The politics of appeasement has created many ‘Hitlers’. In other words, the system is dividing the society into multiple groups based on different identities aligned with religion, region, caste, and class and it is the elite within each group that end up benefitting while the actual grievances of the masses are not addressed, said Prof Arun Patnaik of the University of Hyderabad.
He was delivering a public lecture on “Ambedkar’s Defence of Democracy” at the Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies (NCDS), here on November 20 last. The public lecture was chaired by Director, NCDS Prof Srijit Mishra.
Prof Patnaik said one emergent aspect of Ambedkar’s thinking is that democracy is more about values and less about mechanisms. Regular and continuing elections are a good thing, but they are the means and in some sense a proxy to the ends that are aligned with liberties.
It is inappropriate to boast that India is a successful democracy just because elections are being held regularly. There have been gross violations of rights when we think of Central India or the North East or Jammu and Kashmir or among vulnerable social groups like the Dalits, minorities and women, among others. Ambedkar had been prophetic in stating that a greater emphasis on mechanisms over values (means over ends) will not augur well for democracy, he said.
Prof Patnaik said according to Ambedkar, there is the need for a clarity to distinguish between democracy of appeasement from democracy that believes in settlement of people’s grievances. It is hear that Ambedkar differed from both Gandhi and Nehru and was of the view that they both have created a tradition that could lead to appeasement and not grievance settlement. This, Ambedkar prophesized, will be dangerous, Prof Patnaik said.
He hoped that in the 125th year of Ambedkar’s birth, Indian democracy takes his lessons seriously.