DR J K Saroha 1
DR J K Saroha 1
DR J K Saroha 1
Abstract
The political philosophy of Ambedkar may help in renegotiating the crisis of
western political theory in particular and leading the struggles of the masses
in general. One can see Ambedkar’s association with the grand political
streams such as liberal, radical or conservative through his writings. At same
time he differentiates himself with these three dominant political traditions.
Ambedkar’s philosophy is essentially ethical and religious. For him, social
precedes the political. Social morality is the central to his political
philosophy.He is neither fierce individualist nor conservative communitarian.
His conceptions of democracy internalises the principles of equality, liberty,
and fraternity in its true spirit. Though there are many attempts but one may
find difficulty in locating him in dominant political traditions. Often this
may leads to misunderstanding of the essence of Ambedkar. Ambedkar’s
political thought demands new language to understand the complexity of his
thought.
Introduction
Ambedkar has emerged as a major political philosopher with the rise of dalit
movement in contemporary times. There are several attempts to understand
Ambedkar and his philosophy. Confusion prevails among scholars due to the
existence of diverse, and sometimes, contradictory theoretical assessment of
Ambedkar. The social context of the scholars and their subjective positions
play major role in the assessment of the thinker and very often the opinions
of scholars evoke extreme reactions which either elevate or demean
Ambedkar. Though he had a great influence on Indian politics from the
nationalist movement onwards, till eighties, there has been not much
academic debate on Ambedkar. The communities of knowledge and centres
of power either ignored or deliberately marginalized him as a thinker and
social scientist. Ambedkar is nowhere mentioned in the contemporary Indian
simple terms, new material conditions gave birth to new social relationships
and new philosophy was evolved to afford a rational justification for the new
world which had come into being. This new philosophy became known as
liberalism. Liberalism acquired different flavors in different national cultures.
The difficulties in liberal theory lie in its basic foundations of seventeenth
century individualism and its quality of possessiveness. The possessive
quality lies in the conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of
his own person or capacities owing nothing to society. The individual was
seen neither as a moral whole, nor as a part of a larger social whole, but as a
proprietor of himself. The basic assumption of possessive individualism
–that man is free and human by virtue of his sole proprietorship of his own
person, and that human society is essentially a series of market relations,
were deeply embedded in seventeenth century foundations. The
inconsistency lies inherently in the market society itself. Market society
automatically brings the class differentiations. The propertied class would
like to hold power over the subordinate classes. Men no longer saw them
selves fundamentally equal in an inevitable subjection to the determination
of market. Alternatives emerged for the market system. Articulation of
proletarian politics gave a serious blow to the liberal politics. There are
altogether different assumptions about man and society. The community has
replaced individual. Marxist theory aims at the radical change in society and
its human relations. Human society has seen from the perspective of the
class considers human being as primarily a producer. His relations are
determined by his involvement in social production. Other than the Marxist
notion there is a conservative political theory would like to see society from
the point of view of community. Conservatism has reverence for tradition,
religion and age old custom. Edmund Burke is the one of the examples for
conservative tradition. Burke more than any thinker of eighteenth century
approached the political tradition with a sense of religious reverence. The
conservative view of politics is known as politics of tradition. The state in
particular and society in general must operate with respect to traditions and
customs. The rights of the groups are acknowledged in that particular society.
Conservative perspective works within the limits of the given order
accepting forms of political action within the structural framework of
existing institutions. Conservative theory of politics is known as politics of
imperfection. It finds limitations with human beings and believes that human
beings will be unable to create a social order through their own spontaneous
efforts. People are inherently greedy and selfish. To restrain them there is a
need for a state. The power is state. State plays a central role in conservative
thought. It is the backbone of social order and authority, the guarantor of
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Ambedkar is influenced by all the major political traditions of his times. His
political thought has emerged from the three grand traditions of political
thought, i.e. liberal, conservative and radical. The unique feature about him
is that he has transcended all these traditions. He was influenced by the ideas
of John Dewey, the pragmatic American and the teacher of him. The Fabian
Edwin R. A. Seligman had considerable impact on his thought. He often
quoted Edmund Burke, the conservative thinker of British, though we can’t
brand Ambedkar as conservative. Ambedkar’s notion of liberty comes close
to T.H. Green.
Ambedkar’s philosophy is primarily ethical and religious. He thoroughly
explored the Indian traditions and its philosophical systems in a unique way.
