Ambedkar on the Gita

The word 'gospel' means 'good news'. Good news of what? Eternal salvation through the worship of an incarnation of the Lord. The New Testament is the Gospel of the Christian, though to an atheist it may be a poetic composition or merely a text of value in reconstructing the socio-economic history of the Levant.

Dr. Ambedkar was not a Hindu. Thus he found little value in the Gita. However, it must be said, that most commentaries on the Gita by Indian 'intellectuals' are equally worthless.

Dr. Ambedkar wrote-

The Bhagvat Gita is not a gospel and it can therefore have no message and it is futile to search for one.

Sadly, he persisted in this futility. The irony is that Ambedkar is now a Hindu God- a minor avatar, like the angry Parasurama to Lord Ram, of the Buddha who is himself a less minor avatar of Vishnu. Krishna however is a major avatar and has immediate soteriological value for a billion people- some even in the West- e.g. the Hare Krishnas.  

The question will no doubt be asked: What is the Bhagvat Gita if it is not a gospel? My answer is that the Bhagvat Gita is neither a book of religion nor a treatise on philosophy. What the Bhagvat Gita does is to defend certain dogmas of religion on philosophic grounds.

In that case it is both a book of religion and a treatise of that branch of philosophy which is denominated as Theology. Dr. Ambedkar was out of his depth. Ultracrepidarian remarks tend to be oxymoronic.  

If on that account anybody wants to call it a book of religion or a book of philosophy he may please himself. But essentially it is neither.

No. Essentially- i.e in all possible worlds- it is a soteriological gospel. We can imagine a world without any organized religion. We can imagine one where philosophy does not exist. In such a world, the Gita would be recognized for what it is- viz a promise of eternal salvation by devotion to a particular incarnation of the Lord. 

It uses philosophy to defend religion.

No it does not. Religion is described in the Mahabharata as being defended by the strong arm of the Kshatriya. It would have been foolish to defend something facing physical attack by resorting to philosophy.  

My opponents will not be satisfied with a bare statement of view. They would insist on my proving my thesis by reference to specific instances.

No they won't. They will make the sort of comments I have and dismiss you for a fool.  

It is not at all difficult. Indeed it is the easiest task. The first instance one comes across in reading the Bhagvat Gita is the justification of war. Arjuna had declared himself against the war, against killing people for the sake of property.

No he hasn't. The text clearly states that he experiences 'vishada'- depression- because he sees the outcome will be piteous. Why does he see this outcome? It is because he has an 'asvamika' boon of chaksuchi vidya. Ambedkar- like other Indian intellectuals- hasn't read, or didn't understand, the book he is writing about.  

Krishna offers a philosophic defense of war and killing in war.

No he does not. The philosophic defense of war is that it encourages technological innovation and the spread of more efficient methods of production and organization. Wars may be resolved without killing. The other side may simply surrender. Such killing as occurs is philosophically justified by the doctrine or conatus as giving rise to a right to defend your life by ending that of an entity- be it man or beast- intent on taking it from you. 

This philosophic defence of war will be found in Chapter II verses 11 to 28. The philosophic defence of war offered by the Bhagvat Gita proceeds along two lines of argument. One line of argument is that anyhow the world is perishable and man is mortal. Things are bound to come to an end. Man is bound to die. Why should it make any difference to the wise whether man dies a natural death or whether he is done to death as a result of violence? Life is unreal, why shed tears because it has ceased to be? Death is inevitable, why bother how it has resulted ?

This is false and foolish. Ambedkar's argument would justify suicide even when one is happy.

In the section of the Gita mentioned by Ambedkar, Lord Krishna points out that if the soul is immortal the wise would not lament for the living or the dead. He isn't saying, 'slit your throat. You'll die sooner or later in any case.'

The second line of argument in justification of war is that it is a mistake to think that the body and the soul are one. They are separate.

No. The soul animates the body. They are consubstantial. At death they separate but are not separated before that. Ambedkar does not seem to have known about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity nor of the Vaishnavite theory of bimba-pratibimba-darpan. 

The fact is that this Economist/Lawyer was wholly ignorant of both philosophy and Religion. He was writing nonsense. As a cruel joke, Govt. of India dug up this shite and published it.  But Mayawati had already turned the fellow into a Hindu god. Thousands of poor peasants claimed to have seen Lord Ganesa in multiplied form standing in serried ranks along the approach to the giant idol representing Ambedkar himself. 

Not only are the two quite distinct but they differ in-as-much as the body is perishable while the soul is eternal and imperishable.

