The Time of the Dalit Conversion

Author(s): Gyanendra Pandey

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No. 18 (May 6-12, 2006), pp. 1779+1781-1788
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4418177
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 Special articles

The Time of the Dalit Conversion

More than a reference to the mass conversion of dalits to Buddhism in 1956 and to other
religions in subsequent years, "dalit conversion", in this article, also denotes their conversion
to full citizenship that followed with the abolition of untouchability, institution of universal
adult franchise, extension of legal and political rights to all sections of the population,
with special safeguards for disadvantaged groups. It could also denote a conversion to the
"modern" - signified by a certain sensibility, particular kinds of dress and comportment
and particular rules of social and political engagement. The time of the dalit
conversion is also then the time of Indian democracy - a time of definition, anticipation and
struggle, as seen in the call to educate, organise and agitate.
GYANENDRA PANDEY

urgent political debates of the 1940s and 1950s related to the

L et me start by clarifying two terms in my title. By "dalits"
I refer to India's untouchables or ex-untouchables, question of the rights of minorities, and to the question: "Who
'acchuts', harijans, scheduled castes, to cite a few ofare
thethe minorities?" The dalits laid claim to being a minority,
names used to describe them. As we all know, the many dimen- even a "nation", like the Muslims and the Sikhs. Several dalit
spokespersons advanced an argument for a separate 'Acchutistan',
sions of dalit deprivation included an extremely low ritual status,
generally wretched economic conditions, and a denial of access to match the Muslims' 'Pakistan'. A special Scheduled Castes
to many common cultural and political resources. However,Political
the Conference held at Allahabad in December 1942 de-
clared that "India [was] not a nation but...a constellation of
term "dalit" (literally, "crushed", "downtrodden" or "oppressed"),
nations," one of which was the nation of untouchables or sche-
widely used as a term of description for those at the very bottom
of the social, cultural, economic heap, is also now used as a term
duled castes.2 Ambedkar apparently made the same sort of claim
of militant self-assertion on the part of many of those in so
1944. He is reported to have said that Gandhi and Jinnah were
making a serious mistake in holding exclusive talks on the
oppressed. Several of the submissions and stances that I discuss
in this paper will reflect this sense. constitutional future of India, for "[b]esides the Hindus and
'Dalit conversion' refers, at first glance, and in its most likely
Muslims, the scheduled castes are a third necessary party." And
usage, to the mass conversion of dalits to Buddhism in 1956 again,
and a few days later, that the scheduled castes were "no part
of the Hindu community, but constituted a different nation."3
afterwards, as well as to Islam, Christianity and other religions
at various other times, both before and after 1956. However, I
It requires no great insight to observe that the question of the
dalit conversion is tied up with the question of decolonisation
want to use it also to refer to the conversion to formal citizenship
- the abolition of untouchability in the Indian Constitution, in the
the subcontinent. One might, however, turn that statement
institution of universal adult franchise, the extension of key around.
legal The question of decolonisation has almost everywhere
and political rights to all sections of the Indian population, been
withlinked with the real or perceived threat of persistent internal
colonialism(s). It is this issue of internal colonialism that was
special safeguards and support for specially disadvantaged groups
- with all the consequences this has had for Indian society and
invoked directly or indirectly by numerous dalits, as well as by
Muslims and others, in the India of the 1940s and since. The
politics. I use it, moreover, to distinguish another tendency, which
may be described loosely as a conversion to the "modern":
charge
a is not advanced commonly now,4 but the argument
condition signified for many by a certain sensibility, particular
underlying it remains important and provides, in my opinion, one
kinds of dress and comportment, and particular rules of social/
of the more important frames for a discussion of the dalit struggle
political engagement. This is signalled in the dalit struggle
fromby independence to today.
the emphasis placed by B R Ambedkar and other dalit leaders In the dalit (as in the Muslim) case, we are dealing with a
and spokespersons on rationality, education, "cleanliness" and
population that is widely distributed over a 'national' territory,
the call for a move to the cities.1 and with disadvantaged communities which have come over time
to some kind of mutual accommodation with more privileged,
Sovereignty and 'Internal Colonialism' numerous and powerful groups, although they have done so in
a markedly hierarchical manner. The political question in such
The time of the dalit conversion that I am speaking of isan (in
instance is this: what happens to the "minority", to Muslims
its most obvious calendrical sense) the 1940s and 1950s,or
the
dalits in India (or to African-Americans in the US), if the
moment of establishment of the political in the Indian postcolony,
"majority" gains an apparently unfettered right to rule and to lord
although it is a fight that continues until today. Some of the it over the "minorities", and a sense of colonialism persists even
most

