Ambedkar, who called on the victims of the caste system to abandon outright the Hindu faith that codified and enshrined their status as subhumans. Ambedkar himself adopted Buddhism. Untouchables also tended to reject the condescension implicit in the Harijan designation, preferring to go under the title of Dalits , which modern India has adopted.
Gandhi and Ambedkar quarreled repeatedly over the question of special political representation for those at the despised bottom of the caste ladder; Ambedkar supported it, suspecting that Congress Party rule would be another name under which high-caste Hindus would become the successors of the British Raj. If the Dalits had good reason to fear that they would be subordinated to Hindu-majority tyranny after the attainment of self-rule, the Muslims of the subcontinent equally dreaded a similar outcome.
I had not known that, in the early s, Gandhi reposed his whole political weight in favor of the Indian Muslim demand for the restoration of the Ottoman caliphate as the guarantor of Muslim holy places. This so-called Khilafat movement, while conveniently anti-British in its implications, was by definition taking place in the realm of illusion, since by that time even the Turks themselves had rejected the rule of the sultan.
But it gave Gandhi a platform to address sectarian and traditionalist Muslim throngs, and in his own eyes, this apparently trumped its quixotry. Gandhi cannot escape culpability for being the only major preacher of appeasement who never changed his mind.
The overused word is here fully applicable, as Gandhi entreated the British to let the Nazis. In contrast, Ambedkar argues that modern machinery enables humans to have leisure. And leisure, in turn, is the primary precondition for culture and civilisation to thrive, which make human life worthy of its existence. Ambedkar, being a trained economist, was highly sceptical of the rich protecting the interests of the poor.
Photo: PTI. Ambedkar declared Gandhian philosophy to be suited only for the privileged leisure class, which is vindicated by the class status of the present torch-bearers of Gandhism. Ambedkar dissects and concludes that the ideals of Gandhi are ill-suited for the aspirations of a democratic society.
The foundational conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi are not merely personal, but rather they epitomise the fault lines of caste that run wide and deep across the social fabric of India. Today, there can be no doubt that we need more of Gandhi and of course, we need more of Ambedkar. We need Gandhi to learn how a Brahminised consciousness operates regardless of its best intentions.
Mahatma Gandhi in London. Mahatma Gandhi Pietermaritzburg Station. Mahatma Gandhi Ambulance Corps. Mahatma Gandhi And Leo Tolstoy. Mahatma Gandhi Book Hind Swaraj. Mahatma Gandhi Tolstoy Farm.
Mahatma Gandhi Satyagraha Ashram at Kochrab. Mahatma Gandhi Day Fast. Mahatma Gandhi At the Lahore Session. Mahatma Gandhi Time Magazine. Mahatma Gandhi With Jawaharlal Nehru. Kasturba Gandhi Death. Mahatma Gandhi And Nobel Prize.
The author of the address has quoted chapter and verse in proof of his three-fold indictment—inhuman conduct itself, the unabashed justification for it on the part of the perpetrators, and the subsequent discovery that the justification was warranted by their scriptures. Dr Ambedkar is not alone in his disgust. He is its most uncompromising exponent and one of the ablest among them. He is certainly the most irreconcilable among them.
Thank God, in the front rank of the leaders he is singularly alone, and as yet but a representative of a very small minority. But what he says is voiced with more or less vehemence by many leaders belonging to the depressed classes. Only the latter, for instance Rao Bahadur M. Rajah and Dewan Bahadur Srinivasan , not only do not threaten to give up Hinduism, but find enough warmth in it to compensate for the shameful persecution to which the vast mass of Harijans are exposed.
Ambedkar has to say. The Savarnas have to correct their belief and their conduct. Above all, those who are [preeminent] by their learning and influence among the Savarnas have to give an authoritative interpretation of the scriptures. The questions that Dr. Ambedkar's indictment suggests are:.
Are all the printed texts to be regarded as an integral part of them, or is any part of them to be rejected as unauthorised interpolation? What is the answer of such accepted and expurgated scriptures on the question of untouchability, caste, equality of status, inter-dining and intermarriages?
These have been all examined by Dr. Ambedkar in his address. I must reserve for the next issue my own answer to these questions and a statement of the at least some manifest flaws in Dr. Ambedkar's thesis. Harijan , July 11, Nor is this a finite list. Every age or even generation has added to the list. It follows, therefore, that everything printed or even found handwritten is not scripture.
The Smritis , for instance, contain much that can never be accepted as the word of God. Thus many of the texts that Dr. Ambedkar quotes from the Smritis cannot be accepted as authentic.
The scriptures, properly so-called, can only be concerned with eternal verities and must appeal to any conscience, i. Nothing can be accepted as the word of God which cannot be tested by reason or be capable of being spiritually experienced.
0コメント