This is why Religions which believe in Divine Incarnation have a complicated theory of substance such that Christ or Krishna has a triune nature. 

When death occurs it is the body that dies. The soul never dies. Not only does it never die but air cannot dry it, fire cannot burn it, and a weapon cannot cut it. It is therefore wrong to say that when a man is killed his soul is killed. What happens is that his body dies. His soul discards the dead body as a person discards his old clothes—wears a new ones and carries on. As the soul is never killed, killing a person can never be a matter of any movement. War and killing need therefore give no ground to remorse or to shame, so argues the Bhagvat Gita.

This is not what the Gita argues at all. What Ambedkar has said is a justification for being a serial killer. There is a wide difference in doing your sacred duty under an Ocassionalist metaphysics- where God is the sole efficient cause- and thinking killing people is 'never a matter of any moment'. 

Another dogma to which the Bhagvat Gita comes forward to offer a philosophic defence is Chaturvarnya. The Bhagvat Gita, no doubt, mentions that the Chaturvarnya is created by God and therefore sacrosanct. But it does not make its validity dependent on it. It offers a philosophic basis to the theory of Chaturvarnya by linking it to the theory of innate, inborn qualities in men. The fixing of the Varna of man is not an arbitrary act says the Bhagvat Gita. But it is fixed according to his innate, inborn qualities.

Because in an Ocassionalist Universe God does everything. It is not the innate quality which determines caste but rather God creates the innate quality and also creates the caste and also ensures that sometimes the two don't match with each other. As Draupati complains, God is the 'Mayin'. He makes everything happen but the whole thing is oneiric and irreal. 

Ocassionalism is one way of solving the mind body problem and can be found in Ghazzali and Descartes and Liebniz. Ambedkar was ignorant of this. He just wanted to say 'I got innate qualities coming out of my ass. Yet I'm low caste! Boo hoo! Hinduism is real shitty.' 

The problem here is that Ambedkar is showing himself to be an ignorant asshole. True, he may not have actually sent this dreck to the Publisher for fear of being laughed at. But the fact remains, in trying to show his 'innate qualities' by writing in a scholarly way about a much studied text, the guy ends up justifying the casteist prejudices of a previous age. There were plenty of other Dalits who could give excellent commentaries on the Gita by the time Ambedkar wrote this shit. 

The third dogma for which the Bhagvat Gita offers a philosphic defence is the Karma marga. By Karma marga the Bhagvat Gita means the performance of the observances, such as Yajnas as a way to salvation.

This is karma kanda- i.e. actions with no utilitarian or survival value which, therefore, are wholly gratuitous- like Mayawati's building vast religious complexes for Ambedkar worship. Since the taxpayer paid for the thing, the soteriological benefit goes to the Hindu majority. Thus Ambedkar is now a bona fide Hindu god- much though he hated the religion. Indeed, he had a particular prejudice against Ganesha or Hanuman- thought they feature in Buddhism. Yet his new worshippers see visions of Ganesha attendant upon his glorious idol! 

The Bhagvat Gita most stands out for the Karma marga throughout and is a great upholder of it.

No. It rejects the purva-mimama view. You can give up rituals and just worship Krishna in any way you are capable of.  

The line it takes to defend Karma yoga is by removing the excrescences which had grown upon it and which had made it appear quite ugly.

No. It says karma-kanda is empty save by supervenient Grace. This is the doctrine of the Changodya- i.e. Vedanta or uttara-mimamsa. 

The first excrescence was blind faith.

Blind faith is fine provided it is faith in Grace, not ritual. Vatican II has affirmed that faith remains a mystery regarding which we remain in the dark. Blind belief in the magical efficacy of ritual is a different matter.

The Gita tries to remove it by introducing the principle of Buddhi yoga as a necessary condition for Karma yoga.

No. It states that this is an approved practice. But, because Arjuna- who has the asvamika boon of caskshushi vidya under vishada- shows utter faith and dependence solely on the Grace of Yogishvara, he gets a special theophany through the gift of divine eyes. This means, as in the Vedas and Upanishads, a new approved path is established as canonical. Indian Religion is protocol bound and buckstopped just like Jurisprudence. You can think of this as a legal precedent. Just as previously, a priest accused of some particular fault might say 'In such and such verse of Rg Veda, this fault has been revealed to be venial' so too, for Hindus in succeeding generations, the Gita could be quoted as showing that 'Bhakti Marga' was as good, if not better, than karma-kanda. Christ too, in the Gospels, spells out that some provisions of the 'old' law could be safely disregarded and some new ceremonies were affirmed as having even higher soteriological value. 