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after the establishment of formal democracy? It is in this context
that we might understand Ambedkar's comment on a new, and
in his view unjust, tax levied by the Congress government on
the lowly mahar population of Bombay Presidency in 1939: "It
is good that the Congress has revealed itself so soon and that
it did not wait till it had secured full swaraj when it would have
been so terribly difficult to remedy matters."5
The difficulty faced by such a "colonised" population is clear,
although it has not to my knowledge been widely discussed, far
less theorised. The problem with this kind of internal colonialism
is that the colonised cannot escape in a physical sense. They have
no independent territory of their own: they cannot emigrate, and
they cannot send the colonisers home. What is more, they cannot
easily lay claim to an independent history and culture: indeed
they gain their identity at least in part by their incorporation into
the dominant culture or society: 'African-Americans', "the
Muslims of India", untouchable Hindus. I shall return to this
problem at several points below.
I have referred to the claim made by Ambedkar once or twice
in the course of the urgent constitutional negotiations of the mid-
1940s that the dalits, like the Muslims, constituted a nation on
their own. At other times, he was more circumspect, arguing at
length that the dalits were "a separate element in the national
life of India", that the refusal to allow this minority its proper
representation was precisely the political problem of the untouch-
ables, that the attention Congress paid to the place of the Muslims
should not be at the expense of "the other communities who need
more protection", and that the executive power in the government
of independent India should have its "mandate not only from
the majority (Hindus) but also from the minorities (Muslims,
Sikhs, Christians, dalits and so on) in the legislature".6 With this
last argument, put forward in a 1945 speech on the "Communal
Deadlock and a Way to Solve It", Ambedkar also suggested "a
rule of unanimity" as the principle of decision-making in the
legislature and the executive. This would put an end to the
communal problem, he declared.7
In making this proposal, the dalit leader overlooked the in-
ternally differentiated and contested character of community no
less than of national politics in the subcontinent. In the event,
the "minorities" failed to gain anything like a veto power in the
political processes of the new India. In the idealism of the
moment, and the aftermath of Partition, no communal grouping
was to be permitted to challenge the unity of the nation again,
and anyone who urged political differentiation among India's
citizens on grounds of religious or caste community was on the
defensive. Religious groups (majority and minority) were guar-
anteed the protection of their religious institutions and the free-
dom to profess and practise their faiths. However, the independent
state would have no differential "political" rights for religious
or social minorities, except for a 10-year period of grace during
which limited support - in the form of reservations in legislatures
and government services - was to be provided to the most
depressed castes and sub-castes.8
For the dalits, there was an additional difficulty. While Ambedkar
and others sought to obtain recognition of untouchables as
a minority, no different from Muslims, Sikhs, Christians,
Anglo-Indians and other such minorities, the fact is that the
untouchables, outcastes, depressed classes, harijans, scheduled
castes, whatever the name we might use for them, gained their
distinctiveness - at least until they were constituted into a
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legally recognised minority - precisely from the fact of their
untouchability, that is, the discrimination they suffered at the
hands of Hindu society. Gandhi was, as always, quick to point
out the contradiction in this position. "We do not want on our
register and on our census Untouchables classified as a separate
class," he declared at the Round Table Conference in London
in 1931. "Sikhs may remain as such in perpetuity, so may
Muhammadans, so may Europeans. Will Untouchables remain
Untouchables in perpetuity?"9
In this respect, the dalits were caught in an extraordinary bind
- that of being Hindus and non-Hindus at one and the same time.
Consider the ambivalence that appears in Ambedkar's
presentation, as law minister, of the case for the reform of the
personal law of the Hindus. At one stage in the debate on the
Hindu Code Bill, he referred to the Hindu shastras as "your
shastras". To a member's interjection ("Your shastras?"), he
responded by saying, "Yes, because I belong to the other caste;"
and, a little later, "I am an unusual member of the Hindu com-
munity." At another point in the same debate, he spoke of "our
ancient ideals which are to my judgment, most archaic and
impossible for anybody to practise."10 There was clearly no easy
escape from the aggrandising character of "Hinduism" even for
a leader who had declared, 15 years earlier: "I had the
misfortune of being born with the stigma of [being] an
Untouchable ..It is not my fault; but I will not die a Hindu, for
this is in my power."1l
Paradoxically, then, it was precisely their untouchability
within Hindu society that dalit leaders had to assert in order
to try and gain recognition as a "minority", with the safe-
guards and rights appropriate to a minority in a democratic
republic. More, once the principle of affirmative action and
reservations had been accepted to give the disadvantaged and
"backward" classes a fairer chance in the life of the republic,
this "minority" status as an untouchable community was what
Ambedkar and others had to fight to preserve even after the formal
conversion of particular dalit groups to Buddhism, Christianity
or other religions. Witness Ambedkar's comment in the course
of his speech on the occasion of the conversion of October 15,
1956 - "Even after conversion to Buddhism, I am confident, I
(or 'we', the dalit community) will get the political rights"'2 -
and the demands made in recent years by groups of Christian
and Muslim dalits for an extension of the benefits of reservations
to them.
The aporia of internal colonialism is here compounded by
the need to underline a historically inherited subalternity.
Unable to leave the shared territory, or claim a completely
independent history, the colonised use every means to hand in
the struggle to gain equal rights alongside their (erstwhile)
colonisers. Occasionally, in the course of such struggles, sub-
ordinated groups have turned to the option of converting out of
the colonisers' religion and cultural dominance. Sometimes, they
have taken a step further, and moved to an attempt to convert
the colonisers. This, I shall argue, is part of the claim in the dalit
case: and it makes for a fourth sense of what I am calling the
dalit conversion.
The issue, one might suggest, is one of sovereignty - of the
grouping of humanity into (ultimate) friends and enemies, in-
cluding internal enemies, as Schmitt would have it.13 If the upper-
caste Hindu distribution of this was into something called "India"
and its "development", on the one side, and anyone who would
divide or detract from it, on the other, the "minority" version For a fuller appreciation of the challenge implicit in this, we
of it was that of a federation of communities threatened by an need to examine a number of contemporary political issues not
arrogant and unduly privileged "majority".14 If the secular directly linked with the question of the dalit conversion to
Congress leadership rendered this as a war between India and Buddhism. One of the most hotly contested of these was the
Pakistan (or India and Balkanisation), between religion and reform of the Hindu law. As independent India's first law minister,
society, science and superstition, Ambedkar rendered it as a war Ambedkar was responsible for shepherding the Hindu Code Bill
between brahmanism and Buddhism in which superstition was through Parliament. This was a very wide-ranging piece of
very much on the other side. legislation, aimed at codifying and reforming a multitude of
Hindu practices in relation to marriage, divorce, adoption and
inheritance. The dalit leader considered the measure so funda-
The New Society
mental to the new India of his dream that he cited the failure
Consistently through the 1940s and 1950s, Ambedkar and other of the government to enact it in full as the major reason for his
dalit leaders and activists called for a reform of Hindu society. resignation from the union cabinet in October 1951.
"Those who want to conserve must be ready to repair," as Among the reasons that led him to this difficult decision,
Ambedkar put it during the debate on the Hindu Code Bill. "If Ambedkar noted, was a sense of personal frustration and dis-
you want to maintain the Hindu system, the Hindu culture, the appointment at not being given a more central place in the cabinet
Hindu society, do not hesitate to repair where repair is necessary." and its functioning, dissatisfaction with the foreign policy of the
Hindus were the "sick men" of India, he wrote on another government, and indignation over the continued neglect of the
occasion, in 1944. It was necessary to generate a new life in of the scheduled castes as well as the backward classes.
problems
Hinduism. For this the Hindus could draw upon principles But
found
the event that finally led him to resign, he said, was his bitter
disappointment with the way in which the issue of the Hindu
in their own ancient sources.15 But the surest means of assuring
progress and the greatness of the country as well as of theCode
widerBill had been pursued in Parliament - lackadaisically, as
he saw it, with undue and excessive timidity, followed by a final
world, was to embrace the faith of the Buddha and its fundamental
principles - liberty, equality and fraternity. surrender that he judged to be a capitulation to the forces of
"Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. reaction
Their and orthodoxy.21
"The Hindu Code was the greatest social reform measure ever
political ideal set out in the preamble to the Constitution affirms
a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal inundertaken
their by the legislature in this country," Ambedkar declared
religion denies them." Thus Ambedkar in 1954. Hindus in the statement explaining his resignation from the central
would
have to convert to the religion of the Buddha "for their own government.
good." "No law passed by the Indian legislature in the past
"I have to do the work of conversion."16 or likely to be passed in the future can be compared to it in point
The need for social morality and rationality, a religion thatofwas
its significance...To leave inequality between class and class,
grounded in human experience and reason, that could adapt to sex and sex which is the soul of Hindu society untouched
between
andthe
changing times, that called for constant questioning through to go on passing legislation relating to economic problems
application of knowledge and reason, this is what, in theis dalit
to make a farce of our Constitution and to build a palace on
a dung heap. This is the significance I attach... to the Hindu
view, set Buddhism apart from the superstition of Hinduism.17
Ambedkar's recasting of Indian history as an extendedCode."22
and
unfinished struggle between brahmanism and Buddhism, andWhat
the explains this extraordinary emphasis on the reform of
more general meaning of the 1956 conversion, have been theex-
Hindu law? It may help at this juncture to return to the
tensively analysed.18 Ambedkar was looking for "a broadly metaphor of internal colonialism and my proposition that one
humanist and social religion", one scholar notes. He found waythis
to liberation for the colonised was by converting the coloniser.
The importance of the Hindu Code Bill for Ambedkar lay pre-
in Buddhism. Deeply committed to a scientific outlook, Ambedkar
used "the yardstick of modern science, and its universalistcisely
claimin the opportunity it presented for such a conversion. In
to reason" to "test" the different world religions. "He didspeaking
this," of the bill, the dalit leader stressed the benefits that
suggests Martin Fuchs, "not in order to disown religion, but would
ratherflow from an end to discrimination on grounds of caste,
and from the economic independence of Hindu women which
to find out and reclaim ancient moral insights - which had proved
their trans-historical validity - and return them to his contem-
was a necessary condition of their social advance. "Any one who
poraries."19 has studied Hindu Law carefully will have to admit that...there
The time of the dalit conversion was, from one point of view, are principles in the Hindu Law which discriminate between the
the time of the conversion of all of India - and the world. It was
savarna castes and the shudras. They also discriminate between
not a conversion that looked primarily to the past - to provide a male Hindu and a female Hindu."23 He argued also that "the
"memory to a memoryless people", as D R Nagaraj evocatively same set of laws should govern Hindu social and religious life;"
put it - although that was certainly part of the argument, and such a development would be "beneficial from the point of view
of the country's oneness."24
part of the reason for the recovery of Buddhism and of the history
of struggle between brahminism and Buddhism. Rather, as There is something ironic in the determination shown by a law
Ambedkar's restatement of Buddhism showed all too clearly, this minister, who had vowed not to die a Hindu, to do everything
was a conversion for the future. To a religion of humanity; he of could to bring about fundamental reform in "Hindu society"
for the progress of "the country as a whole". However, it was
liberty, equality and fraternity - but especially of equality (be-
tween men and women, upper caste and lower caste, class and not only at the level of their most visible and articulate spokes-
class); of reason; and of progress - with compassion and under-person that dalits were seeking this kind of change in social
standing and a minimum of violence.20 practices and mores. Consider the parallel example of a dalit civil

