Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen to recount Congress’ supposed “sins” towards Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, while defending Amit Shah’s derogatory rants against him in the Rajya Sabha. In the process, the prime minister has cherry picked facts from history and sought to rewrite the chapters of constitution-making in independent India.
There was indeed stiff opposition from a section of the Congress leadership to Ambedkar’s election to the constituent assembly in 1946, particularly from Vallabhbhai Patel, B.G. Khare and Kiran Shankar Roy. Despite this, Ambedkar got elected to the constituent assembly in 1946 from the Jessore-Khulna constituency of undivided Bengal. His candidature was proposed by the leader of the Scheduled Castes Federation, Jogendra Nath Mandal, and seconded by a Congress member of Legislative Council, Gayanath Biswas.
After the Partition, Jessore-Khulna constituency became part of East Pakistan and Dr. Ambedkar lost his seat. Rajendra Prasad, the chairman of the constituent assembly, then directed B. G. Khare to get Dr. Ambedkar re-elected on a Congress ticket from Bombay to fill the vacancy that had arisen by the resignation of Mukund Ramrao Jayakar in 1947.
Ambedkar was invited by independent India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to join his cabinet. Ambedkar took oath as the first law minister of independent India on August 15, 1947. Subsequently, he was elected chairperson of the drafting committee of the constituent assembly, and steered the process of drafting of India’s constitution.
‘Worshipping False Gods,’ Arun Shourie, Harper India, 2012.
Ambedkar resigned from Nehru’s cabinet in September, 1951 due to the non-passage of the Hindu Code Bill which he had piloted, to end the injustices suffered by Hindu women. The Bill could not be passed because of opposition from Jan Sangh’s Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu orthodox leaders of the Congress, as well as the RSS, which launched an agitation against it.
Ambedkar was not only opposed by the Brahmanical orthodox sections of the Congress but more by the Hindutvawadis of the Jan Sangh-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The progressive sections of the Congress, on the other hand, adopted a more balanced, reconciliatory approach towards him and recognised his erudition, talent and commitment towards securing justice for the oppressed sections of society.
The V.P. Singh government posthumously conferred the Bharat Ratna upon Ambedkar in 1990. The starkest proof of which ideological-political stream in India actually abhors Ambedkar on ideological-political grounds, came in the shape of Arun Shourie’s book Worshipping False Gods, published in 1997. In his book, Shourie contemptuously lamented the Bharat Ratna award for Ambedkar and heaped insult upon insult on the chief architect of India’s constitution. Shourie was subsequently rewarded with a Rajya Sabha ticket by the BJP in 1998, and was made the cabinet minister in charge of the ‘Ministry of Disinvestment’ under Prime Minister Vajpayee.
Prime minister Modi will do well to first publicly denounce the book before pointing fingers at other political parties for insulting Ambedkar. Modi must also apologise for the RSS-Jan Sangh’s Brahmanical, anti-women opposition to the Hindu Code Bill which led to Ambedkar’s resignation from the Nehru cabinet.
Prasenjit Bose is an economist and activist based in Kolkata.
