This article on Outlook that explores the ambivalent attitude of the Indian Left towards the great radical humanist BR Ambedkar, is in my opinion, a must read for the intellectually inclined and with an interest in exploring the contribution of history to the burning social issues of today.
In that article, EMS, a pivotal ideologue of the Marxists is quoted thus:
Symptomatically, E.M.S. Namboodiripad wrote: “This was a great blow to the freedom movement. For this led to the diversion of people’s attention from the objective of full independence to the mundane cause of the upliftment of the Harijans.”
To call the scourge of casteist exploitation as mundane is to say the least, utterly shocking and that too coming from the putative Robin Hoods of social change.
In my own gradual change to exploring and imbibing the philosophy of radical socialism, Ambedkar has been for me an exemplary intellectual role model. So it saddens me to see this great legacy and brilliant social and cultural behavioral insights thus wasting away into neglect and rites of lip sympathy
While it is upto the reader and enthusiasts of history and sociology to form their own opinions of this desertion by the Indian Left, I leave this with some important highlighted excerpts of Ambebkar's insights from that article.
It says, when Ambedkar pushed for the Poona Pact in 1932, demanding separate electorates for Dalits, the Indian Left kept its distance from the issue.
In that article, EMS, a pivotal ideologue of the Marxists is quoted thus:
Symptomatically, E.M.S. Namboodiripad wrote: “This was a great blow to the freedom movement. For this led to the diversion of people’s attention from the objective of full independence to the mundane cause of the upliftment of the Harijans.”
To call the scourge of casteist exploitation as mundane is to say the least, utterly shocking and that too coming from the putative Robin Hoods of social change.
In my own gradual change to exploring and imbibing the philosophy of radical socialism, Ambedkar has been for me an exemplary intellectual role model. So it saddens me to see this great legacy and brilliant social and cultural behavioral insights thus wasting away into neglect and rites of lip sympathy
While it is upto the reader and enthusiasts of history and sociology to form their own opinions of this desertion by the Indian Left, I leave this with some important highlighted excerpts of Ambebkar's insights from that article.
"The most insidious form of caste solidarity ignores and hides the stark
fact that caste is part of what Althusser calls the “apparatus” of
ideology and is based in material existence.
Every form of social
practice (and exploitation) in India is contextually casteist. It
creates conditions of multiple prejudice between the bourgeois and the
working class (where the scavenging class/caste goes unnamed). And this
prejudice becomes part of the relations of production as caste
introduces elements of segregation and humiliation within those
relations.
In the case of untouchables, one might in fact call it
relations of waste, where the disposing of sewage, etc, is not accorded
even the minimum standard of dignified working conditions."
"Ambedkar pointed out how the class system had an “open-door character”,
whereas castes were “self-enclosed units”.
He gave a brilliant
explanation of caste’s forced endogamy: “Some closed the door: others
found it closed against them.”
The image throws up a phenomenon opposite
to the Kafkan idea of law: the (Hindu) gatekeeper of law, in Ambedkar’s
explanation, is also the lawgiver, and he allows entry by birth, but no
exit.
Once entry has been secured in Hindu society, as Ambedkar argued,
everyone who is not a Brahmin is an other. Hinduism is a uniquely
self-othering social system, whose (touchable) norms are secured by
declaring a brutal exception: untouchability."
Wonderful analysis. Even to this date, Left has miserably failed to comprehend the importance of Dr. Ambedkar. In fact, I may say, Left believes that Caste can be annihilated only when Class structure is broken, conveniently forgetting that without attacking the Caste structure, Class cannot be shaken a bit. Dr. Ambedkar is often termed as British stooge by the Left and the Right. What moral authority does the Left have to say so, particularly, remembering their role during 1942 Quit India Movement. Right of course was always a British Raj Frontal.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pragoti.in/node/4665
ReplyDeletePlease go through this link. The word mundane is the contribution of the translator and not of EMS.
“However, this was a major blow to the freedom movement. For this led to the diversion of people’s attention from the objective of full independence to the partial objective of the upliftment of the Harijans.”
That does not change the substance of the charge that Left abandoned and did not support the cause of Ambedkar and posed futile and useless ideological objections to the primacy of the caste issue.
DeleteIf actions are supposed to speak louder than words, quibbling between partial and mundane does not settle the argument in favor of EMS or Marxists