D. Raja on Ambedkar's immortal soul

D. Raja is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India. Yet he believes in the immortality of the soul and the sacred character of places of worship. Either that, or he is simply a liar.

In a recent article he says-

On December 6, 1956, B R Ambedkar attained immortality.

Ambedkar himself did not believe in the Supernatural. Like everybody else, Ambedkar was mortal. He did not become immortal by dying. He just died, that's all. If he is immortal in some other sense, then it is because of some achievement of his more out of the ordinary than his dying. Thus his immortality, in that sense, must have been attained some time before he kicked the bucket.

It is not the case that his was an ordinary life lifted into significance only by some extraordinary circumstance connected with his death. 

Jawaharlal Nehru said that, “B R Ambedkar deserves to be remembered always by us because of his fight against social injustice. The great service that he had rendered in framing the constitution of India”.

So that's what made him 'immortal'. It wasn't the case that he had performed some supernatural type of samadhi or had been turned into an immortal God or been transported by angels or valkyries or another such creature.

On December 6, 1992, the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya was demolished.

So what? Communists have destroyed plenty of Mosques and Churches and Temples and so forth. Surely that's a good thing- if Communism is itself a good thing.

Why is this old fool shedding tears for places of worship when his creed demands he regard such worship as analogous to opium addiction? 

The demolition was a clear break from what our national liberation movement and Constitution stood for.

But our national liberation movement and Constitution stood against Communism.

Hindus and Muslims fought shoulder-to-shoulder against imperialists.

And also massacred Communists if they attempted an insurrection.

The seeds of distrust and disharmony were sown in those days resulted in Partition. Even after that horrific event, India, its leaders, its Constitution and above all the common people chose tolerance, plurality and secularism as the binders of society.

And the ruthless suppression of any Communist led attempt to subvert the Constitution. 

The demolition was yet another vulgar attempt to paint Muslims as the “outside enemy”.

Communists were the inside enemy. They were killed if they wagged their tail. 

It was the execution of the plan of the legatees of M S Golwalkar and K B Hedgewar — to cast India in the mould of a Hindu theocratic state.

But Communists were most ruthlessly suppressed by the Congress Party. The Trinamool is a Congress off shoot. It beats the shit out of Commies in West Bengal. That is why ex-Reds are now voting for the BJP. 

On December 6, it was not just a historical structure that was mutilated. History itself was mutilated, the wounds of which are still raw in the collective conscience of the oppressed of this country.

In 1912, there were about 26,000 mosques in Central Asia. By 1941, there were just 1,000. Communists destroyed 25,000 mosques. The CPI was an obedient vassal of the USSR. It condoned this destruction. Now this senile old fool is weeping copiously and saying 'History was mutilated!' when a structure which had ceased to be a mosque in 1949 was pulled to the ground more than four decades later.

It was an attempt to obliterate the legacy of Ambedkar, Periyar, Phule and Birsa Munda, who fought for justice and equality.

But it was identical to the Communist policy towards mosques and other places of worship.  It was also in keeping with Rajiv Gandhi's policy of opening the place to Hindu worship and permitting the laying of the foundation stone for a new temple at the site. Why did the CPI ally with the dynasty if it was so worried about 'the legacy of Ambedkar, Periyar etc'?

Since their inception, the RSS and other Hindutva forces have maintained a commitment to the hierarchical division of society on the lines of religion and caste, informed by Manu’s sense of purity and pollution.

How come the President of India is now a Dalit? How come the P.M is O.B.C. How come the Home Minister is not Hindu and comes from a Religion which has no truck with Manusmriti? 

It was no accident that the day they chose for the demolition was associated with one of the tallest crusaders against the caste system and hierarchy. December 6 marks the Mahaparinirvan of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar.

This may be true. Ambedkar was a virulent enemy of the Hindu religion. That is why he failed as a politician. 

Even as the students of Babasaheb, the oppressed of this country are marching to ensure justice and equality, Hindutva forces are pushing the nation onto the path of exclusion and hierarchy. At the symbolic level, the right-wing forces attempted to invisibilise Ambedkar’s legacy by remembering December 6 as “Shaurya Diwas” to mark the violence and violation by Kar Sevaks.

Muslim, Communists and Ambedkarites have failed to prevent the 'communal majority' in India functioning as a 'political majority'. Furthermore, because their leaders are useless, they have lost political influence. Meanwhile, the majority will celebrate 'Shaurya Diwas' at a grand new temple in Ayodhya. Fools like Raja will remind the Hindus that Ambedkar was just as much their enemy as the Communists or the Muslims. Sooner or later, the BJP will drop Ambedkar from their pantheon. Congress, of course, had never been enthused by him. As for the Commies, nobody needs them any longer. Let them talk about the immortality of the soul and sit around beating their breasts at the destruction of places of worship. They will die soon enough and the nuisance will abate.

The Sangh stands in opposition to the modern, secular ideas upheld by Ambedkar. Having experienced the barbarity of Hinduism, Ambedkar was firm in his resolve that though he might have been born a Hindu he will never die as one. As the ultimate rebellion against brahmanical violence, Ambedkar rejected Hinduism and embraced Buddhism. For him, the function of religion was the moral upliftment of an individual. For the Sangh, it has always been political mobilisation against the “other”.

Good. Hindus are a majority and may as well mobilize against their enemies. Why is Raja preaching to the converted? Is his Communist creed a complete sham? Along with 'immortality of the soul' and 'eternal sanctity of places of worship', does he now also believe that Manu was right all along? The mleccha and the achooth must be kept in their place or actively persecuted. Is this what he is saying?

Observing December 6, to remember Ambedkar’s vision, is particularly important in these times. The deeply problematic decision of the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya title dispute has emboldened Hindutva forces. Despite the posturing by the RSS and its ilk to recast Ambedkar as one of them, it is clear that the only interest the right-wing forces have is to polarise the society and draw political-electoral gains. Co-option is their preferred methodology. But the mere garlanding of Babasaheb’s statues is not fooling anyone. Each time portions about Ambedkar are deleted from the school textbooks, the true face of the brahmanical forces is exposed.

So, Raja is advising Hindus to dump Ambedkar. Fair enough. Perhaps the time has come to get rid of reservations. Maybe they won't be renewed for another ten years next time round. But Modi will have to go before that can happen. A new generation will have to have taken over. 

Ambedkar’s increasing relevance in India gives hope to everyone who dreams of a society free of hierarchies, a society based on equality and dignity.

Ambedkar said Communism may be able to give equality but it can't give dignity, fraternity, or liberty. Why is this old fool saying his party is hopeless? Everybody knew this already. 

His legacy and relevance is also an undying challenge to the reactionary and divisive forces that seek to perpetrate hierarchy and humiliation.

This 'reactionary and divisive force' is the CPI which has been propping up a 'Saivite' Brahman Dynasty for fifty years now. 

It is time we recognise the power structures of caste, patriarchy, religious majoritarianism and thwart their attempts at distorting Ambedkar’s legacy.

Why was it not time fifty years ago when the Soviet Union was still mighty and the CPI not a gerontacratic joke? 

The demolition of Babri masjid is a dark blot on the social and constitutional history of India.

It is a blot on Congress which presided over it- though too hypocritical to do the deed themselves. 

The champions of that act are now at the helm, threatening everything Ambedkar stood for.

But Congress and the Communists had destroyed everything of that sort when they were ascendant. You can't threaten something which does not exist. 

As citizens of a secular republic, it is imperative that we understand the enormity of December 6 and draw hope for the collective fight to ensure equality and dignity for all.

It is imperative to understand why Communism failed in India. Its proponents were not interested in any positive Economic program. They secretly believed in 'immortality of the soul' and 'sacred inviolability of religious structures'. They agreed with Ambedkar that Communism was the philosophy of a pig. It destroyed human dignity, liberty and fraternity.  The real reason people pretended to be Communists was Careerism pure and simple. Raja and his wife are the ultimate apparatchiks. But there's is a nomenklatura without any technocratic nous. It is merely a priestly caste of an impoverished and impoverishing religion. No wonder this old fool speaks of death as the only means of attaining 'immortality'. Achievements are out of the question for these brain dead zombies.