Viewers of NDTV have taken to drooling over a handsome Philosophy Professor- Aakash Singh Rathore- who is married to the no less attractive and accomplished Diplomat and Medical Doctor, Devyani Khobragarde.
Sadly, Khobargarde was unfairly targeted by some stupid racist in the US Diplomatic Protection Corps and had to leave America with her husband and children. America's self-inflicted loss in India's gain. It is likely that this 'power couple', who would otherwise have been coopted by the 'soft power' Ivy League elite, will take a more independent and critical line with respect to the hegemonic power.
How will this affect Dalit Political theory? Let us see.
lf Indians were slaves under imperialism, as Gandhi and others had often claimed, then dalits were the “slaves of slaves.” This was the double-bind of the dalits during British rule. How to
disentangle oneself from a double bind? Every move that Dr. Ambedkar made attempting to untangle
himself from one of the knots of bondage only seemed to entangle him more tightly in the other.
Is this a reasonable view? The British abolished Slavery and suppressed the Slave Trade, as Ambedkar well knew. One might as well say 'If Indians were cats under Socialism, then dalits were the cats' pajamas'.
A 'double bind' can only paralyze a cretin or a person with histrionic personality disorder. Ambedkar was not a cretin. He did well for himself and did well for his people. That is why he is still venerated. Unlike Gandhi, Ambedkar was a good economist, a fine lawyer, and a thoroughly sensible man.
It is foolish and false to claim that he delayed Independence by even a single day. That was Gandhi's achievement.
One could plausibly say Gandhi suffered a 'double bind' because he benefited from the status quo- he was financially dependent on mercantile castes similar to his own- while having to pretend to change it. There is an emotional, a hysterical, aspect to Gandhi's quixotry.
It is true that Ambedkar, on returning to India to take up the position of Military Secretary to the Gaekwad, experienced a traumatic rejection and humiliation. However, he quickly adjusted to these adverse circumstances and forged a highly rational and utile path for himself, his community and his country.
In fairness, it must be admitted that Ambedkar- like other politicians of the era- was stung into adopting a highly irrational platform. Though the plight of the Dalit could only be ameliorated if the majority community rose up through education, urbanization, and free enterprise- thus weakening a 'Trade Union' type zero-sum mentality- still, Ambedkar was forced to pretend that the opposite was the case. The Dalits could rise while the Majority fell. However, this was not a 'double bind'. It was casteist stupidity and special pleading of a type which Gandhi's calling off of the Non Cooperation Movement made inevitable.
Rathore takes a different view-
Dr. Ambedkar once quipped, “If Tilak had been born among the untouchables, he would not
have raised the slogan 'Swaraj is my birthright', but he would have [instead] raised the slogan
'Annihilation of untouchability is my birthright'”.
Quipped? How is that a quip? It is a perfectly sensible observation. Tilak was a Chitpavan. When his people held power, the position of Dalits worsened. So did that of certain Brahman sub-castes. Tilak and Gokhale and Savarkar and so on belonged to a community which, for perfectly sensible reasons, was distrusted even in Maharashtra. After Gandhi's assassination, these guys where attacked by furious mobs even in their own citadel of Pune.
The tension, at times outright antagonism, between
svaraj understood as Indian home rule, and the more focused interests of the dalits, or “depressed
classes” as they were called in that era, recapitulates the profound and I believe irreconcilable
differences between Gandhi and Ambedkar.
This is sheer nonsense. The Brits decided to exclude Mahars from the Army despite the excellent record of bravery and educational success displayed by people like Ambedkar's father. During the Twenties, the Brits stood idly by as Caste restrictions on Dalits were worsened. Gandhi's Congress cronies were part and parcel of this attempt to extract a bigger surplus from Dalit and Bahishkrit communities.
Economics explained why discrimination against Dalits was increasing even against the wishes of Princes like the Gaekwad. This was a case of Trade Union type assertion of countervailing power by a rising 'intermediate' caste. Ambedkar was an Economist. He understood very well that Gandhi's moralizing was eye-wash, nothing more.
There is an irreconcilable difference between facts and worthless pi-jaw. Why pretend otherwise?
I have discussed this at length in a paper entitled “Gandhi
and Ambedkar: Irreconcilable Differences.” That paper responds to the enormously increasing
literature that attempts to reconcile the life and work of Gandhi and Ambedkar.
Why respond to it? The proper course of action is to piss upon it from a great height.
I pay particular
attention to the exemplary writings of Thomas Pantham, Ramachandra Guha, and Partha Chatterjee,
who represent three distinct archetypal techniques of reconciliation (specifically, homogenizing,
historicizing, and dialectical reconciliation, respectively).
