The Sangh brigade always wanted India to become a Hindu Rashtra with Manusmriti as India's Constitution. Ambedkar not only chaired the drafting committee which gave India a Constitution that declared India as a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic with the resolve to secure for all its citizens justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, but two decades before finalising the Constitution, he had publicly denounced the Manusmriti as India's code of social slavery and burned it. It is therefore inevitable that the Sangh-BJP brigade will have nothing but contempt for Ambedkar and his legacy. In his recent Rajya Sabha remarks concerning Ambedkar however, Amit Shah has ended up exposing more than this characteristic Sanghi abhorrence of the prime architect of India's Constitution.
The BJP is perfectly aware that as long as it has to operate under the prevailing Constitution, it has no option but to pay lip service to Ambedkar. In fact, it has been audaciously trying to appropriate Ambedkar by building a few statues and developing a few sites in the name of protecting his memory and promoting his legacy and even attempting to use him to serve the fascist agenda of hate and lies. But with the Constitution emerging as a potent weapon of popular anti-fascist mobilisation, first during the anti-CAA protests and then during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, with the Preamble becoming a manifesto of our times, the BJP's 'Operation Ambedkar' has fallen flat. Because of this exasperation Amit Shah could not camouflage his contempt and the 'man ki baat' came out on the floor of Parliament.
Amit Shah not only expressed the BJP's deep discomfort over Ambedkar and the Constitution being repeatedly invoked by the people, in the process he also revealed the Sangh's Manuvadi mindset and agenda. If only the people chanted the name of God instead of taking Ambedkar's name so many times, they could be sure of having a secure place in heaven for seven lives, quipped Shah after mocking people for invoking Ambedkar. An assured place in heaven in the next life is precisely the promise that has always been made to gullible people to condemn them to hell in this life. The caste system and every other injustice has all along been justified by invoking the idea of rebirth and exploiting the religious belief of the common people.
All through his life Ambedkar fought against this exploitative use of religion to keep people enslaved in shackles of caste and gender oppression. Securing justice, equality, liberty and fraternity for the oppressed here and now was Ambedkar's sole concern. And here's Amit Shah invoking the idea of heaven and rebirth to mock people he accuses of excessively chanting the name of Ambedkar! Who are these people who invoke Ambedkar? They are first of all people from India's oppressed and deprived bahujan communities who have to fight every day and everywhere for their survival and dignity. From earning their livelihood to securing any degree of reservation and representation, nothing comes without struggle and assertion of the rights affirmed in the Constitution.
Amit Shah says his viral video clip was divorced from the context. What follows his derogatory remarks about Babasaheb Ambedkar is a mischievous attempt to pit Ambedkar against Nehru and hold the Congress responsible for Ambedkar's resignation from the Nehru cabinet. This is a blatant lie about the circumstances that led to Ambedkar's resignation. While Ambedkar did voice his differences with the Nehru government and the Congress on some issues, what prompted him to resign was Nehru's decision to drop the Hindu Code Bill ahead of the 1952 elections. Nehru was in full agreement with Ambedkar on the content of the Hindu Code Bill and the urgent need for this legislation to promote equity and justice for Hindu women. Dropping and deferring the bill however became a tactical imperative to save the Bill in the face of massive opposition within Parliament and society at large.
And who were spearheading this fierce opposition to the Hindu Code Bill? It was primarily the Hindutva brigade led by the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha that had been whipping up a frenzy across the country, burning copies of the Bill and effigies of Ambedkar and Nehru. The Hindutva brigade which had been badly isolated following the assassination of Gandhi and the ban on the RSS, decided and announced by none other than Sardar Patel, India's first Home Minister, sensed a great opportunity to bounce back by exploiting the conservative opposition to the Hindu Code Bill. The withdrawal of the Bill robbed the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and Jan Sangh of their agenda and they could win no more than seven seats in India's first Lok Sabha elections compared to the Congress tally of 364 and Left-Socialist tally of 34. Elections over, the government got the Bill passed as a set of four separate legislations.
Ambedkar's resignation from the cabinet over the withdrawal of the Hindu Code Bill was a statement of protest and an expression of counter-pressure against the virulent conservative opposition to measures of progressive social reform and gender justice. It showed the importance Ambedkar attached to the urgent task of women's empowerment. This was his way of telling us that social justice is incomplete without gender justice and that the road to annihilation of caste passed through the defeat of brahmanical patriarchy. At a time when the agenda of social justice is being systematically robbed of its essential transformative and egalitarian thrust and sought to be reduced to a status-quoist exercise of social engineering, we need to grasp Ambedkar's passion for women's rights and his focus on gender justice in the battle for social equality.
The Modi government and the entire Sangh brigade have jumped to the defence of Amit Shah, with the ludicrous attempt to distract people's attention from the real issue by filing a case against Rahul Gandhi over an alleged assault on BJP MPs. This reveals the panic in the Sangh-BJP camp on being caught red-handed over their actual attitude to Ambedkar and the Constitution. We must answer their contempt for Ambedkar and their assault on the Constitution and parliamentary democracy by grasping the radical legacy of Ambedkar and intensifying the battle for social equality with renewed vigour and determination.