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servant who served in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) inhuman treatment given to the so-called untouchables by the
for five years from 1959 to 1964. Hindu fanatics is much worse than that given to any coloured
"In an independent cc ntry, the responsibilities of the ad- African by the government of South Africa. Every conservative
Hindu house is a South Africa for a poor untouchable who is still
ministration are not confined merely to law and order, for [the
being crushed under the heels of Hindu Imperialism.26
maintenance of] the status quo," Balwant Singh writes in his
autobiography, written a few years after his resignation from the The tone of the judgment was almost certain to lead to trouble
IAS in May 1964 and published in the 1990s. "In a welfare state for the young magistrate, as he will surely have known.
the man in the street also has something at stake and his progress Nonetheless, Balwant Singh felt constrained to put forward
and development are of paramount importance." He speaks of a brutal social analysis in unapologetically polemical terms.
the need to purge the Hindu religion of its social evils, "for a This deliberate departure from legalese deserves a moment's
house built on discrimination and hatred cannot stand and this reflection.
ancient religion should ensure a life of dignity and respectability
to its poor and low brethren.... That is not possible until it is Reinscription of Subalternity
free from the stigma of high and low and [continues to be] without
equality, liberty and fraternity..."25 Like the debate on the Hindu Code Bill, Balwant Singh's
The autobiography, tellingly entitled An Untouchable in autobiography
the indicates the major transformations contemplated,
IAS, provides a detailed account of the circumstances that and led to some extent set in motion, in the India of the 1940s and
Balwant Singh to quit what was in the 1950s and 1960s, and 1950s. These and other texts tell us something about the extra-
for some time afterwards, the service of the educated middle ordinary hopes and expectations of the time, as also about the
class's, and even more emphatically the dalit graduate's dream. sense of betrayal and consequent bitterness felt by many among
the depressed castes and classes. The dalit bureaucrat's position
He spells out in the text his understanding of the needs of a new,
democratic society and the reasons for his own clash with was the not in this respect wholly different from that of the dalit
establishment, which was to lead to his resignation from the law minister, by whom it was almost certainly inspired and from
covenanted service. The young officer's brief career in the IAS whose writings it borrowed directly in parts.
ended soon after he recorded a combative statement against "The practice of violence binds them together as a whole,"
persistent caste prejudice, derision and discriminationFanon in has written about the colonised.27 Ridding oneself of fear
- the fear of the white man - that was the essential condition
public life, and against the unacceptably slow pace of change
of swaraj, Gandhi declared. At issue in the dalit conversion at
in the new India, which had committed itself to the establishment
the dawn of Indian independence, I suggest, was the matter of
of a modern, democratic, even "socialistic" society in the subcon-
tinent - "the judgment on untouchability that created so much
the violence of untouchability and the fear of the untouchables.
uproar", as he titles it in bold type in an appendix to hisIt was a matter of the transformation of dispositions all round.
autobiography. Let me elaborate this point a little.
It will help to quote from Balwant Singh'sjudgment at some Census enumerators, as well as other observers and commen-
length. This was a case in which a poor wayside barber
tators, have made the point that there was never an easy way
showed his disinclination to cut the hair of a dalit customer, and
of separating dalits or untouchables from others among the
then gave him a hair-cut only after demanding an unusually subordinated castes and classes. In the established Hindu social
high price and insisting on doing the job outside, rather thansystem, as Robert Deliege has put it, "everyone is to some extent
inside the shop. The facts of the case were quickly established
impure, and ... impurity is a relative concept." Conceptually, he
- "It has...been proved beyond any doubt that Sri Shyam Lal argues, the impurity of untouchables - or of untouchability, as
went for a hair-cut to the shop of Sri Bhaiyan and he was a category - is distinctive, in that it is "indelible and irrevers-
refused the service on account of his being a Barar...Firstly Sri
ible."28 Nevertheless, it is necessary to note that the distinction
Bhaiyan demanded a very exorbitant price for a simple hair-cutbetween the lowest "touchable" castes and the "untouchables"
and to add further insult he also asked Sri Shyam Lal toissit not always very sharp. Nomenclature and standards vary: th
out[side] the shop to get his hair-cut by which Sri Bhaiyan same castes are not everywhere considered polluting to the exten
thought he was giv[ing] a befitting status to Sri Shyam Lal, of being "untouchable", or at any rate not in the same way
the unfortunate untouchable in the society" - and the magistrate
to the same extent - for there are different degrees of permitte
could immediately have proceeded to pronounce his judgment "touching" even in untouchability. This is where the questio
and sentence the accused. However, Balwant Singh felt the needof dispositions becomes critical.
to pronounce judgment on the wider social forces and prejudices Ultimately, one might argue, the question of untouchability
at work. hinges on the matter of dispositions - of non-untouchables toward
This is...[the] highly derogatory inhuman and mean treatment that so-called untouchables, and of the latter towards themselves an
the so-called untouchable could receive from the so-called hightowards the rest of society. This is of course what Gandh
caste Hindus in this second half of 20th century independent India. famously contended, for all his painful vacillations and amb
In the eyes of a Hindu even a dog can be allowed to enter theguities on the subject. And this is what many dalit activists an
shop but not a human being who by force of circumstances and leaders discovered, although they saw much more clearly th
ill-luck happened to be born in so-called scheduled castes. The
Gandhi that the political and economic props of upper-cast
Hindu society is a society of defeat and degeneration and it can
inspire no confidence in the mind of a sensible human being.Hindu dominance had to be kicked away if dispositions wer
Hindu society is a society of distinction[s] which have beento change significantly. Balwant Singh's discovery of the IAS
sought to be imposed upon the so-called untouchables. It is a continued 'taluqdari' mentality illustrates the proposition very
society of meanness and a storehouse of degradations. The well indeed.