How can it be exemplary to homogenize shite with genuine food for thought? WTF have Pantham, Guha or Chatterjee ever achieved? Why pay them any attention?
While appreciating the motives behind
reconciliatory gestures, I argue that such attempts are both false in principle (if due weight is given to
the full extent and nature of their differences) as well as dangerous in practice (given the risk of
appropriation of Ambedkar by upper class intellectuals).
Upper class intellectuals need to appropriate stuff that will make them richer. If they don't their kids won't be Upper Class. Thus prattling Fintech or MBA shite is the way to go. Appropriating Ambedkar or Fanon might get you tenure but in a shite Department for a meager amount of money.
In contrast, and to avoid these pitfalls, I argue,
quite against the current trend, that we must resist attempts to reconcile Gandhi and Ambedkar. Instead,
we must recognize and preserve their differences and keep ever attuned to their tension, and remain
vigilant about it.
Rathore is correct. Pulwana happened coz our jawans were not remaining vigilant against, not Terrorists, but some shitheads who were illicitly reconciling Gandhi and Amedkar.
So, what would dalit svaraj mean in the light of that background and the Gandhi-Ambedkar
debate?
Amedkar said dalit svaraj meant moving to Cities and getting high paid jobs in Knowledge Based industries. One way to catalyze the process was by adopting a highly respectable Knowledge Based Religion- viz. Buddhism- and getting rid of all sorts of silly superstitions and reciprocal obligations of a type which militated against Socio-Economic ascent.
Gandhi was welcome to get Marwaris to go look after cows or pretend to spin cotton. The important thing was to keep kicking him in the goolies by showing that he was stupid and ignorant and that his every political initiative immediately back-fired.
Ambedkar's vision for Dalits was one which would benefit everyone- save some elderly shitheads who yearned for a bucolic existence more brainless than that of the cows they worshipped. That's why everybody is now for Ambedkar and against Gandhi-giri of every stripe.
Is it a surreptitious reconciliation by other means? Is it an appropriation of Ambedkar to a
majoritarian Hindu cause?
Much of India has a Hindu majority. Hindu minorities, on the sub continent, get short shrift. What is good for Dalits is good for Hindus. Consider what is happening to Indian Muslims. They are going in for Business and Knowledge based industries. This is good for the Majority. Imagine a textile factory employing girls in hijaabs. I'd want to invest in it coz the thing is scalable. These girls will take a break to get married but will only have one or two kids before returning to work. Some may have exceptional entrepreneurial and technical talent. There is a young Muslim girl in every District of India who could be the next
Zhou Qunfei . Every Indian benefits if she rises up and becomes a billionaire through her own ability and hard work.
No Identity Group can't rise up through Education and Enterprise. No economic destiny is 'irreconcilable' with any particular cultural or religious heritage.
Is it not the fusion of two irreconcilables? I think not. Quite the contrary, in
this certainly most suspect and risky linkage of terms, we might actually uncover a kind of solution to,
a way out of, the impossible double-bind that entrapped Ambedkar.
Ambedkar was not trapped. He did well. One might say JN Mandal, his ally, got tricked or trapped by the Muslim League and this destroyed his political career. Nothing similar can be said about Ambedkar- though, no doubt, his death was untimely.
And even beyond that, it was a tacit
notion that seems to have carried considerable weight for Ambedkar not only before independence, but
also afterwards. As I hope to show in what follows, what I am refering to as dalit svaraj uniquely
captures an innovation in Ambedkar's own political thought and practice, and is not merely my
academic invention.
Ambedkar wanted to conserve the 'Sangha' represented by his caste (which has always been famous for bravery and academic brilliance) and developed a new type of Buddhism, quite different from that of the High Caste North Indians, so as to make it a highly effective vehicle for upward mobility. Brilliant people like Barrister Khobargarde, or Rathore's own father-in-law, did not face any 'double-bind'. They did well for themselves and for their people.
Dalit svaraj is part of Hind svaraj just as much as Patel svaraj. When a bunch of guys start doing well, it opens doors for everybody. I have a relative who dropped out of College in America to start a Motel business. This was 'Iyer Svaraj' made possible by the example of the 'Patel Motel'. At the time we thought of the guy as a black sheep. Then we realized he'd made a lot more money than the Math Professors at Cow Colleges of whom we had too many. I recall hearing a horrible story about how his daughter, who studied finger-painting at Yale, raped a young Iyengar I.T professional but refused to marry him to restore his 'izzat'. Poor fellow, the boy was completely traumatized and now does H.R in Bangalore in between worshiping Sri Sri.
Rathore, an 'Ironman' triathelete, may not have been raped by a Yalie but, clearly, exposure to 'Indian political theory' can have the same effect.