He developed political concepts like democracy, justice, state and rights
from his understanding of Indian society and the functioning of its
institutions on the moral grounds. He is very critical of the institution o f
caste, which influences all the spheres of individual’s life and the Indian
society as a whole. He further discusses how individual is related to society
and how individual’s freedom is limited by other social forces. He is critical
of authoritarian Hindu social order and argued in favor of democratic society.
He probed into the moral and social foundations of India and gave new
meaning to the lives of disadvantaged people. His was a rationale approach.
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Reason plays a role in his writings and speeches. The methodology he used
is very scientific rather speculative. He was influenced by the assumptions of
modernity. He is well informed in many areas of Indian history, polity,
culture, anthropology and philosophy. He quotes many thinkers in his
writings those who are influenced him.
The notion of community is central to his thinking. To say that individuals
make up society is trivial; society is always composed of classes. It may be
exaggeration to assert the theory of class conflict, but the existence of
definite classes in society is a fact… an individual in a society is always a
member of a class. A caste is an enclosed class. Brahmins created caste and
it is extended to other servile classes. Caste is endogamous unit and also a
communal unit. His political theory was premised on moral community. It
was as an ideal to be realised. He was very much critical about the Hindu
social order. He argues that Hinduism is not qualified to be a community.
Buddhism was projected as the ideal having the value of community
grounding on morality. He considers that Buddhism attempted to found
society on the basis of ‘reason’ and ‘morality’.
His conception of community is very novel. He does not confirm to either
Hindu ideal community or Marxist conception of community based on
participation in production process. His conception of community is moral
and ethical. It is not automatically available for participation in common
affairs. His idea of community has to be created through hard and torturous
process of moral transformation.
On Democracy
Ambedkar had a lengthy discussion on democratic form of government in
his writings. His conception of democracy is different from the
parliamentary democracy of Western Europe. Democracy came with the
principles of liberalism. His conception of democracy makes different with
parliamentary forms of in a significant way. Parliamentary democracy has
all the marks of a popular government, a government of people, by the
people and for the people. Ambedkar considered the problems and express ed
discontent against the parliamentary democracy in the nations like Italy,
Germany, Russia, Spain and some other European nations in proposing the
parliamentary democracy in India. Ambedkar finds reasons for the failure of
parliamentary democracy that ‘parliamentary democracy gives no free hand
to dictatorship and that is why it became a discredited institution in the
countries like Italy, Spain and Germany which readily welcomed
dictatorships’.[5] The nations that are opposing dictatorship and pledged to
democracy too find their discontent with democracy. First, the parliamentary
democracy began with equality of political rights in the form of equal
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Upstream Research International Journal (URIJ) ISSN 2321 –0567
A Peer Reviewed Refereed Indexed Journal Vol. IV Issue I (Jan- 2016)
suffrage. There are very few countries having parliamentary democracy that
have not adopted adult suffrage. It has progressed by expanding the notion
of equality of political rights to equality of social and economic opportunity.
It has recognized that corporations, which are anti-social in purpose, cannot
hold state at bay. With all this, ‘the reason for discontent is due to the
realization that it has failed to assure to the masses the right to liberty,
property or the pursuit of happiness. The causes for this failure may be found
either in wrong ideology or wrong organization or in both.’[6] He elaborated
this point by pointing out the fault with both wrong ideologies and the bad
organization in carrying the ideals of democracy. The idea of freedom of
contract is one of the responsible factors for parliamentary democracy in
terms of ideology. Parliamentary democracy took no notice of economic
inequalities and didn’t care to examine the result of freedom of contract on
the parties to the contract, in spite of the fact that they were unequal in
bargaining power. It didn’t mind if the freedom of contract gave the strong
opportunity to defraud the weak. The result is that parliamentary democracy
in standing out as a protagonist of liberty has continuously added to
economic wrongs of the poor, downtrodden and disinherited class.’[7]The
second wrong ideology which has vitiated parliamentary democracy is the
failure to realize that political democracy can not succeed where there is no
social and economic democracy’.[8] He illustrated this point by comparing
the collapse of parliamentary democracy in the countries of Italy, Germany
and Russia with England and USA. He felt that there was a greater degree of
economic and social democracy in the latter countries than existed in the
former. ‘Social and economic democracy are the tissues and fiber of a
political democracy. The tougher the tissue and the fiber, the greater the
strength of the body.’[9] Democracy is another name for equality.