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 Young men like him joined the Indian Administrative Service, of his fellow parliamentarians in the course of the debates on
he observes in the autobiography, in the hope that this "prestigiousthe Hindu Code Bill. The exchanges between other parliamen-
service would be responsive to the common man and provide tarians and a dalit leader at the height of his intellectual and
relief and succour by alleviating his sorrows and sufferings." political power, a member of the central cabinet in the first
But five years in the service "totally disillusioned" him. "The government of independent India, hailed as the architect of the
IAS was still the protector of the rich and the socially privileged Indian Constitution, and acknowledged as an outstanding scholar
and the man in the street did not count much in their scheme." and writer on a wide range of subjects, are remarkable. One is
The old order had enormous power. Caste and communal biasstruck repeatedly - even on the basis of the written record alone
persisted among the high caste officers, and "one was re- - by the deep-seated caste prejudice and spite displayed in this
minded of the taluqdari system [a particularly oppressive formmost public and supposedly most advanced of Indian political
of high landlordism upheld by the British in Awadh andforums. A few extracts from the proceedings of September 20,
certain other parts of northern India] where law was the rod1951 will suffice to make the point.
or the whims of an individual and social equality was out of Responding to the idea that the longevity of the society proved
[the] question."29 the essential goodness of Hindu laws and social structure, Ambedkar
The distinction between "their" administration and "the man had argued that its much vaunted adaptability and absorptive
in the street" is a recurrent motif in Balwant Singh's autobio- capacity had not helped to democratise the Hindu social order.
graphy: and the author himself ends up, not on the side of It thehad failed to assimilate the Buddha's preaching of equality, for
administration but that of the oppressed majority. "For officers example, while adopting a considerably watered down, and prac-
from the low castes things were...complicated. They weretically ac- meaningless, version of the doctrine of 'ahimsa'. "What-
ceptable if they accepted the prevailing...social norms" (p 196). ever else Hindu society may adopt, it will never give up its social
Even this is not the whole story. For it would be more accurate structure (which is designed) for the enslavement of the sudra
to say that while such officers were "tolerated" if they accepted and the enslavement of women. It is for this reason that law must
upper caste ways and attitudes, they were never fully accepted now come to their rescue in order that society may move on."31
socially.30 At this, Govind Malaviya, son of the renowned orthodox Hindu
Low caste officers suffered from much social indignity and scholar and politician, Madan Mohan Malaviya, and a scholar
humiliation. Any expression of discontent from them was met and journalist in his own right, interjected: "Move on to what
with the response that these were "trivial", "inconsequential" even Buddha could not do". Ambedkar ignored him and went
matters (p 197). The question we have to ask is "trivial" or on to make a point about degeneration rather than improvement
"inconsequential" for whom, and how frequently do trifling as the mark of Hindu history.
insults have to be repeated before they become historically or
Dr Ambedkar: There was, as everybody knows, no caste system
politically significant. The history of the trifling is precisely what among the Aryans...the varna system never came in the way of
we need to rediscover, whether we seek to write feminist and inter-marriages. You can find many.. .cases of Brahmans marrying
minority histories, subaltern studies, or the history of Partition
untouchable women, Kshatriyas marrying sudras and sudras
and independence. marrying upper class women.
"There were numerous...cases where the officers and other Pandit Malaviya: Which were the instances?
employees of the scheduled castes became victims of day to Drday
Ambedkar: I can give many instances if you will come to my
social malpractices. They could not say anything because room. they I have got them.
were [in the eyes of their upper caste colleagues] petty men... Pandit
[who] Malaviya: Why not now?
Dr Ambedkar: But, the Aryans never had a hide-bound social
were born to carry out the orders of the superiors" (p 197). It
system of class division that was later introduced. Nobody can
was in this context that the dalit magistrate wrote the judgment
deny that has been a subsequent change...
cited above in the case of 'state vs Bhaiyan'.
The fall-out was predictable. The judgment was followedA few moments later, the law minister referred to the charge
thatdalit
quickly by a series of charges and complaints against the reforms like the Hindu Code Bill were simply an attempt
to put India in the good books of the west, given that western
officer for his acts of commission and omission as an official
nations had strict insistence on monogamy and liberal provisions
and a magistrate. While there was not a single complaint against
him until March 1964, Singh writes, the complaints camefor divorce. Those who made this charge, Ambedkar noted, "have
fast
said
and furiously in April (p 214). He was accused of lying by the that our ideal should be, what? Somebody said Ram; some-
body said Dasaratha; somebody said Krishna...I do not wish to
local Congress MLA, in connection with his efforts to maintain
peace on the occasion of a hunger strike by a Hindu Mahasabhacomment upon any of the ideals which have been presented to
worker (p 210). He was described as unduly sensitive by the the House, and I do not..."
chief
secretary, the senior most civil servant of the province: "My Shri Syamnandan Sahaya: You will be well advised not to do so.
Mr Chairman: Order, order,
friend, your work is not the consideration. You are supersensitive
and not settling down" (p 215); and told by the same official
Dr Ambedkar: My ideals are derived from the Constitution that
we have laid down. The preamble of the Constitution speaks of
to "shut up" and not "talk like a clerk or a tehsildar" (lower-
liberty, equality and fraternity. We are therefore bound to examine
level officials, unworthy of the status and standing of the IAS!)
when he sought an explanation for the effective "demotion" every
he social institution that exists in the country and see whether
it satisfies the principles laid down in the Constitution (pp 1 160-61).
was being given through a posting as assistant commissioner
(p 217: see also p 213 and passim). Ambedkar went on to argue for the married woman's right to
It is instructive to juxtapose Balwant Singh's narrative with
divorce, saying that "circumscribe [it] as you may, ... and... I shall
reports of Ambedkar's experience, as law minister, at the hands
be quite prepared to consider any proposal ... from any side of