From the perspective of Indian political theory, what is important to cull out from these
arguments is this: dalit svaraj is not just a precondition for svaraj, or authentic Indian independence;
rather, dalit svaraj is the mark, measure and metric of svaraj as such.
Dalit svaraj involved fundamental changes in the Law of a Constitutional type. This was made possible when, with Ambedkar's help, the Republic adopted an autochthonous Constitution such that the Privy Council had no jurisdiction on Indian matters.
Mereologically speaking, what Rathore suggests is an impossibility. A part could not attain a property only bestowable if the whole had that property.
What is this shite about 'mark, measure and metric'? It could only have salience if first one part of a whole acquires a property and imposes it upon other parts of the whole by a process of conquest or commercial diffusion. This was not an option for dalits who were a relatively weak minority everywhere.
It was not the case that Ambedkar's Mahars could be the 'Piedmont of India'.
This holds true not simply for
svaraj in its straight-forward political sense as 'home rule', but equally for its more nuanced moral and
ontological denotations.
Its 'nuanced moral and ontological denotations' were pure unadulterated bullshit.
'Home Rule' has an empirical definition. It either obtains or it does not. What is true of it can't be true of something whose definition is 'essentially contested'.
Gandhi, in his own idiosyncratic way, was himself emphatic about this now
and again. In Young India in 1920, Gandhi wrote:
Non-cooperation against the Government means cooperation among the governed, and if
Hindus do not remove the sin of untouchability, there will be no Swaraj in one year or one
hundred years....''
Was Gandhi right? No. He was wrong. India became independent 27 years later.
A decade later, at the Round Table Conference, Gandhi again said:
Just as the Congress considered Hindu-Muslim Unity, thereby meaning unity amongst all
classes, to be indispensable for the attainment of Swaraj, so also did the Congress consider the
removal of the curse of untouchability as an indispensable condition for the attainment of full
freedom.
Was Gandhi right about Hindu-Muslim unity? Nope. Completely wrong.
However, at other times, Gandhi vacillated:
A correspondent indignantly asks me...what I am doing for the (untouchables): “Should not we
the Hindus wash our bloodstained hands before we ask the English to wash theirs?” This is a
proper question reasonably put. And if a member of a slave nation could deliver the suppressed
classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would so do today. But it is an
impossible task.
This is true enough. Only if India was fully independent could it implement the necessary legal and constitutional measures.
As far as Dr. Ambedkar was concerned, he believed that words such as these showed that Gandhi and
the Congress were insincere when they said that removal of untouchability was a condition precedent
to svaraj.
Ambedkar could see with his own eyes that dominant castes were turning the screws on the Dalits so as to extract a bigger surplus for themselves. He was a practical politician.
After Independence, people like Morarji Desai used all their influence to prevent Dalits and Tribals gaining title to land. Ambedkar knew this. That is why he had continuing salience even though, politically speaking, he'd backed the wrong horse.
But not relying on words alone, Ambedkar also set out to show in his writing that Gandhi's
words were anyway never followed through by the required action.
Ambedkar provides three main bundles of evidence. First, Ambedkar documents the farce that
was made out of the Bardoli Programme, which was a constructive plan of Congress drawn up in 1922
for recruiting members, raising funds, and spending the funds on social and political endeavors. The
fourth point of action was, “to organise the Depressed Classes for a better life, to improve their social,
mental and moral condition and to induce them to send their children to national schools and to provide
for them the ordinary facilities which the other citizens enjoy.” The sub-committee set up to implement
the fourth point of action did not receive the funds required to undertake any real work, and thus its
head, Swami Shradhanand of the Arya Samaj, resigned. With neither funds nor a sub-committee head,
the Working Committee meant to oversee the implementation of the Bardoli Programme decided that,
instead of implementing the fourth point of action, it would pass off this work to the All-India Hindu
Mahasabha. In 1923, it wrote asking the Mahasabha “to take up this matter and to make strenuous
efforts to remove this evil [untouchability] from amidst the Hindu community.” As Ambedkar
sardonically concludes his account of these events: “Thus came to an end the Constructive Programme
undertaken by Mr. Gandhi and the Congress for the Untouchables.”
Ambedkar was telling the truth. Gandhi was simply being used as a fig-leaf.
Second, Ambedkar narrates the satyagrahas at Mahad and Nasik for establishing their rights for
drawing water from a public tank and for temple-entry, respectively. Since these satyagrahas were by
untouchables against Hindus, and not by Indians against the British, Gandhi was opposed and Congress
did not lend support. The satyagrahis were isolated and demoralized, supply lines cut off
The third piece of evidence Ambedkar points to in order to show that neither Congress nor
Gandhi were sincere about dalit emancipation as a precondition for svaraj relates to the Round Table
Conference; specifically, Gandhi's vociferous objections to the demands made there by representatives
of the dalits that the Indian Constitution should contain two political safeguards: the right to “adequate
representation,” or what today we refer to as reservation; and, separate electorates for a period of 10
years. How these details were decided later through the Poona Pact has been widely discussed in the
literature in terms of creating a chasm between Gandhi and Ambedkar. Below we will return to some
of these points in relation to the permutations of Ambedkar's understanding of svaraj.