Parliamentary democracy developed a passion for liberty. It never made
even nodding acquaintance with equality. It failed to realize the significance
of equality and didn’t even strike a balance between liberty and equality,
with the result the liberty swallowed equality and has made democracy a
name and farce. More than the bad ideology, bad organization is responsible
for failure of democracy. All political societies get divided into two
classes-the rulers and the ruled. This is almost stratified that rulers are
always drawn from ruling class and the class that is ruled never become the
ruling class. This happens because generally people do not see that they
govern themselves. They are content to establish a government and leave it
to govern them. This explains why parliamentary democracy has never been
a government of the people or by the people and why it has been in reality a
government of hereditary subject class by a hereditary ruling class. It is this
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Ambedkar accused the western writers that they are superficial and not
provided the realistic view of democracy. They superficially touched the
constitutional morality, adult suffrage and frequent elections as the be-all
and end-all of democracy. Ambedkar proposed a written constitution for the
effective democracy. The habits of constitutional morality may be essential
for the maintenance of a constitutional form of government. He puts more
emphasis on moral society and its custom than the written legal law in
governing its people. He heavily invested on social morality for effect ive
functioning of the democratic form of government. He reminds us very often,
in devising the constitution one has to keep in mind that the principle aim of
constitution must be to dislodge the governing class from its position and to
prevent it from remaining as a governing class forever.[12]
Assessing the Political Thought of Ambedkar
About Ambedkar there are diverse opinions. Upper caste Nationalists has
tried to brand him as a ‘British agent’. For instance, Arun Shourie, the Hindu
nationalist and the “intellectual hero” of the upper castes at the time of the
anti-Mandal agitation and the Minister for Disinvestment in one of the
BJP-led government, puts all his efforts to depict him as an antinational
collaborator with British imperialism in his book Worshipping false Gods,
Ambedkar and the Facts which have been Erased (1997).[13] He charged
that in the 1940s, Ambedkar never took part in any freedom movement.
Instead, he was collaborating with the British. The motive of the
Brahminical Hindu nationalists is quite clear. They want to prove that
Ambedkar does not have any political credentials to be worshipped as a god
of ‘social justice’. This attitude has to be understood in the wake of a strong
Dalit movement and their confrontation with Hindu nationalism and caste
hegemony. Ambedkar is the symbol and source of philosophy for Dalits in
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feudal relations in the village setting of which land relations constituted the
crux and the socio-political nexus with the State. Annihilation of caste thus
needed destruction of all of them. He rightly diagnosed that caste system is
basically sustained by the peculiar economic constitution of the Indian
village of which the land relations was the main feature. This kind of
understanding of Indian society is unique to him and no others had identified
this in the politics of his times. The Reformists, the Congress, Territorial
nationalists, Communists and the Muslim league who were active in the
politics of his time had not bothered to think in this direction.
Further, Ambedkar realized the necessity of political power for the attack on
caste system. Even to bring about residual change in the belief system either
through the cultural or religious route, he stressed the necessity of political
power. At the same time, in the given time, he was not prepared to confront
the State. As an alternative he proposed, feudal relations in the village could
be destroyed only if the private ownership of the land is abolished and
co-operativisation of farming is introduced. He thought this structural
change could be effected through the constitution.
It is clear that every one has his/her intentions and motives in attributing
particular political positions to Ambedkar. Along with the Brahminical
Hindu writers, the nationalist congress also calls him a British agent. With
this, it is easy for them to exclude him from the pride of the nationalist
movement. Naxalite party calls him a liberal democrat. Their intention is to
show that he is not a radical thinker. As said earlier, they believe that the
liberation of Dalits is only possible through a sound philosophy like
Marxism-Leninism and Maoism.’[32] According to them, class politics can
accommodate more political space than caste. In this country, through
democratic means people could not achieve anything. Only through armed
struggle, the Dalit masses can get real political power. The Naxalite party
expects Dalits to be in their fold rather getting attracted towards existing
Dalit political parties based on Ambedkar’s philosophy. The party considers
only the liberal face of Ambedkar and it doesn’t want to see the radical
implications of Ambedkar’s thought. It would like to consolidate its base by
promising the most radical agenda in the context of a large number of Dalits
leaning towards Dalit political parties centered around Ambedkar.
masses by them. In a completely different move, the Hindu political part ies
may get theoretical advantage by Ambedkar’s advocating of religion. They
conveniently forget that he proposed Buddhism in place of Hinduism. In fact,
this action can be used against the radical spirit of Ambedkar’s philosophy
by groups like the BJP/Shivasena to portray Ambedkar as a conservative and
appropriate his philosophy to their ends. They would also have the added
advantage of keeping the Dalits away from other radical struggles.