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the House to narrow down the conditions of divorce that have it, and at the same time part and not part of it. However, the
been prescribed in the Bill as it stands", the constitutionallyambiguity of this position affected not only B R Ambedkar but
guaranteed liberty and equality of citizens necessitated the also the caste Hindus who opposed the Hindu Code Bill he was
piloting through Parliament. Was he, or was he not, a Hindu?
extension of this right for Hindu women. "That is the reason why,"
he said, "we are proceeding with this Bill and not because we What right did this scion of an untouchable family have to reform
want to imitate any other people or we want to go in for our the laws of the Hindus? There was more than one legislator who
ancient ideals which are to my judgment, most archaic and balked at this proceeding, and challenged the right of Ambedkar
impossible for anybody to practice." That tough statement was to seek to don the mantle of Manu, Yajnavalkya and other
of course not going to remain unanswered. renowned Hindu lawmakers.

Dr C D Pandey...: We are ready to support the Bill, but we do Dr Ambedkar has...tried to take a place in the galaxy of Manu,
not want these invectives. How far the Hon. Minister is justified Parashar and Yajnavalkya by following in their footsteps, but I
in dealing with this subject [in this way?] and resorting to such believe it is an unjustified effort on his part because our traditions
invectives... have gradually evolved according to the dictates of time and
An Hon. Member: Why vilify the Hindu religion?. circumstances. They are formed on the basis of collective wisdom
Dr Ambedkar: Now, I come to the specific amendments that have experience. Therefore, the wisdom of any particular individual
and
been tabled by various Members to clause 2. cannot affect them...we cannot violate our traditions so simply
Shri Krishlanaand Rai...: The House is for divorce and monogamy, so easily. We perhaps do not even know all of these traditions.
and
but not for this kind of abuse. I would challenge Ambedkar, our minister of law, to state how
many traditions of ours, which he wants to destroy completely
Dr C D Pandey: We are for these provisions, but we do not want
these abuses and invectives. through this Hindu Code, are there in this vast country of ours,
in the Bharatvarsh. How far is it proper for him to say that these
At this point, the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, intervened
traditions which he perhaps does not know of should be destroyed?
with a comment on the "tender skins" of some members. Many (p 1280)
harsh things had been said earlier in speeches against theThe
Billreference to vast "traditions which (the Law Minister)
without objection from anyone, he observed: he could not seedoes not know" - set off against the "collective wisdom",
perhaps
why people were objecting to Ambedkar's statements in this
theway.
antiquity and greatness of this 'Bharatvarsh' - suggests more
However, an agitated Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra proceeded
than the limits of any individual's capacity. It also suggests, it
with another interjection that is recorded in the proceedings: "Weto me, the illegitimacy of an "untraditional" interpreter,
seems
have been listening with rapt attention to Dr Ambedkar, butanwhat
ex-untouchable to boot, seeking to define and overhaul "Hindu
we do not want is these invectives and reflections on some oftradition" (or for that matter Indian democracy). This is not an
the best ideals which we cherish. The provisions can be defended
attitude that has been easy for the upper castes and the tradi-
without injuring the religious susceptibilities of Members." tionally
"Side privileged to shed, in relation to the profession of teach-
conversations", as they are described in the official record,ing,
andthe practice of medicine, the matter of policing, or the
disturbance continued for a while before the house settled down administration of justice, as the evidence of the recent battles
to hear the rest of the law minister's statement on this particular
over "reservations" continues to show. I shall return to this point
clause (pp 1162-63). in the last section of this essay. Before that I wish to draw attention
Earlier in the debate, when Govind Malaviya referred to how to one other aspect of the dalit struggle in the 20th (and the 21st)
Hindu society prescribed "rights and privileges" for the chandala
centuries that has gone relatively unnoticed in the scholarly
as much as for the brahman, there had been objections from account of dalit history and politics.
various members, including the deputy speaker, on the grounds
that the use of any name that suggested untouchability was now
Multiple Requirements of Citizenship
unconstitutional. Following some further arguments suggesting
that the reference was "only to history", the deputy speaker wentIn the struggle for emancipation and political rights, dalit
on to say that "all history is not very good to mention". The leaders have laid exceptional emphasis on the importance of
exchange that followed is extraordinary. education, of refined speech ('sadhu bhasha') and manners, and
of modem dress and cleanliness. Why is it that these apparently
Pandit Malaviya: I was referring to it [the word Chandala] not
as to an individual, but as to a system in the past. However,"trivial"
I matters have commanded such attention in dalit
will abide by what you [the Deputy Speaker] have said. discourse? Ambedkar himself underlined the need to look and
Dr Ambedkar: Why should you? act like the highest castes and classes. Zelliot cites, as one
Pandit Malaviya: The Hon Law Minister asks, why I should. Only
striking illustration, the 1942 speech in which Ambedkar
because I am a law-abiding Member and not the other name thatcongratulated his mainly dalit audience on their growing po-
I had been mentioning (p l i 12).
litical awareness, progress in education and entry into state
That scarcely veiled reference to Ambedkar's origins in an institutions like the army and the police (not to add legislatures,
untouchable community, amongst people who could easily act which he mentioned in other speeches). However, the dalit leader
like chandalas (that is to say, scum) rather than like law-abiding
noted, "the greatest progress that we have made is to be found
citizens, was perhaps the lowest point in the debate. But the among our women folk. Here you see in this conference these
controversial question of the ability of ex-untouchables to speak20,000 to 25,000 women present. See their dress, observe their
for Hindu society, and more broadly democratic India, runs manners, mark their speech. Can any one say that they are
through the exchanges like an undercurrent. untouchable women?"32
There was some ambivalence in the dalits' relation to Hindu Again, to take just one other example, a dalit intellectual recalls
society, almost inevitably as I have noted: they were defined
theby
army of local leaders and activists who emerged in Bombay