Amedkar was making truthful assertions. His understanding of svaraj was perfectly sensible and pragmatic. Why pretend this brilliant man was actually a cretin caught in a 'double-bind'?
2. Framing the Double Bind
Dr Ambedkar's discomfort with svaraj, both as a term and what it signified, is fairly well
known. Far less known, however, are the subtle ways that Ambedkar appropriated this term from time
to time over the years. I have documented 215 uses of the word within the corpus of Ambedkar's
writings and speeches. Indeed, if you follow the development of his thought from the 1920s to the
1950s, it is apparent that Dr. Ambedkar mastered a powerful rhetorical use of the term, ultimately
deploying it to justify his deeply controversial conversion to Buddhism in 1956.
How was it controversial? Everybody liked Buddhism back then. It is about giving up alcohol and meat and degrading rituals or superstitious practices. There was even a 'Hindi Chini bhai bhai' availability cascade in the background such that Chou En Lai turned up, in 1957, to make a gift of a Buddhist prayer Hall to Nalanda District.
Ambedkar's kairotic genius was to chose a South Indian Dalit path, not an 'Aryanist' North Indian route, to conversion.
But a great deal happened before that moment. To begin, one of the most articulate and direct
expositions of Ambedkar's understanding of svaraj can be found in his opening address at the Round
Table Conference held in London in 1930. I cite it at length, as it allows us to enter directly into the
crux of Dr Ambedkar's understanding of both the problems and the promise inherent in svaraj.
The depressed classes, ...one-fifth of the total population of British India...form a group by
themselves..., and, although they are included among the Hindus, they in no sense form an
integral part of that community. It is one which is midway between that of the serf and the
slave....This enforced servility and bar to human intercourse, due to their untouchability...works
out as a positive denial of all equality of opportunity and the denial of those most elementary of
civic rights....
...The Depressed Classes had welcomed the British as their deliverers from age long tyranny
and oppression by the orthodox Hindus. ...Has the British Government done anything to remove
it? Before the British, we could not enter the temple. Can we enter now? Before the British, we
were denied entry into the Police Force. Does the British Government admit us in the Force?
Before the British, we were not allowed to serve in the Military. Is that career now open to
us? ...There is certainly no fundamental change in our position.
...We must have a Government in which men in power...will not be afraid to amend the social
and economic code of life which the dictates of justice and expediency so urgently call for. This
role the British Government will never be able to play. It is only a Government which is of the
people, for the people and by the people that will make this possible.'
This is truth and sweet reason. Where is the 'double bind'?
...We feel that nobody can remove our grievances as well as we can, and we cannot remove
them unless we get political power in our own hands....It is only in a Swaraj constitution that we
stand any chance of getting the political power into our own hands, without which we cannot
bring salvation to our people.
...The idea of Swaraj recalls to the mind of many of us the tyrannies, oppressions and injustices
practised upon us in the past and fear of their recurrence under Swaraj. We are prepared to take
the inevitable risk of the situation in the hope that we shall be installed, in adequate proportion,
as the political sovereigns of the country along with our fellow countrymen.
Notice that this speech directly points to the need for universal suffrage of the type the Brits were giving Ceylon at that time. Clearly, Dalit votes would go to that faction of the elite which could and would deliver the outcomes they wanted. The competitive nature of Democratic Politics, like the competitive nature of Market Economies, would work to improve the lot of the Dalit provided Social and Institutional Discrimination was curbed by the proper exercise of the Law.
Ambedkar's speech displays forensic brilliance befitting a highly educated barrister and politician. Rathore thinks it is 'poignant' as if the guy was a whimpering, simpering, hysteric.
This poignant speech touches upon the central dilemmas of the double-bind.
In every Identity Class, there will be haves and have-nots. Thus a Political Movement involving that Identity Class will have its own internal fissure. This could involve 'emotional distress' if a 'have-not' feels obliged to propound a doctrine which is likely to worsen the position of her own sub-class.
Ambedkar experienced no emotional distress of this sort. He acted in a wholly rational manner in furthering the interests of his own Identity Class. The
manner in which he counseled his people to rise yielded great benefit to other communities. That is why Ambedkar is now a hero to all Indians- regardless of Caste or Creed.
Rathore takes a different view-
First, that the dalits
are included among the Hindus, but in such a way that they are simultaneously caste out from the
Hindu fold.
