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Remembering Dr Ambedkar on 14th April, 2021
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- Annivesary: Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, whose 130th birth anniversary falls on 14th of April, offered a substantive definition of democracy, radically different from the procedural definition that dominated the 20th-century theories of democracy. For him democratic mechanisms like elections and parliament were there for a purpose: ‘to bring about welfare of the people’. For most modern Indians, Ambedkar remains the architect of the constitution of a remarkably unequal society, trying to become a modern republic. But he was much more - an economist, a political scientist, a humanist, a votary of women's rights and a deep thinker on human rights.
- About Ambedkar: Babasaheb Ambedkar was the first Indian, and perhaps the only Indian in the 20th century, who offered a theory of democracy. This needs to be remembered because the celebration of his intellectual and political legacy tends to focus almost exclusively on his critique of caste-based injustice. Today the Indian democracy itself is under steady attacks, often by those who publicly worship Ambedkar.
- India and democracy: Dr Ambedkar’s approach to democracy was different from what others in his time thought.
- On the one hand were ‘liberals’ like Jawaharlal Nehru who expected the western fairytale of democracy to be replayed in India, albeit with a time lag. For them, western democracies were the model towards which India had begun its journey by enacting a Constitution and holding free and fair elections.
- On the other hand were the critics, mostly from the Left, who thought that the democratic experiment in India was a sham, nothing but a rule of the capitalist class cloaked in procedures of democracy. Gandhi, too, shared this disdain for Westminster-style democracy.
- Dr Ambedkar offered a theory of cautious and conditional optimism, an optimism drawn from the abstract promise of democracy and a caution rooted in the Indian context.
- Ambedkar's version: He offered a substantive definition of democracy, not unmindful of the procedural aspects of democracy. All these democratic mechanisms like elections and parliament were there for a purpose: “to bring about welfare of the people”. For him democracy was “a form and a method of government whereby revolutionary changes in the economic and social life of the people are brought about without bloodshed.”
- While the western democratic though first talks of liberty, Dr Ambedkar puts equality at the heart of democracy.
- He said that “The roots of democracy lie not in the form of Government, Parliamentary or otherwise. A democracy is more than a form of Government. It is primarily a mode of associated living. The roots of Democracy are to be searched in the social relationship, in terms of associated life between the people who form a society.”
- For this ideal, he turned to the Buddhist tradition. He insisted that Buddhist Sanghas were the models for parliamentary democracy.
- Indian caste system: The ‘associated living’ that democracy presupposes simply did not exist in India. Caste system divided Indian society into many parallel, self-contained communities that did not allow for the conversation necessary for a healthy democracy. Thus, Ambedkar’s critique of the caste system was not merely that it was unjust and oppressive for the ‘depressed classes’, but also that it fractured national unity and made democracy impossible.
- Pre-conditions for democracy: Dr Ambedkar turned this critique into a general theory of preconditions for a successful democracy. He reminded us, “democracy is not a plant that grows everywhere”. He would often cite the cases of Italy and Germany where the absence of social and economic democracy led to the failure of nascent political democracy. For him the first and foremost condition for democracy was that there should be no glaring inequalities, that every citizen should enjoy equal treatment in everyday administration and governance. This needs constitutional morality, widespread public conscience and the upholding of moral order in society. Dr Ambedkar reminded us that a tyranny of the majority is antithetical to democracy.
- No violence please: Unlike the social revolutionaries of his time, he did not advocate a violent or even non-violent overthrow of the existing democratic order. In fact, at one point, he argued against the continuation of satyagraha or civil disobedience in independent India.
- Ambedkar was the first serious student of social consequences of political institutions. He understood that every institutional design has a built-in drag, that it has consequences irrespective of the intent of those who designed it.
- Whether it was the choice of the parliamentary system over the presidential, or the role and powers of an elected panchayat in a village, or the formation of linguistic states or the partition of the country, Dr Ambedkar brought a razor-sharp understanding of how each of these decisions would affect the most marginalised sections of society.
- The institutional design he proposed in ‘States and Minorities’ showed a nuanced approach to using the political form of democracy for social transformation.
- Today's India: Dr Ambedkar might have been quite sad with the continuation of inequalities, including caste inequalities, and on the rise of majoritarian democracy in today’s India. What requires careful reflection and imagination is turning these fragments of original thinking into a coherent theory of radical democracy for the 21st century. That is a task for those who take Babasaheb’s intellectual legacy seriously, beyond the birth anniversary celebrations.
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