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in the 1940s and 1950s, inspired by B R Ambedkar, all of them screamed one night: "I want to forget their gods, their folk epics,
with two things in common - "immaculately clean attire and their violence."38
impressive oratory". He writes of a huge procession on Ambedkar' s The discarding of the demeaning dress and speech and
birthday, in which women activists, "dressed all in white", played deference of that earlier humiliating condition is a necessary
a major part; and recalls how his own working-class parents, part of the dalit struggle for full citizenship. To Gandhi's choice
affected by the Ambedkarite movement, while thrifty about of the loin-cloth, and his advocacy of vegetarianism, manual
clothes, "insisted that we always wear shoes." They "brooked labour and the simple village life, dalit spokespersons respond
no compromise in this regard. Maybe their idea of being "up with the statement that they already have these, indeed they have
to date" was firmly linked to wearing shoes."33 had too much of them. What they need, instead, is the hat and
The dalit stress on books and formal education, on "cultured" the three-piece suit, the pipe and the spectacles. It is not an
speech and urban manners, clean clothes and shoes, in the accident, as Timothy Fitzgerald notes, that the dominant
construction and presentation of the dalit self makes a good deal method of representing Ambedkar in sculpture and painting,
of sense in the context of the struggle to transform dispositions in calendar art and in little images found in dalit homes and
- that of the dalits and that of their opponents. If rationality, offices and fairs all over the country is "not as a mendicant with
science and a belief in progress was to provide the spirit of a [a] begging bowl, or as a meditator ['bodhisattva'] beneath a
modern, democratic society, and adult franchise, elected legis- 'bodhi' tree, but as a middle class intellectual, wearing glasses,
latures and governments, a free press, transparent laws and an a blue suit, and carrying a book which symbolises the Republican
independent judiciary its political institutions, then education, Constitution and the power of education and literacy."39 The
articulate speech and self-confidence reflected in dress and struggle to overthrow the marks of subalternity must proceed
manners, were the conditions of their use. on many fronts.
"Decolonisation is the veritable creation of new men...,"
writes Fanon: "the "thing" which has been colonised becomes Inheritance of Privilege
man during the same process by which it frees itself."34
Rationality, social morality and the possibility of individual I want, at the end here, to illustrate the different aspects of
choice were. from the dalit point of view. the need of the age.
this struggle - to overthrow the marks of an inherited subalternity
The city was their location. Nagaraj writes of the motifonofthe one hand, and to re-inscribe it on the other - by reference
escape from persecution and the journey to the promised land: to one final example, taken not from the 1940s and 1950s, but
"this time the promised land is the modern city."35 As againstfrom an encounter that has occurred half a century later. This
is a public exchange in the form of letters written in 2001-02
the Gandhian advocacy of a return to the roots, the "harmonious"
village community, and the simplicity of village life, dalit to a dalit columnist writing a weekly column entitled "The
leaders have stressed the need for dalits to look to the future,
Problems of the Dalits" in a national newspaper published in
and to move to the towns where they could escape from some Hindi from Delhi.40
of the worst disabilities of the caste system as experienced To in put this in context, let me emphasise that the columnist's
the countryside. own writings are marked by some aggression, and a polemical
"I am...surprised that those who condemn provincialism quality
and not unlike that found in many political interactions
communalism should come forward as champions of the village," between dalits and non-dalits from the days of B R Ambedkar
Ambedkar observed. "I hold that these village republics [anduntil
he today. This is perhaps not unexpected given the gross
uses the Gandhian phrase, borrowed from colonialist writings, inequality and evident lack of respectful communication
with some irony] have been the ruination of India.... What between
is the two sides over a very long period; but it is
the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-
important to note that the aggression and polemic is hardly
mindedness and communalism?"36 "In this republic there is restricted
no to one side when we come to the moment of open
place for democracy. There is no place for equality. There ispolitical
no contest. This is what the letters to the dalit columnist
demonstrate all too clearly.
room for liberty and there is no room for fraternity. The Indian
village life is the very negation of a Republic."37 Among the hundreds of letters received by the columnist from
Ambedkar was hardly alone in his condemnation of the readers of his column, a large number come from dalit youth
Indian "village community". It is evident that dalits were asking advice or seeking help - to get a job or a loan, to find
expected to perform functions - to follow paths. literallyways and of continuing their education, to learn more about Ambedkar
metaphorically - that were symbolic of their very low status orin
Buddhism, and to make clear their own desire to contribute
ritual and social life, especially in the villages. Such has been
to the struggle and change society. There are numerous letters
the weight of this history that many politically conscious
from Muslim readers, which seems a little more surprising
dalit youth have sought to shun the very instruments
until one recalls that this is the period of the ascendancy of an
and expertise - say, in music or in particular handicrafts -
aggressive right wing Hindu movement dominated by the upper
that they have inherited as a mark of their lowly status. castes: in the face of the latter, targeted and vulnerable commu-
D R Nagaraj wrote of his activist friend, Krishna, for whom nities like the Muslims seek to build new political coalitions and
"the art of playing drums is linked with the humiliating seetaskin the dalits an important potential ally.
of carrying dead animals. The joy of singing oral epics is For these non-dalit well-wishers as well as for dalit readers,
traditionally associated with the insult of the artist standing
the columnist is more than just a writer. He needs also to be a
outside the houses of upper caste landlords with a begging bowl."
leader, of the dalits and of other oppressed communities. Dalit
He will have none of these, even when it is friends and activist
correspondents condemn as traitors those dalit intellectuals,
colleagues who are celebrating. "I want to forget all this,"officials
he and other professionals who fail to represent the interests