Ambedkar resolved this by taking up a Tamil Dalit's theory that 'Untouchability' arose because of a Brahmanical victory over an originally Buddhist ruling class. Since everybody liked Buddhism back then, Boddhisatva Ambedkar was showing a way by which his people could rise up while simultaneously bestowing an inestimable boon upon Indian Society.
They are excluded within, and they naturally fear that after the coming independence they
will be “included out”. Having been always excluded, dalits had earlier falsely invested hope in the
British that they should be their liberators from oppression. But the British preserved the social system
they found, and carried on permitting the untouchables to be excluded from social and civic life.
Actually, under the influence of 'Aryan' racial science, they had worsened the position of Dalits in Ambedkar's own life-time. Thus, people like him sought allies from younger, smarter, people from all castes and creeds so as to put India on a trajectory to modernity and industrialization.
Thus, Ambedkar's second wife- a Brahman Doctor- had the same agenda. She was continuing a tradition of seeking empowerment for women through education and the removal of legal and social disabilities and obstacles upon her gender.
Thus,
svaraj is desirable, despite that it recalls to mind the oppression and tyranny that the untouchables faced
for centuries at the hands of the caste-Hindus. Now, to prevent being excluded even after svaraj,
government in India must be of the people and by the people: that is, dalits (one-fifth of the population)
must be permitted a share of political sovereignty.
This happens by granting universal suffrage.
Finally, Ambedkar makes clear that the dalits
themselves must own and address their grievances – it is not to be done for them, but by them.
Wow! What a revolutionary idea! Most lawyers would say 'only the Penguins of Antarctica can do justice to my clients. Kindly grant the Penguins Guardianship over the wretched people I represent.'
Rathore, who thinks Ambedkar was weeping and speaking poignantly while making this speech, also thinks he was exposing a 'vicious irony'.
It is a
vicious irony, however, because they need svaraj in order to empower themselves, and at the same time,
to empower themselves is to achieve svaraj.
Rathore Sahib, it is a vicious irony that I need to go to the toilet in order to avoid shitting my bed whereas, at the same time, to rid myself of shit in the toilet means I don't have enough shit left in my intestines in order to properly defecate on my bed.
Kindly ponder this poignant remark of mine. It reveals also sorts of ontological nuances and double binds. Yet it is the story of my life.
Gandhi was himself well aware of the double-bind that Ambedkar found himself entangled
within.
Nonsense! Gandhi was a cretin. He wasn't aware of anything at all- except stuff like how sleeping with naked girls increases one's 'soul force'.
Not only did he describe the situation in detail, he also advised Ambedkar that there was only
one way out, which was to find salvation in Hinduism:
There are three courses open to these down-trodden members of the nation. They may call in
the assistance of the slave-owning Government. They will get it, but they will fall from the
frying pan into the fire. Today they are slaves of slaves...
This was nonsense. The Brits weren't going to spend money making things cozy for Dalits or any other sort of dusky folk.
.They will be used for suppressing their
kith and kin.
Also nonsense. There weren't enough of them and, anyway, they'd want to get paid and there was no money in the kitty for any such thing.
Instead of being sinned against, they will themselves be the sinners....
Coz muscular guys named Rathore would politely extend their necks to be slit.
The
second is rejection of Hinduism and wholesale conversion....
Sadly, the lot of the Dalit Muslim or Christian or Sikh was nothing to write home about. Ambedkar knew this very well. Still, he only abandoned the threat to convert to Islam when some Muslim leaders opposed this. His pact with Moonje had to do with converting to Sikhism or the Arya Samaj or some similar sect. This was perfectly sensible. Still, one must say, Ambedkar's kairotic brilliance in choosing just the right moment to convert to a modernized version of the highly prestigious Buddhist religion shows the 'upaya kausalya' of a Boddhisattva.
Then,...self-help and selfdependence, with such aid as the non-Panchama Hindus will render....
That was the only possible, also the only worthwhile, way forward.
The better way...is for the
Panchamas heartily to join the great national movement that is now going on for throwing off
the slavery of the present Government.
That worked for people like Jagjivan Ram but only because his family had already been doing the other thing.
Thirty years later, Ambedkar reflected back upon this advice:
When Gandhi demanded Swaraj I supported him. I asked him just one question: what will be
the position of the Dalits in his so-called Swaraj? Will our people have some standard of life,
will we be educated, will there be no harassment of untouchables in Swaraj?
Ambedkar said this when it had become clear that Congress Ministries were determined not to give S.C and S.T people their due rights in land, jobs etc. But this 'Old Congress' was losing its grip on the Nation.
