viceroy's Council) and in many ways was a British collaborator (there is evidence of this in a letter written in 1942 by the then Governor of Bombay to the Viceroy), he did not actively oppose the Freedom Movement. And three, he was willing to make compromise as when he signed the Poona Pact which thwarted the British attempt to separate untouchables from the mainstream Hindus through what was called the Communal Award against which Gandhi fasted. Gandhi was to tell Ambedkar that in accepting the Poona Pact, the latter had accepted the position that he was a Hindu. Gandhi, perhaps, spoke a shade too early to make that point because Ambedkar was to announce his decision to convert to Sikhism in August 1936, only to be dissuaded by dalit Sikhs from doing so. There were attractive offers from Christian missionaries and Muslim mullahs to receive dalits into their capacious arms, but he desisted them. The Nizam of Hyderabad even went to the extent of offering him Rs seven crore if he and his followers converted to Islam. Finally, he and thousands of his followers willingly and massively got converted in 1956 to Buddhism as the best possible choice, because it was an egalitarian religion having good relations with Hinduism and, what was more, it was not fundamentalist, but reformist. It was a happy compromise.

Conversion to Islam would have turned out to be a disastrous step; Buddhism, besides, was acceptable to Hindus who had accepted the Buddha as one among the dashavatars. When Independence came, the Congress with which Ambedkar was at odds, could have marginalised him. But it is to the credit of Mahatma Gandhi that he persuaded Jawaharlal Nehru to take the dalit leader in his cabinet. His contribution to the making of free India's first Constitution is too well known for eleboration, but what is not known is the substantial assistance he unpretentiously received from a shy civilian, Benegali Narasimha Rao, ICS. It is doubtful, for all of Ambedkar's scholarship and resourcefulness, that he would have made such a mark in the Constituent Assembly without the able support of B.N. Rao who, to this day, remains unhonoured and unsung. That is a matter of shame. But who can convince the post-Independence generation of politicians with little knowledge of the past and still less desire to make amends for the future? This is not to belittle Ambedkar's own contribution. He was certainly a man of strong views.

For instance, he strongly was in favour of Bombay being turned into a City State. Ambedkar was also opposed to certain aspects of the Hindu Code Bill and broke up with Nehru and resigned from the government on that score. He differed from Congress on Kashmir which he thought should go to Pakistan! It is hard, in the circumstances, to give full marks to Ambedkar. He had his shortcomings, many of them too glaring to be easily forgotten. he may have been the inspiration for the Bahujan Samaj Party of Kanshi Ram, but there are more factors which have gone into the substantial emancipation of the lower castes like technological development, industrial promotion and urbanisation, not to mention the change of heart among upper castes themselves and spread of education among dalits that, while acclaiming Ambedkar as a major force in affecting changes in the Hindu mind, lionising him for that alone would be misleading. Never, for instance, can one forget Mahatma Gandhi's own role in this regard for which sufficient credit has not been given to the Mahatma. To Ambedkar, Gandhi was a powerful rival and Gandhiji's assassination came to him, sadly enough, as a great relief, which he openly admitted in a letter to his wife. But that is another story. Incidentally, he was born in a village called Ambevade and that he changed his name from Ambevadekar to Ambedkar, must be attributed to his school teacher-and friend.

Courtesy: www.organiser.org, May 11, 2008