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of the dalits at large, and call on the columnist to continue to salutations"), the correspondent writes that he has been reading
lead the struggle to raise dalit consciousness and establish dalit the column on 'The Problems of the Dalits' for some time, and
power. The high stakes involved are indicated in the very forms recognises that "somewhere", in some important way, "what you
of address, which are extremely reverential in the case of letters say is true". However, he asks,
from many supporters and often downright abusive in letters from
Will you tell me whether you think of yourself first as a dalit,
opponents. [a member of] a so-called low caste, or as an Indian? If the
For some of these supporters or "followers", the columnist is answer is "Indian", then I plead with you not to divide this
no less than "today's Ambedkar" or (in one case) "more cou- nation up further, physically or psychologically. In my view you
rageous than Ambedkar". For opponents, usually from higher are capable of lifting up the dalit community of the entire country
castes (including some from the so-called "backward castes" who through [their] education, thereby contributing to the progress
do not see themselves as dalit), he is anything from "Mr Dalit", of the nation. You must endeavour to lift them up out of the
"Mr Dalitji", "Dalit Maharaj (or 'Almighty Dalit')", "The all- feeling of being dalits or so-called low castes, and make them
knowing one" and "The pimp of the dalits", to "Mr Pig", "Mr. [conscious of being] Indians. Let them know that we are not
Shit", "Dog", 'goonda, suvar, chamar, dom', and so on. More brahmans, kshatriyas, vaishyas, shudras, we are nothing but Indians
and will remain [nothing but] Indians... Our nation needs your
than a few of these letter-writers (from "respectable" back-
assistance.
grounds) heap every term of sexual abuse on the female relatives
of the dalit columnist, freely using words and phrases that they The correspondent goes on to express his opinion against
would have been careful to keep from the ears of their children affirmative action, or constitutional provisions for the reservation
(at least until the agitations that followed the decision to of a quota of educational and political positions for people from
implement the Mandal Commission's recommendations on lower caste backgrounds. "There are other ways of lifting up [the
reservations for backward castes, when the tone of the conver- dalits]." "Reservations ... harm the nation."
sations in upper caste and middle class homes seemed to change Note that this "sympathetic" reader too believes in the
overnight). necessity of the columnist playing the role of the leader of
In the letters to the columnist they even threaten him with his community, though of course not of the nation or country
anthrax if he does not stop abusing them, that is to say, attacking at large: "you are capable of lifting up the (entire) dalit com-
the Hindus and their religion, dividing the nation, forgetting the munity" and thus "contributing to the progress of the nation"
duties of Indian citizens, forgetting what "we" have done for Note the unselfconsciousness of the enquiry, "Are you an
"you", and forgetting his - inherited - place. Some of the same Indian first or a dalit first?", a question periodically asked
letter-writers, having heaped abuse on the columnist and his of Muslims in India but of course never of upper caste and
relatives, and perhaps threatened him with anthrax and other class Hindus: for they are the nation, invisibly and axiom-
forms of imminent death, go on to demand the publication of atically. Note in this context that India (and Indians) are
their letters in full and warn him of other untoward conse-
abstract and unmarked categories, while the dalits are a concrete
quences if he fails to comply. This unrepentant exhibitionand identifiable group, with identifiable but sectional problems.
They must never forget that these are, in the end, sectional
of aggression and shamelessness on the part of the "respectable"
must surely give us pause. It is a statement of extraordinary
problems, minor in comparison with the maintenance of the
nation at large - the wider community in which the sections
arrogance, of the right of masters to speak as they will, of groups
who believe they are above the law (and other requirements mustofmerge.
"civil" society) at least in their dealings with certain kinds of is the rub. The dalits are real people. the concrete product
There
people, and of an unshaken belief in the upper castes' inalienable
of a concrete history that produced not only a real, concrete but
right to rule. also an abstract "India". In that abstract India, the dalits must
Two letters make the point succinctly. One says: 'Upar bevale
Indians first and Indians last, even as they are enjoined to
ne tumhein banaya hai hamari seva karne ke liye' (The Almighty
remember where they have come from, how much things have
changed in such a short time, in a word, how much India
has made you [precisely] to serve us). The second: 'Hamarejoothe
tukde khane vale, hamare bailon-bhaison ke gobar mein sehasdane
done for them. One might return here to the question of
nikal kar khane valon, hamare mare hue jaan var khane vaalon,
sovereignty, of (ultimate) friends and enemies, and of the need
hamare saamne tumhari himmat kaise hoti hai hamare khilaf baat to rethink the design of Indian history as Ambedkar and others
karne ki...' (You who eat the crumbs we leave for you, who
have tried to do.
eat the grains you pick out of the shit of our cattle, who eat ourThe time of the dalit conversion, then, is the time of Indian
dead animals, how dare you speak out against us [or, for that democracy. It is a time of anticipation and struggle: whence
matter, even "speak"] in our presence...)? the call to educate, organise and agitate. It is 1951 and 1956,
I could multiply these examples of abuse and the arrogant 2001 and 2006. "Decolonisation is quite simply the replacing
statement of inherited privilege. Instead, r will round off my of a certain "species" of men by another "species" of men....
discussion of this particular dalit/non-dalit interaction by The proof of success lies in a whole social structure being
reference to a much more polite intervention which never- changed from the bottom up."41 Colonisation is always a
theless re-states the dominant upper caste and upper class belief violent phenomenon, with deadly effects on both the coloniser
and the colonised. Recall that Gandhi shared this position
in the appropriate place of the dalit, or any other insurrectionary
voice, in the order of things - and of progress. This particular with Fanon. So, obviously, did Ambedkar, although he spoke
letter comes from a brahman male who lives in Delhi, on the from a different vantage point and used a different kind of
eastern side of the river Jumna. Addressing the dalit columnist language. The escape from such a condition could only come
through the conversion (as I have called it) of both oppressor
in the most respectful traditional terms ("honourable" - "respectful