But in the interim, at least up until Gandhi's fast-until-death, that forced Ambedkar into signing the
Poona Pact, Ambedkar had actually paid some heed to Gandhi's advice. For example, it was reported
that when Ambedkar affirmed that he would attend the Round Table Conference in London in 1930, despite the Congress boycott, Ambedkar said “I will demand what is rightful for my people, and I will
certainly uphold the demand for Swaraj.” That is the curious, plain statement of the dilemma: the
double-bind: what is rightful for Ambedkar's people – since they are both dalits and Indians – is
simultaneously swaraj and not swaraj.
Nonsense! Ambedkar is saying 'Svaraj on the basis of universal suffrage plus some minority protection of the Ceylonese type.' Sapru and Srinivas Sastri and Jinnah weren't saying anything very different.
There was no 'double bind' here at all. Ambedkar said 'no swaraj' had been a disaster for Dalits. He wasn't saying 'please, pretty please, O great and good White People, continue to protect us.' There had been no protection.
Chittaranjan Das had remarked somewhere that svaraj was undefinable.
Yes. He was a deeply silly man. Most politicians are.
But that did not prevent
him and countless others from impregnating the term with all kinds of meaning.
They may have wanked over it. They didn't impregnate anything.
This could be banal
and literal – such as, “purna svaraj means complete independence”– or even sarcastic and ironic –
such as svaraj is “the highest bliss and the greatest stimulant”. Gandhi's understanding is surely the
most rich and complex.
Only if you think shit is rich and complex, not smelly and sticky.
We are aware of the double-sense of svaraj as home-rule as well as individual
self-mastery, as both political and moral.
Political independence is alethic. 'Self-mastery' is an episode of Seinfeld involving not wanking so as to remain the 'master of one's domain'.
Beyond that, Gandhi speaks of it in terms of agency: India
must “generate sufficient power to be able to assert herself.” Swaraj thus has these elements of power
and self-assertion.
As opposed to shitting oneself and crying quietly.
Gandhi then evokes the image of “paralysis” as the opposite of svaraj: “What can a
paralytic do to stretch forth a helping hand...but to try to cure himself of his paralysis?”
Yup! That's how one cures oneself of paralysis, right enough. Was Gandhi really incapable of uttering a single sensible sentence?
And, finally,
there are interpretations of others' use of the term. For example, Ambedkar argued that Gandhian svaraj
was a “paradox”: it stands for freedom from foreign domination, which means destruction of the
political order. But it keeps intact the social order, which permits one class to dominate the other –
indeed, on a hereditary basis, which is permanent domination. This is the paradox of svaraj.
It was the paradox of Gandhian swaraj because the man was a cretin. Still, Ambedkar and Rajah could talk to sensible people like Moonje or the Karweer Sankaracharya, or the Maharajah of Patiala and so forth.
In any case, a new generation was rising up which saw Caste as a prison destructive of their own life-chances.
For some, svaraj suggested not freedom, but tyranny, slavery, something to fear.
That was the actual outcome for Hindu minorities in Pakistan. More generally, the departure of the Brits meant not being able to tuck into a nice beef steak or have a tot of Rum.
Ambedkar
closes his well-known “Annihilation of Caste” with words to that effect:
In the fight for Swaraj you fight with the whole nation on your side. In this [eradication of
caste] you have to fight against the whole nation and that too, your own [nation]. But it is more
important than Swaraj....Swaraj for Hindus may turn out to be only a step toward [our] slavery.
Ambedkar was voicing a fear that all young people harbored- viz. that elderly men sitting in khap panchayats would get to fuck up their life-chances. Gandhi was one such fuckwit. Like Ambedkar, most young people shed a tear for Gandhi, when he was assassinated, but also breathed a sigh of relief.
Ambedkar, therefore, fought tirelessly to: “make sure that Swaraj does not become a strangle-hold for
the Untouchables.” The dalits must be protected “against the tyranny of the majority under the
Swaraj constitution.” This motif is repeated numerous times throughout his writings and speeches: 'Swaraj would be the substitution of domination by the British for domination by the Hindus.
Without ensuring protection of all their rights, in a free India [dalits] would not be free. Swaraj
meant Hindu Raj.
Ambedkar, like other politicians, said some silly things. In this case, he was backing the wrong horse- viz. the notion that a Dalit-Muslim alliance could take power. The Muslim League used the Dalits and then discarded them. In a bizarre twist, Pakistan simultaneously ethnically cleansed landowning Namasudras while prohibiting the migration, in the West, of the 'sweeper' caste of Untouchables.
So, Ambedkar queries, in conclusion: 'What good can the Congress brand of Swaraj bring to [the servile classes of India]? They know
that under the Congress brand of Swaraj the prospect for them is really very bleak. ... If it is
[Gandhism] it will mean the spread of charkha, village industries, the observance of caste,
Brahmacharya (continence), reverence for the cow and things of that sort. If it is left to
governing classes to make what it likes of Swaraj the principal item in it will be the suppression
of the servile classes....'
