Time we learnt true teachings of Baba Saheb
Today is Dr BR Ambedkar’s Birth Anniversary and the best way to remember him is to discuss his ideas and also examine what his followers thought of those ideas.
When I was in Class VIII, the Dalits in my village formed a sports club. The club was named Dr Ambedkar Kirti Club. Incidentally, Dr Ambedkar Kirti Club was given by Munoo Rai an upper caste of the village. The fact that we had a club named after Dr Ambedkar meant that the elder Dalits in the village would often talk about him and his ideas. In fact, the very next year, some Dalits even raised the question of launching a Dalit Panthar (a social organisation committed obtaining social and economic justice for all) in our village.
I had thus, in my very childhood, an introductory lesson on Ambedkar. Three images formed in the mind when I thought of him:
A few years back, I found out, much to my chagrin, that I had been taught a wrong lesson. The lesson we had learnt was that we (the Dalits) the non-Aryans had been invaded, tormented and enslaved by the caste-Hindu upper caste who were Aryans.
Ask any Dalit today (a Dalit with doctorate on Dr Ambedkar and/or a Dalit school dropout) about Dr Ambedkar’s Aryan invasion theory and most will tell you that Baba Saheb was right when he talked about the Aryan invasion theory.
But how much truth is thereIJ In his book Who Were the Shudras Vol 7, Dr Ambedkar dismisses the Aryan race with absolute contempt. On page 85, he concludes by saying (while dismissing the Aryan race theory) that:
In the same book (page 86), Dr Ambedkar writes:
“Enough has been said to show how leaky is the Aryan theory expounded by western scholars and accepted by Brahmins. Yet, the theory has such a hold on the people that what has been said against it may mean no more than scotching it. like the snake, it must be killed.”
On page 100, Dr Ambedkar writes: “In the face of the discovery of new facts set out in this chapter, the theory can no longer stand and must be thrown on the scrap heap.”
It is a real puzzle that Dr Ambedkar’s followers believe in the Aryan race theory which he himself rejected. To him, Aryan is a linguistic term and not a term for race. Worse still, Dr Ambedkar’s followers believe that it was Dr Ambedkar himself who propounded the Aryan race theory!
When late Kanshi Ram came up with his theory of Bahujans, Dalits in the north believed the Dalits-OBCs are always the victims and the enemy is always the upper caste.
Dr Ambedkar had no such ambiguity. The book Who Were the Shudra is in fact two books put together as one. The first part is titled Who Were the Shudra and dedicated to Mahatma Jyotirao Phule. In his dedication to Phule, Dr Ambedkar writes: “The greatest shudra of modern India who made the lower classes of Hindus conscious of their slavery to the higher classes and who preached the gospel that for India social democracy was more vital than independence from foreign rule.”
The second part of the book is titled The Untouchables. This part of the book is dedicated to three Dalits saints — Nandanar (Tamil Nadu), Guru Ravidass (Uttar Pradesh) and Chokhamela (Maharashtra). It is one thing to propound or believe in a theory or ideology and it is quite other thing to ascribe that theory or ideology to some one who never propounded it.
If we have to learn from Dr Ambedkar, the first step would be to unlearn what has been stored in the name of Dr Ambedkar. He never fabricated social categories and he would have been the first person to talk about what the reality is.