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and oppressed, a conversion that would produce a new social as a significant progressive achievement - cf. Derrett - but Ambedkar
believed that much more could have been achieved, much more quickly,
compact. Ti
under his stewardship, if only the cabinet, the prime minister and the ruling
party had been willing to back him properly.
Email: gpande2@emory.edu 22 BAWS, XIV, 1325-1326.
23 BAWS, XIV, 772.
Notes 24 BAWS, 17, III, 396, 411,455. By different provisions of the Hindu Code
Bill, inter-caste marriages and inter-caste adoptions were to be legalised,
[Earlier versions of parts of this paper were presented at seminars in CSDS 'stridhan' (the woman's property or belongings) were to be remain in
and JNU, Delhi; and at the universities of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Emory,
possession of married women, and daughters were to gain rights of
Yale and Tokyo. I am grateful to participants in those seminars for their inheritance equal to those of sons.
comments and questions.] 25 Balwant Singh, An Untouchable in the IAS (Balwant Singh, Saharanpur,
n.d), pp. 216 and 199. It is no accident that the book is dedicated to Nelson
1 Christopher Queen delineates some of the relevant issues well in his Mandela, president of South Africa, "the champion, crusader and liberator
analysis of Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism. In the act of leaving of the insulted, humiliated and discriminated mankind".
Hinduism and embracing Buddhism, he suggests, Ambedkar fulfilled one 26 Singh, Untouchable in the IAS, pp 224-227.
of the primary conditions of modernity: "the exercise of individual choice 27 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, New York, 1963),
based on reason, careful deliberation, and historical consciousness;" p 93.
Christopher S Queen, 'Ambedkar, Modernity, and the Hermeneutics of 28 Robert Deliege, The Untouchables of India (Berg, Oxford, 2001), p 50.
Buddhist Liberation' in A K Narain and D C Ahir (eds), Dr Ambedkar,29 Singh, Untouchable in the IAS, pp 221-22 and 216.
Buddhism and Social Change (BR Publishing Corp, Delhi, 1994), pp 99 30 One could adduce all kinds of evidence to show this. Among striking
and passim. I have taken the quotation from Gauri Vishwanathan's gloss examples that I came across in my own interviews are the recollections
on Queen in her Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief of a retired upper caste IAS officer's wife that in the bureaucratic circles
(Princeton Univ press. Princeton, NJ, 1998), p 228. of her husband, an ex-untouchable officer (whom she recalled clearly)
2 Sekhar Bandhopadhyay, 'Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics was superficially treated as a friend, but 'hamesha heya drishti se dekha
in India, 1945-47', Modern Asian Studies, 34, 4 (2000), p 903. karte the'; and the recollections of Meera Kumar, Congress leader and
3 Ibid, p 906. long-term cabinet minister, Jagjivan Ram's daughter, now a central
4 By contrast, of course, the charge of internal colonialism - or outright government minister herself, about her experience of being visited at home
colonialism - continues to be made by various political leaders and by several school and college friends but never being invited to their homes
in return.
movements in relation to a number of regional nationalities on the northern
and north-eastern borders of the territory of the Indian state, in Kashmir 31 BAWS, XIV, 1160. Page numbers for the extracts that follow are given
and the states and territories of the north-east. in the text.

5 Babasaheb Ambedkar's Writing and Speeches (hereafter BAWS), Vol32 Report of Depressed Class Conference, Nagpur Session (Nagpur, G T
17, Part III, p 214. Meshram, 1942), pp 28-29, cited in Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit,
6 BAWS, IX, pp 181, 190; XVII, pt 3, p 418; and Volume I, p 368. p 131. See also the autobiographical memoir, written at the end of the
7 Ibid, p 376. 1930s or in the 1940s, in which Ambedkar refers to the first train journey
8 Ambedkar argued that these provisions for affirmative action should stay that he and three other children of his extended family took to Goregaon
in place as long the condition of untouchability lasted, but had to settle where his father was stationed as a cashier in the army. "We were well-
for 10 years; BAWS, 17, III, pp 420, 433. It is another matter that dressed children," he wrote. "From our dress or talk no one could make
out that we were children of ... untouchables;" Rodrigues (ed), Essentiai
reservations have since been extended over and over again by 10-year
periods. Writings, pp 48-49.
9 BAWS, IX, p 68. 33 Narendra Jadhav, Outcaste: A Memoir (Viking, Delhi, 2003), pp 228-30.
10 BAWS, XIV, 270-271 and 1162. 34 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pp 36-37.
35 D R Nagaraj, The Flaming Feet: A Study of the Dalit Movement in India
11 Eleanor Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar
Movement (Manohar, Delhi, 1996), p 206. (South Forum Press, Bangalore, 1993), p 58.
12 BAWS, 17, III, p 536. 36 Valerian Rodrigues (ed), The Essential Writings ofB R Ambedkar (Oxford
13 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (1932; trans, George Schwab,University Press, Delhi, 2002), p 486.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996), passim. 37 BAWS. V (1989), p 26, cited in G Aloysius, Nationalism without a Nation
in India (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1997), p 166.
14 See Ambedkar' s repeated calls in 1950-51 for the dalits to seek cooperation
with other communities. in spite of the bitter experiences of the past;38 Nagaraj, The Flaming Feet, pp 74-75.
BAWS, 17, III, pp 398-99, 412, etc. 39 Timothy Fitzgerald, 'Analysing Sects. Minorities, and Social Movements
15 BAWS, vol 14, I, 283; vol I, 26 and 77-78. in India: The Case of Ambedkar Buddhism and Dalit(s)' in Surendra
16 BAWS, vol 17, III, 503 and 505. Jondhale andJohannes Beltz (eds), Reconstructing the World: B RAmbedkar
17 In this context, see also Swami Dharma Theertha, The Menace of and Buddhism in India (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2004), p 270.
40 I am grateful to the columnist for his kindness in letting me read and
Hindu Imperialism (2nd ed, Happy Home Publications, Lahore, 1946),
passim. copy all the letters he received, and for his permission to let me use them
18 For a recent statement, see Gail Omvedt, Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened Translations from the Hindi in the quotations that follow are mine. After
India (Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2004), passim. See also the essays some consideration and consultation with the columnist, I have withheld
in Narain and D C Ahir, eds. DrAmbedkar, Buddhism and Social Change; his name and other particulars in order to prevent the personalisation of
Jondhale and Beltz, eds, Reconstructing the World; and several sections the larger issues at stake here.
in Rodrigues, ed, The Essential Writings of B R Ambedkar. 41 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p 35.
19 Martin Fuchs, 'A Religion for Civil Society? Ambedkar's Buddhism, the
dalit Issue and the Imagination of Emergent Possibilities' in Vasudha
Dalmia, et al, eds. Charismna and Canon: Essays on the Religious History
Economic and Political Weekly
of the Indian Subcontinent (Delhi, 2001), pp 252-53.
20 Ambedkar argued that communists too could learn from the Buddha how
to bring about the "bloodless revolution" and "remove the ills of humanity". available at
"Communism of the Russian type aims to bring about [change] by abloody
revolution. The Buddhist Communism brings it about by a bloodless A H Wheeler Bookstalls
revolution;" 17, 1II, 515, 517,493. There are Gandhian echoes here, which
Western Railway
must form the subject of another essay.
21 The reform of the Hindu law was carried out piecemeal in the years that Borivli to Churchgate
followed, and many commentators have seen even the truncated legislation

1788 Economic and Political Weekly May 6. 2006

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