Ambedkar was right to warn of Gandhian idiocy. However, it was the mathematical economists of the Planning Commission who screwed up India's path to industrialization by their crazy 'turnpike theorem' according to which a low wage, labour surplus, country oughtn't to go in for labour-intensive industries- like textiles. However, there was a political angle to this. The politicians wanted the whip hand over the industrialists who had financed their ascent.
If Ambedkar was right in his conception of politics, it must also be admitted that- like other politicians of the time- his actions were stupid, his speeches silly and his strategy self-confuting. He thought a Muslim-Dalit alliance could tyrannize over Hindu majority populations. Could anything more foolish be conceived?Still, even a smart man like Jagjivan Ram could do silly things- like get Ambedkar into the first Cabinet as Law Minister at a time when tact was the need of the hour. Still, we can always pretend that Ambedkar, whose favorite Professor was E.R.A Seligman, who also influenced C.A Beard, would have been a Law & Econ maven. That's a sort of mythology which could actually be useful.
By contrast, consider Rathore's
6. Conclusion
Gandhi, when speaking of the untouchables' double-bind,
which did not exist
had said that they had only three
options before them. From among those options, he had warned them of the dangers of siding with the
British.
which nobody had put on the table. The Brits had stopped recruiting Mahars and Dushads and Pariahs when Ambedkar was a kid.
He had also ruled out the second option, the idea of embracing Christianity or any other
religion, on the basis of the insincerity and opportunism of doing so.
The problem here was that they would lose access to affirmative action. Still, empirically, Christianity has proven to be the best option precisely because the crutch of quotas is not available. Instead, emigration on the basis of education and training completely transforms life-chances.
What he had advised, rather, as the
best option was that the untouchables could find salvation in Hinduism, in entering more completely
into the Hindu fold.
Which involves an intensive cultivation of stupidity.
Until now we have spoken only of the first and third options, Ambedkar's Scylla
and Charybdis, and the way they manifested themselves for Ambedkar and the dalits as an irresolvable
double-bind.
Gandhi was irrelevant. Moonje mattered. The deal made then was that Dalits get reservations provided they convert to an Indic Religion- preferably one which condemned alcohol and meat eating and so forth.
Ambedkar redeemed his earlier Political silliness by converting to Buddhism- which exported the notion of Untouchability to distant countries like Japan and Korea- at exactly the right time but on his own terms.
But Ambedkar indeed also had the second option before him. And he took it.
When Ambedkar was asked what advantage he would gain by conversion, he replied, “What
will India gain by Swaraj? Just as Swaraj is necessary for India, so also is change of religion necessary
for the untouchables. The underlying motive in both the movements is the desire for freedom.”
Indians got more money from Swaraj. Ambedkar, had he lived, would have got lots of money by being a Boddhisattva. He and his Brahman wife could have lectured the Dalits to their heart's content on the evils of their traditional diet and the terrible sin they commit in honoring, as the Japanese do, Ganapati and Hanuman and other such un-Aryan
mischegoss.
Ambedkar deployed the idea of svaraj to justify his controversial decision to convert, we should realize
that at that moment, Ambedkar had mastered a powerful rhetorical use of the term.
Ambedkar was imitating Iyothee Thass who, after meeting Col. Olcott, went to Sri Lanka and got diksha as a Buddhist. This was before the Sinhala monks started baying for Tamil blood.
What 'mastery' of a 'powerful rhetorical use' of the, by then wholly passe, word svaraj (which had been replaced by svatantrata) was Ambedkar displaying?
The truth is Buddhism was fashionable at the time. The term 'Panchsheel' was Buddhist. The Ashoka Chakra, not Gandhi's fuckwitted chakri, was India's National emblem. The Chinese were making nice with the Dalai Lama and Chou en Lai gifted Nalanda a Chinese style Buddhist prayer Hall.
Ambedkar had screwed up politically- but then all political lives end in failure- he redeemed himself by going one up on the Mahatma and becoming a Boddhisattva. Meanwhile, Kosambi pere et fils & Rahul Sankrityayan and so forth were making themselves a laughing stock.
Indeed, Ambedkar's
use of svaraj is a classic instance of Hegelian sublation (Aufhebung), a simultaneous cancellation and
preservation.
Really? In that case Ambedkar was not a Buddhist. He was a cretin who didn't know from Philosophy 101. There can be no Hegelian sublation in a
kshanikavada, i.e. momentary, Universe. If Ambedkar is guilty of sublating a concept, he is a closet Radhakrishnan type Idealist. Buddhists don't sublate concepts, they regard them as 'anitya'- evanescent and delusional.
