Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar: Ramji

Rebel Hindu Tradition against

BALKRISHNA GOVIND GOKHALE

Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, North Carolina, U.S.A.

FOR ALMOST three decades (1928-1956) Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) was an unrelenting challenge to Hindu dogma and social prac- tices. To most political leaders, including M. K. Gandhi (1869-1948) and Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), he was a troublesome spectre casting a menacing shadow over their grand national designs. To the orthodox Hindu he was anathema, an "untouchable" who persistently refused "to keep his place." To millions of his followers he was a "father figure," Babasaheb as he was fondly and reverently addressed, a veritable saviour vindicating their human rights and heroically striving to lift them out of the mire of poverty and degradation into which the Hindu social system had cast them. Cram-full of facts, vitriolic in his denunciations, unbending in his personal and general likes and dislikes, tireless in his energy and prophetic in his pronouncements, Ambedkar symbolised a unique phenomenon in the political and social history of modern . It is too early to deliver definitive judgment on the longevity and vitality of Ambedkar's impact upon . In its characteristic way Hinduism epitomised him as its "modern Manu" and promptly laid his ghost to rest. Ambedkar had challenged Hinduism where it was most vulnerable, the caste system and its correlate - untouchability. The bastions of the system have begun to show cracks, but it will be a long time before they will crumble if recent studies are any indication.' As his final riposte, Ambedkar led millions of his followers into a new religion (Buddhism) in October 1956 in the hope that they would escape the tyranny of the caste system thereby. But in hundreds of villages in they simply seem to have exchanged one label for 2 another, for now they are taken to be "untouchable" Buddhists !2

1 For such studies see Irawati Karve, Hindu -AnInterpretation (Poona, 1961), pp. 159- 161 ; Devabrata Bose, The Problems of Indian Society(Bombay, 1968), pp. 184 ff.; André Betéille, Castes: Old and New (Bombay, 1969), pp. 95-102; James Silverberg (Ed.), Social Mobility In The Caste System In India (The Hague, 1968), pp. 135-136; Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne H. Rudolph, The Modernityof Tradition (Chicago, 1967), pp. 129 ff. 2 See Eleanor Zelliot, "The Revival of Buddhism in India" in Asia : A Journal Published by the Asia Society (New York, 1968), No. 10; Winter, 1968, pp. 33-45, especially p. 45. 14

The phenomenon called Ambedkar, however, cannot be dismissed as inconsequential, a starry flash of lightning illumining the darkness covering the lower orders of Hindu society. His life and leadership symbolise something new in the history of Hinduism and India. The dimensions of his challenge to Hinduism were altogether of a new order. There have been cries of protest in behalf of the millions of the suppressed sections of Hindu society in the past; witness the impressive list of "saint-poets" of Maharashtra for such protests. These were Namadeva (1270-1350), a tailor; Narahari, a goldsmith; Sawanta, the gardener; Gora, the potter; and most of all Chokha, the Mahar (the caste to which Ambedkar belonged). These occupy a place of pride in the Bhakti tradition, 3 though the bases of their protests were entirely different. They took their stand on the metaphysical and theological assumption of the Bhakti tradition securely moored in the Vedanta and called upon God to redress wrongs done to their fellow humans by the priests and other entrenched religious and social interests. They meekly stood outside the temple doors and patiently waited for someone to pour water into their joined palms to quench their thirst on a searing day. Ambedkar was no meek supplicant; he led his followers to the shores of a forbidden lake to draw water for themselves and attempted to push himself through the temple doors into the forbidden sanctum. He demanded his rights in terms of the natural rights of man, in terms of social justice and ethical integrity. He was the first among the un- touchables to articulate the tragedy and hopes of his people in terms of modern thought and modernistic forms of political and social action. He exposed the tyrannies perpetrated not only by the Brahmans but also the non-Brahman upper castes such as the Marathas (the dominant caste in rural Maharashtra) and, adroitly using his political strength rooted in the unflinching devotion of his followers, put the untouchables on the political map of India and on the collective conscience of Hindu leadership, liberal and orthodox. In a sense, therefore, Ambedkar's rebellion against Hinduism was the symbol of the impact of modernity on Hindu tradition.

II

Ambedkar's career may be briefly summarized at the outset. He was born in the Mahar caste, a rather numerous (about three million in numbers) untouchable caste in Maharashtra, parts of Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. He was born in the family of the Sakpals (the name Ambedkar was acquired either from the native family village of Ambavade or "gifted" to him by a Brahman teacher) two generations of whom had taken to military service under the British. Enrollment in the British-Indian army was used as a means of upward economic and social mobility by many Mahars during the second half of the nineteenth and first four decades of the twentieth

3 For details see H. S. Shenolikar, PracheenMarathi VangmayancheSwaroop (Kolhapur, 1962), pp. 72 ff.; D. K. Kelkar, Marathi SahityancheSimhavalokana (Poona, 1963), pp. 95 ff.