The Week India – June 30, 2019

62 THE WEEK • JUNE 30, 2019

W

hen I was in school final in 1969, Ma-

hatma Gandhi’s 100th birthday was

celebrated with visible propaganda. As

school children, we enjoyed that celebration. But at

an advanced age of 66 I have to assess his role in our

lives now. By ‘our’ I mean in the life of the dalit-bahu-

jan mass, who constitute the majority of Indians.

One visible change I see is that in 1969

there was no competition to Gandhi’s

moral and socio-spiritual leadership and

his Mahatmagiri. But by 2019, Dr B.R.

Ambedkar had challenged him. Ambed-

kar later acquired the status of ‘Father of

the Constitution’ by disturbing Gan-

dhi’s status of the ‘Father of the Nation’,

though title is with him.

By 1969 ‘harijan’, the name that

Gandhi had given to the untouchables

of India, had become both popular and

legally and socially accepted name. But

the dalit movements over a period of

time successfully fought to erase that

name from the Indian diction.

While the constitutionally valid name

Scheduled Castes is in our diction, the

concept dalit has become a new name

of identity, and Ambedkar has acquired

the status of a prophet, as Navayana

Buddhist, whose spiritual and socio-

political identity forced even the BJP and

the RSS to give him more visible place

than Gandhi in day-to-day discourses.

The Congress is in a crisis because

for a long time it ignored Ambedkar,

and only Gandhi and Nehru were given

the highest status. Now they, too, give

Ambedkar a respectable position, as the

dalits have forced them to.

Gandhi was not a caste abolitionist.

He was an abolitionist of untouchability.

Both the Congress and BJP/RSS remain

Gandhians even today on the question

of caste abolition.

Both the BJP and the Congress are

trying to address the untouchability

issue, but not the caste hierarchy. Their

commitment to SC/ST reservation and

the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled

Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act tells

about their position.

Gandhi was against abolition of caste

and varna order because he knew that

the caste/varna institution is the soul of

Hinduism. The RSS/BJP share this view

of Gandhi, hence they try to use their

power in Delhi to subtly send that mes-

sage by giving a bigger celebration to his

150th birth anniversary than what Indira

Gandhi’s Congress did in 1969.

CORRECTING

THE PAST

Indian dalit-bahujan youth see Gandhi

as a figure of the past and Ambedkar

as the figure of the future

BROKEN

IDOL

Gandhi collecting

donations for

harijan fund at

a train station

in1945

KANCHA ILAIAH

SHEPHERD

Political theorist, social

activist and author

DINODIA

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