Ambedkar picks up and preserves what he finds valuable in the concept, even as he
cancels and overcomes what is retrograde to his aims and intentions.
There is no concept. Just an empty name. Non-Buddhists may find value in a concept because they believe it to something permanent or prescriptive. I find value in the concept of 'Svaraj' because I believe it licenses me to smoke on Air India. I cancel and overcome everything which is retrogade to my aim and intention. But I still get slapped silly by the air-hostess who only agrees not to have me arrested when we land because I pretend to be Captain Vijayakanth and promise her a role in my next movie.
And not only was the justificatory terminology that Ambedkar used a liberating appropriation,
but the very act itself – the agentive act of conversion, the refusal to accept the paternalism of Hindu
svaraj – was an expression of dalit svaraj.
Ambedkar, as a politician, may have said and done some silly things. But he was a smart guy. His PhD was in a worthwhile subject. The 'justifactory terminology' he uses is that of Economics or the Law. It isn't some shite about 'liberating appropriation'. The guy was a grown-up. Nobody was asking him to accept 'paternalism'. On the contrary, Viceroy Linlithgow asked him to put on a frock and breast-feed Jinnah as part of Churchill's matriarchal strategy to preserve the British Empire.
Buddhism dissolved the tension of the double-bind.
Yup! That's what happened to R.D Laing when he went to Sri Lanka. That lunatic went even further out of his mind.
It was
swarajist insofar as the religion originated on Indian soil.
That's 'Svadesi' not 'svarajist'.
It was thus not a search for liberation through
British or alien ideas and practices. As a religion, its holy sites were not located outside of the Indian
subcontinent, like Christianity (Rome, Jerusalem), Judaism (Israel), or Islam (Mecca, Medina) – in this
respect, he picked up into his own conception of svaraj a trace of Savakar's idea of Hindu Swaraj. But
at the same time, Buddhism was the destination for the transit out of Hindu bondage, it was svaraj as
freedom from alien rule, svaraj as freedom from Hindu domination.
Indeed! Col. Olcott wasn't American. He was from Ludhiana and ate makkian did roti while dancing the bhangra.
Buddhism did a swell job spreading Untouchability all over India and to faraway countries like Japan.
Ambedkar hinted at this in various ways throughout his 1948 Preface that he had authored for
Laxmi Narasu's “The Essence of Buddhism”:
Prof. Narasu was the stalwart of the 19th century who had fought European arrogance with
patriotic fervour, orthodox Hinduism with iconoclastic zeal, heterodox Brahmins with
nationalistic vision and aggressive Christianity with a rationalistic outlook – all under the
inspiring banner of the unflagging faith in the teachings of the Great Buddha.
Narasu was a high caste Naidu who was influenced by Olcott & Arnold. His book was endorsed by Anagarika Dharmapala who was born a Christian 'Burgher' but became a Buddhist under a like influence. Narasu did not battle anything at all but Ambedkar, after all, was only being polite in a manner expected of politicians.
Rathore has gotten it into his head that Ambedkar was some sort of head-case suffering a 'double-bind'. This leads him to the conclusion that
Ambedkar's long search for a resolution to the double-bind took so long that one of the coils of
bondage was undone of its own accord.
This means, from August 1947 onward, Ambedkar had only a 'single-bind'. He remained a Mahar- i.e. a member of a caste most of whom were very poor and many of whom suffered active prejudice and oppression.
The other remained. The political system had changed; the
social system abided all change. At the end of his life, Ambedkar found a way out of the social system
he died. Death will do that.
that did not – to call back Gandhi's warning – take the dalits from the frying pan to the fire. This was
conversion to Buddhism. This was Buddhism as dalit svaraj.
The moment Dalits became Buddhists they became rich and honored. Buddhism has magical properties. There are plenty of very poor Brahmans. They should convert to Buddism and enjoy the felicity of a 'Brahman svaraj' comparable to 'Dalit Svaraj'. Why stop there? Disabled people experience much suffering and incovenience. They too should convert to Buddhism. Then they could save money on crutches and wheel chairs.
I don't know if Rathore is a Buddhist. Clearly there is some sort of 'double-bind' he has gotten himself into because he insists on writing hysterical nonsense. Will conversion to Buddhism dissolve that double-bind? Of course it will! Buddhism has magical properties. But only if, like Rathore, you are qualified to teach not just Philosophy but also oenology. Yup. That's right, this iron-man is a wine expert. It is comforting to think of him writing his books as he performs feats of strength and endurance while simultaneously draining a couple of boxes of Chardonnay. I am not saying it's what I want to do when I grow up, but it's nice to know it can be done.
