Reassert Dr
Ambedkar’s Vision For India
As we approach the 126th Birth Anniversary of
Dr BR Ambedkar, we can see how Dr Ambedkar’s call to ‘Educate, Agitate,
Organise!’ is under an all-round attack by the Modi-led Central Government and
other State Governments, which are instead replacing that call with the motto
of ‘Exclude, Alienate, Oppress.’ At the same time we repeatedly see attempts by
the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to cynically appropriate and distort the
legacy of Dr Ambedkar to “synchronize” it with the Hindutva agenda of the RSS.
In the latest instance of the Central
Government’s offensive against students, students of Panjab University,
Chandigarh who were protesting steep fee hikes have been subjected to a brutal
lathicharge by the Chandigarh Police. The Chandigarh Police also slapped
sedition charges on 66 students, though it reportedly withdrew those charges
subsequently. The Chandigarh Police comes under the Home Ministry, indicating
that the assault on students comes with the approval and on the orders of the
Modi Government.
Meanwhile, the attack on other Universities
continues unabated, with massive seat cuts in MPhil/PhD research seats in JNU
and other Universities; steep cuts in fellowships and scholarship; and the
attempted disintegration of the largest Central University, Delhi University to
make way for self-financing “autonomous” colleges.
Meanwhile SC/ST students in schools all over
India are being subjected to caste, class and gender atrocities. There are
moves to forcibly saffronise education in UP, Assam and other BJP-ruled states.
Teaching is being contractualised and casualised.
Dalits all over India are facing attacks for
asserting their rights to homestead and agricultural land. Workers are being
jailed for unionizing and organizing. Human rights activists who act as
conscience keepers of a democracy are being branded as ‘anti-national’ and
facing attacks ranging from jail, murder, false cases and organized campaigns
of abuse and slander. Dr Ambedkar’s legacy as a fierce defender of the rights
of workers and of civil liberties is one that the Government’s eulogies will
seek to suppress – but it is one that inspires and empowers trade union and
civil liberties activists today.
In an outrageous insult to Dr Ambedkar, the
intrepid fighter against Manuvad who burnt the Manusmriti, Narendra Modi in
2007 wrote a eulogy for RSS founder Golwalkar in which he referred to Ambedkar
as the ‘modern Manu.’ Indeed, Modi and the RSS try to empty Ambedkar of his own
ideas and vision, and equate him with the RSS’ philosophy of ‘Samajik Samrasta’
(Social Harmony) which is a rationalization of the existing caste and gender
hierarchy.
With Modi as PM and Yogi Adityanath as UP CM,
the BJP is trying hard to speed up its attempt to turn India into a Hindu
Rashtra (Hindu Nation). Dr Ambedkar had seen this danger long ago and warned in
1945 that “If Hindu Raj does become a fact it will no doubt be the greatest calamity
for this country. It is a menace to liberty, equality and fraternity. On that
account it is incompatible with democracy. Hindu Raj must be prevented at any
cost.”
As the Sangh-supported mobs, protected by BJP
Governments go on a spree of lynching Muslims and Dalits on the pretext of
‘protecting the cow’, and the RSS and BJP leaders like Venkaiah Naidu falsely
claim Constitutional sanction for a nationwide ban on beef, it is important to
reiterate Ambedkar’s historical approach towards the question of the beef
taboo. Dr Ambedkar traced the links between untouchablity and the Brahminical
taboo on eating beef: “There is no community which is really an Untouchable
community which has not something to do with the dead cow. Some eat her flesh,
some remove the skin, some manufacture articles out of her skin and
bones.”
Last year, following the assault by a
Hindutva mob against Dalits in Una on the pretext of ‘cow protection,’ Modi had
belatedly sought to contain Dalit anger against the BJP by making an
impassioned appeal, “Shoot me, kill me but don’t attack Dalits.” Contrast this
appeal with the resounding silence of the Prime Minister as well as Rajasthan
Chief Minister on the Always lynch mob murder of Pehlu Khan, both of whom
managed to tweet their shock and sorrow on the far-away terror attack in
Stockholm! The message of such selective speech and selective silence is a
cynical one: the BJP is keen to attract Dalit votes while it wishes to subtly
signal its support for the slaughter of Muslims.
Dr Ambedkar was no advocate of blind
nationalism that brands all criticism and dissent as ‘anti-national.’ He stood
for a constant striving to acknowledge, confront and resist the deep social and
economic inequalities that undermined India’s democracy. For today’s movements
that seek to expand and defend India’s democracy, it is imperative to resist
the RSS-BJP’s attempts to appropriate Dr Ambedkar, and to assert the struggles
to educate, agitate and organize for a better, more democratic India.
A CPI(ML) Weekly News
Magazine
Vol. 20 | No.16| 11-17 April 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment