Congress’s Failed Attempt To Marginalise Babasaheb Ambedkar
- By : Dr Anirban Ganguly
- Category : Articles
Ambedkar has outlived and outshone the Congress and its desiccated and warped ideology.
First things first! Endorsing Dhananjay Keer’s monumental biography of Babasaheb Ambedkar, Veer Savarkar observed that Keer’s style was fascinating and that the biography was “so truthfully written.” “This life of Dr Ambedkar,” Savarkar wrote, “should be read and studied by every youth who aspires to take part in the public life of our country and it should be found on the shelf of every library worth the name.”
Keer’s biography of Babasaheb, retains an abiding value and presence. Despite numerous attempts to marginalise it, its essence, authenticity and centrality in any serious study of Babasaheb remains undiluted and cannot be ignored by the serious scholar and activist.
Babasaheb’s 50th birthday, which fell on 14 April 1942, was widely celebrated and commented upon. To the chagrin of many today, it will be useful to note that the “Bombay Provincial Hindu Sabha, by a special resolution, felicitated Ambedkar on his Golden Jubilee.”
Keer records that the main function in the “series of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations was held at Chowpatty” on April 19 with Dr M.R. Jayakar of the Hindu Mahasabha presiding and Acharya Dhonde as Chairman of the Jubilee Committee. Processions from across the city converged into a mammoth gathering at Chowpatty. Dr Jayakar “told the vast audience how Dr Ambedkar’s independent line of thinking and action had brought a phenomenal change in the status of Depressed Classes and how it has infused confidence in them and awakened the caste Hindus…”
avarkar’s was the most moving tribute and assessment on the occasion of Dr Ambedkar’s fiftieth birthday. Ambedkar’s personality, erudition and capacity to lead and organize”, wrote Savarkar, “would have by themselves marked him out as an outstanding asset to our Nation. But in addition to that the inestimable services he has rendered to our Motherland in trying to stamp out untouchability and the result he has achieved in instilling a manly spirit of self-confidence in the millions of the Depressed Classes, constitute an abiding, patriotic as well as humanitarian achievement. The very fact of the birth of such a towering personality among the so-called untouchable castes could not but liberate their souls from self-depression and animate them to challenge the supererogatory claim of the so-called touchables.”
Savarkar concluded his felicitation by conveying his “great admiration for the man and his work” and wished him a “long, healthy and eventful life.”
The Nehruvian Congress and the Congress led by his biological descendants have been allergic to both Babasaheb and to Savarkar. Over the decades, starting with the first general elections of 1952 and even earlier, it went all out to defeat, insult and to politically decimate Babasaheb. The Communist Party of India had completely sided with Nehru and the Congress in their effort to decimate Babasaheb politically. They wanted to silence his voice. Nehru’s lifelong efforts to shackle Veer Savarkar is also too well known to require reiteration. Unlike the Congress and the communists, leaders of the Hindu fold always nurtured a great admiration for and deference towards Babasaheb, they never doubted his integrity and his sense of purpose.
Dr Savita Ambedkar, Babasaheb’s second wife, writes in her moving memoirs of Babasaheb, Babasaheb: My Life with Dr Ambedkar (first published in Marathi, Dr Ambedkaranchya Sahavaasaat) how Nehru, Mumbai Congress chief SK Patil and Dange “of the Communist Party had arrived at an agreement. What we had heard then was that Nehru, SK Patil and Dange had decided that they would do all that was required, use whatever strategy suited the occasion, but they were determined not to let Dr Ambedkar win. Patil and Dange had organised their forces with this goal in mind…SK Patil and Dange played all the tricks they had in their bag. What therefore happened was inevitable – the Constitution-making Doctor Saheb was defeated. It was a terrible psychological blow for Saheb.”
During the first general election campaign SA Dange of the CPI had howled out a notorious slogan against Dr Ambedkar, “Spoil your votes but don’t vote Dr Ambedkar.” Dr Ambedkar had long exposed the ruse of communists and had spoken against their divisive and destructive politics. To him, communism was ‘like a forest fire; it goes on burning and consuming anything and everything that comes in its way.’
He had deeply studied communism and had closely followed and critiqued the communist movements and politics in India. He had seen through a number of their machinations. It always bothered him to see that communists used the marginalised to serve their political ends. Seeing this he had once written that communists ‘exploit labourers for their political ends.’
Under Nehru’s patronage, using the Congress’s gargantuan political and organisational machinery, the Communists thus saw an opportunity to get back at Babasaheb. The political thuggery initiated by the Congress and communists were planned to the last detail. Dr Ambedkar had to file an election petition citing the rejection and non-counting of as many as 74,333 ballot papers in his constituency.
The 1952 defeat, rued Dr Savita Ambedkar, “had an extremely harmful impact on his already debilitated health…Melancholy, disappointment, depression and disability returned. He began despairing of life…” Writing to her brother, Dr Savita Ambedkar—Maisaheb—lamented, “We have been told that some 20 lac rupees have been spent by our enemies to defeat Dr Saheb. This is very likely true…under these circumstances, why this farce of election? Our PM (JN) never wanted anybody of the height and stature of Dr Saheb. So, with the help of Patil, he has succeeded. Politics and Parliament have been the very life of Dr Saheb…Bombay’s results are maneuvered by purchase and transport of ballot-papers from one polling booth to another…”
Writing to RD Bhandare, his political colleague and SCF leader who also lost, a “broken” Babasaheb wrote with great fortitude, “I am sorry for your defeat as you are for mine. But elections are gambles. Nobody can be sure of the result. All that one can do is to do his best. I think in your case, as in mine, the best was done…we must not lose courage and keep alive the spirit of our people; that alone will lead to success…”
Maisaheb Savita Ambedkar wrote, that “although he was himself quite broken”, Babasaheb would “admonish his colleagues that elections, after all, were a gamble and therefore there should be no despondency” and “as before we should work for our party with greater energy and enthusiasm.” The Congress relished Babasaheb’s electoral defeat. Its machinations and subversion had succeeded. Nehru and the communists had triumphed for the time being.
Addressing a mammoth public felicitation programme organised by the SCF at the Nare Park in Dadar, soon after the herculean task of framing the Constitution was over, Babasaheb Ambedkar made a very poignant and prescient observation. He was alerting a free India and her free citizens to their “most important duty.”
Maisaheb has left us a record of that historic address. “There is one thing now that we must keep firmly in mind,” Babasaheb told the sea of humanity that had gathered to hear the architect of free India’s Constitution at Dadar that evening, “we had been looking after the welfare of our community, that, of course, we must continue to do, but along with that we should also consider how we can preserve the independence that our country has got. In spite of having gained independence earlier, it has had to suffer servitude. Earlier, the Mussalmans and then the English had taken away our independence from us. Independence is as important to the lower classes as it is to the upper classes. We have become free from slavery to the English, but it will be a terrible tragedy if we were to get enslaved again to a foreign power. Therefore, we should consider it our most important duty to defend the independence of this country.”
It was this Ambedkar that the Congress wished to defeat. It was this Ambedkar that they insulted and attempted to marginalise. For decades that attempt was relentlessly made, and yet Ambedkar has outlived and outshone the Congress and its desiccated and warped ideology.
