(Editorial- Red Star Monthly, January 2025 issue)
Shah’s Rajya Sabha Speech Reveals the Standard Hindutva Hatred towards Ambedkar!
On 17 December 2024, while speaking in Rajya Sabha on the 75th anniversary of the Indian Constitution, Home Minister Amit Shah said: “It has become a fashion to say Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. If they had taken god’s name so many times, they would have had a place in heaven for seven births.” However, according to the tenets of Hinduism, it would be impractical on the part of Dalits and untouchables to worship the Hindu gods created by the upper-caste Brahmins. For, as per Rig Veda’s “Purusha Sukta” and “Manusmriti”, it was the god who created the caste system according to which the Dalits and Untouchables are condemned to live as subhumans. From this logic, god is inimical to the oppressed Dalits. At the same time, Ambedkar, who was the deadly enemy of casteism and caste-based Hinduism, is the ‘real God’ of the Dalits and oppressed caste people. Therefore, Shah’s speech reveals the usual Hindutva hatred towards Ambedkar and an insult to the Dalits for whom Ambedkar is the saviour.
In the neofascist context today, Shah’s statement on Ambedkar cannot be considered a casual or isolated one since Ambedkar’s unravelling of the inhuman caste system remains as one of the most powerful ideological weapons in the fight against RSS. The RSS, the world’s longest-running and biggest fascist organisation and its political tool, BJP, are well aware of the strategic relevance of Dr Ambedkar in the Indian anti-fascist political discourse today. In this context, both RSS and BJP are pursuing a two-pronged tactic, i.e., on the one hand, opportunistically appropriating Ambedkar, thereby hoodwinking the Dalits and Untouchables, and on the other, stigmatising, denigrating and defaming Ambedkar whenever an opportune situation arises. Amit Shah’s Rajya Sabha statement on Ambedkar quoted above belongs to the latter category.
As is obvious, throughout his political career, Ambedkar had been vehemently attacking the caste system and its guidebook Manusmriti, the ideological basis of RSS fascism. Ambedkar’s burning of Manusmriti in 1927 became historical from this perspective. Ambedkar’s publishing of “Annihilation of Caste” in 1936, in which he characterised caste-ridden Hindu society or Hinduism as a “veritable chamber of horrors”, is the antithesis of what RSS and Hindutva ideologues propagate about Hinduism. However, Golwalkar, the prominent and most influential Sarsanghchalak of RSS who also put forward the essential postulates of a majoritarian, theocratic Hindurashtra, had unequivocally identified Hinduism with casteism. The antagonism between Ambedkar and RSS became too striking in the late 1940s when leaders of both RSS and Hindu Mahasabha went on abusing Ambedkar when he piloted the Hindu Code Bill. At that time, Swami Karpatriji Maharaj, one of the leaders leading the agitation against the Hindu Code Bill, declared that an “Untouchable had no business meddling in matters normally the preserve of the Brahmin.” Led by Hindutva leaders, on 12 December 1949, Ambedkar’s effigy, together with that of Nehru, was burnt at Delhi’s Ram Leela ground.
Again, when the Constituent Assembly adopted the final Draft for the Indian Constitution on November 1949, prepared under the leadership of Dr. Ambedkar, on 30 November 1949, i.e. within four days, the RSS, in its mouthpiece Organiser, demanded Manusmriti as India’s Constitution. Subsequent Issues of Organiser reiterated that position. Not only RSS it’s fraternal organisation Hindu Mahasabha was also openly upholding this stance. Even 75 years after the adoption of the Constitution, whose main architect was Ambedkar, there is no dearth of proponents of Manusmriti that treats Dalits and women as subhuman. Even many judges in Indian courts are hardcore Manuvadis, having no qualms in quoting Manusmriti during trials. Revealingly, the Supreme Court in February 2023 had even dismissed a public interest litigation petition to remove the mythological Manu statue holding Manusmriti in front of the Rajasthan High Court in Jaipur.
To be precise, all well-meaning people have to bear in mind that the tirade against Ambedkar and the heinous move to alter the very character of the Constitution on the one hand, and growing adulation towards Manu and Manusmriti on the other by RSS/BJP are taking place in the specific neofascist context today. Having full hold over the Indian regime since 2014, and with both state power and street power under its control, RSS is engaged in its maddening pace towards the establishment of a theocratic Hindurashtra in which the Dalits and all oppressed including religious minorities, will not have even basic human rights. Therefore, the spitting of venom on Ambedkar by Shah, a Hindutva stalwart, should be seen as part of the broader agenda of hardening RSS fascism in India.