Ambedkar: The Progressive Radical Thinker
Many thinkers and radical political parties made an attempt to project
Ambedkar as a liberal thinker. Liberalism, as a political theory developed in
the west has a theoretical basis and reflection of modern industrial capitalist
society. It implies individual rights as natural and absolute. Ambedkar seems
to reject the liberal notion of society as an aggregation of individuals related
to each other as individuals in terms of the goal of promoting individual
interest. He has given importance to justice than utility. According to him
utility is only a secondary criterion for judging right or wrong. That is,
primacy of justice over utility is axiomatic for him. By subordinating utility
to justice in his philosophical analytical scheme, Ambedkar departs from the
very first tenet of utilitarianism in particular and liberal philosophy in
general.
common but the only difference is the means that they professed. The means
adopted by communists are violence and dictatorship of the proletariat
whereas for Buddha, it is love and compassion, conversion of man by
changing his moral disposition to follow the path voluntarily. Ambedkar
considers Buddha as first revolutionary since he rejected caste system and
social inequality and for his idea of Sangha. He comments on the issue of
religion, that communists have carried the hatred of Christianity to
Buddhism without waiting to examine the difference between two.
Ambedkar also believes that humanity does only want economic values, but
also wants spiritual values to be retained. Ambedkar tries to see the
similarities between Buddhism and Marxism and also differences.
Ambedkar argues that in India there is not only division of labour but also
division of laborers exists. He also felt that economic interpretation of
history is not the only the explanation of history. Buddhism for Ambedkar
stands for reason. In fact, for both Buddha and Marx the ends remain same
but the means differ. For Marx, the means are violent take over of the State
through dictatorship of proletariat. For Buddha, it is conversion of man by
changing his moral disposition to follow the path voluntarily. Ambedkar put
the question to Marxists, what will takes place of state when it whether away.
He expressed the doubt that the anarchic situation may take place. Ambedkar
proposed Dhamma in place of it. However, Ambedkar developed his own
version of socialism. He termed it as state socialism, which emerges from his
interpretation of democracy. Ambedkar very much emphasized that caste is
not only the division of labor but also division of laborers in India.
Conclusion
Refrences
[1] Dallmayr, Fred R. ‘Political Theory at Cross Roads’ in From Contract to Community,
Marcel Dekkar, Inc, New York, 1978. p.1
[2] Ibid.p.9
[3] Ibid p.9
[4] Bay, Christian, “Thoughts on Liberalism and Post- Industrial Society” in From
Contract to Community. P.29-45.
[5] Roudrigues, Valerian (Ed.) The Essential Writings of B.R.Ambedkar, New Delhi :
Oxford University Press, 2002, p.61
[6] Ibid, p.62
[7] Ibid,p.62
[8] Ibid ,p.62
[9] Ibid,p.62
[10] Ibid, p.63
[11]Ibid, p.63
[12] Ibid. p .64
[13] Shourie, Arun. Worshipping False Gods: Ambedkar and the Facts which have been
Erased. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2000.
[14] At present the party is known as CPI (Maoist) Party.
[15] Ranganayakamma. Dalita Samasya Parishkaraniki Budhudu Chaladu! Ambedkaru
Chaladu! Marx Kavali!( For Resolving the Dalit problem, Neither Ambedkar nor Buddha
are Solutions. A Marx is Required). Hyderabad: Sweet Home Publications, 2000.
[16] Teltumbde, Anand. ‘Ambedkar’: in and for Post-Ambedkar Dalit Movement. Pune:
Sugawa Prakashan, 1997.
[17] Raghavendra Rao, K. Babasaheb Ambedkar New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1998.
[18] Ibid. P.35
[19] Ibid. p.35
[20] Ibid. p.36
[21] Ibid. P.36
[22] Omvedt, Gail. Liberty, Equality, Community . Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar’s vision of a
New Social Order 2000. in www.Ambedkar.org/Research
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Bharata Desamlo Kula Samasya-Mana Drukpadham (Peoples War Document) ,
1996 .p.25
[27] Ibid. p.24
[28] Ibid. p.25
[29] Dr.Anand Teltumbde. ‘Ambedkar’ In and for the Post-Ambedkar Dalit Movement,
Pune: Sugawa Prakashan, 1997.
[30] Ibid. p.40-41
[31] Ibid. p.48
[32] Bharata Desamulo Kula Samasya: Mana Drukpadham (Caste Problem in India:
Our Point of View) CPI (ML) Peoples War Document, 1996.
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