Revealed Scripture works in this way. Ambedkar didn't get the memo. Sad. His own writing are a Revelation of his Manyu- or dark anger. But then the Mahabharata is about Manyu. Wrath- though 'a small pleasure'- too has its place. Ambedkar is now a Hindu God who is a minor incarnation of a wrathful type of Buddha who however has some splendid places of worship in a part of the country where Turks destroyed every last vestige of Buddhism. 

Become Stihtaprajna i.e., ‘Befitted with Buddhi’ there is nothing wrong in the performance of Karma kanda.

According to Chandogya, karma-kanda is useless without it. Krishna says,' among Upanishads, I am Chandogya'. Interestingly, in that text, Krishna Devakiputra gains something similar to Arjuna's chakshushi vidya.  

The second excrescence on the Karma kanda was the selfishness which was the motive behind the performance of the Karmas.

Karma kanda, by definition, must be gratuitous. Otherwise it is no better than magic. 

The Bhagvat Gita attempts to remove it by introducing the principle of Anasakti i.e., performance of karma without any attachment for the fruits of the Karma.

All this existed previously. It is obvious that an offering isn't really gratuitous unless this condition is fulfilled.  

Founded in Buddhi yoga and dissociated from selfish attachment to the fruits of Karma what is wrong with the dogma of Karma kand ?

The dogma of karma-kanda was already such in the view of Uttara Mimamsa. Purva Mimamsa however had a comeback of a game theoretic sort. After all, a focal solution to a coordination game has greater utility if it is informationally robust. In other words, correct performance of karma kanda too is an end in itself. Soteriology, after all, merely supervenes on Economic survival.  

this is how the Bhagvat Gita defends the Karma marga.

The strong arm of the Kshatriya protected the karma-kanda of the Rishis and householders. The Gita merely reiterates, in the manner of a Supreme Court decision, what was established as law before 'harmoniously constructing' something new which would serve as a stare decisis precedent. 

It would be quite possible to continue in this strain, to pick up other dogmas and show how the Gita comes forward to offer a philosophic defence in their support where none existed before.

No. It would be impossible. The Gita's construction is amazingly tight and economical. This is possible because it is highly allusive. Ambedkar is showing that, because he was born outside the pale of Vedic Hinduism and had not bothered to repair this defect in paideia before writing this shit, it was literally the case that he wasn't a part of Aryan Religion. Still, he embraced Buddhism- which is plenty Aryan and which even exported untouchability to Japan whereas Bali, which has Brahmins, doesn't have untouchables. Anyway, there are plenty of Chatterjees and Batterjees who write worse shite today. 

I read that in the old days, in China, an official who embezzled money wouldn't just be beheaded. He'd be condemned to becoming the local God of a turbulent neighborhood. Ambedkar didn't embezzle money. But he did short-change his people intellectually. He should have stuck with Econ & the Law. If he felt he had to venture into Religion, he should have taken a more scholarly approach. His shrillness had a kairotic aspect- but it has seeded nothing but sullen stupidity. 

Ambedkar thought Krishna was invented by Hindu counter-revolutionaries and that Krishna parrots the Buddha. 

This is foolish. Buddhism's central message was 'Give money to monks. Everybody else is fucked, unless they give money to monks and get to be reborn as one- in which case Nirvana beckons..' This was cool if you were a monk. Anyway, monasteries can be pretty useful at a certain stage in material Civilization. 

Krishna's message was quite different. Like the Vyadha Gita- its dual- the Bhagvad Gita gives you freedom in your choice of Deity or form of Faith. So long as you show diligence as either agent or principal, you may depend on Grace if you can depend solely on Grace. That's the tricky part. Some commonsense things strengthen the soul so it does so. Silly things weaken the soul. 

Thankfully, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism before his tragically early death. He may have believed that Hindus were nasty to Buddhists but the truth is Buddhism is monastic. Once the Turks destroyed their 'viharas', the Religion was doomed in India. Hinduism could survive as something passed down from father to son and mother to daughter. Jainism, in pockets, was kept alive by a mercantile class possessed of excellent character. But Buddhism needed Universities and lots of money to fund them. Buddhism will revive to the extent that India prospers as a Hindu nation. Ambedkar, now a Hindu god, may contribute to this if his people ignore his ultracrepidarian crap about History and Religion and concentrate on reconstructing a sensible type of 'Law & Econ' political philosophy which, had he been free to do so, he would probably have embraced.