Dr Ambedkar: the 1940s Political Hero of India
Dr Ambedkar: My Conclusion is Buddhism
By Rhoda Monihan
“Law and order are the medicine of the body politic and when the body politic gets sick, medicine must be administered.” Dr Ambedkar
Dr B R Ambedkar, born 14 April 1891 died 6 December 1956
Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, or popularly Baba Saheb, helped to reconstruct Indian society through its legal and political systems. Earning four doctorates in economics, he conducted research in law, economics and politics into the lowest class of India’s caste system called the untouchable0s, the Dalits or the depressed classes, and also into the low status of women. British rule in India (1858-1947) and social inequality and prohibition straddled sub-continent Indian society. In taking the depressed classes as one group, Dr Ambedkar regularly opposed Mahata Gandhi.
Early life
Ambedkar was the leader of the untouchables because he was brought up as one within the Mahar caste, which was the lowest and fourth Hindu class. From the military town of Mhow, he experienced socio-economic discrimination and his father served in the army. Being strictly Hindu he made sure all five children read the Hindu classics, insisting that Bhimrao and his brother read the Mahabharata and Ramayana to their sisters and others at bedtime every night. The Dalits were the untouchables of Indian society, the poorest slave class.
He lobbied for his children to study further, but at school Ambedkar was forbidden to go and collect a drink of water if another pupil from a higher class, a peon {here defined as someone of higher ranking} did not facilitate this by also distantly pouring it from a great height: “No peon, no water”. And a gunny sack that held his grain harvest was his chair. His father’s retirement meant that the family moved to Satara and Bhimra changed his last name from Sakpal to Ambedkar because, having passsed exams, his Brahmin teacher allowd him this which relocated him to the Ambadawa village. Aged 15 he was forced to marry a 9-year-old Ramabai but upon being widowed, remarried medical doctor Dr Sharada Kibar.
Education
Ambedkar became the first untouchable to enter Elpinstone College, affiliated to the University of Bombay, gaining a BA in Economics and Political Science. This made him public, and Dada Keluskar gave him his biography of the Buddha. At Columbia University 1915 he gained an MA in economics minoring in sociology, history, philosophy and anthropology, and immediately wrote a thesis on Ancient Indian Commerce. Another MA in 1916 on National Dividend of India - A Historic and Analytical Stud saw him finally received his PhD in Economics in 1927. His inquiry was how India should function for more social and economic equality with respect to castes in India, and having become a barraster, he gained a D.Sc in Economics from the London School of Economics.
Politics
Rejecting Aryan invasion theory, Dr Ambedkar went into politics fighting Gandhi for an Indian sub-continent based on a horizontal wealth based classification system which accepted all religions who were represented as one electorate and reservation. not a religiously vertical caste system where citizens were grouped according to their religion, He succeeded partly through public speech making and untouchables received their own electorate in the judiciary and also parliament in 1932 with the Communal Award, but Gandhi fasted until Ambedkar renounced this electorate for a smaller proportion of votes (Poona Pact). India became independent from Britain in 1947 seeing Dr Ambedkar draft its constitution as its first Law Minister for which he is much remembered. Gandhi began his fast on 16 September 1932 in protest against government's decision to separate electorate by caste rather than religion. Dr Ambedkar made very many speeches.
Hindus were a humanitarian disgrace to him, but once he said Muslim’s were worse. He also drafted the Hindu Code Bill which, although it was stalled by Hindus, became four separate acts denouncing the Purdah (Veil) system and giving women property rights: Hindu Marriage Act; Hindu Succession Act; Hindu Minority and Succession Act; Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act. These inheritance and marriage laws were gender neutral, because he advised that wives should be friends of their husbands, and no slavery should corrode. Most women, whether Dalit or top ranking, subscribed to Dr Ambedkar's emancipatory policies, and he was appointed to the upper house of parliament even though they stalled this Hindu Code bill, which on 5 February 1951 was introduced in the Parliament.
Books
• Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis, and Development (1916)
• Annihilation of Caste (1936)
• The Problem of Rupee (1923)
• Pakistan Or The Partition of India (1940)
• What Congress And Gandhi Have Done To The Untouchables (1945)
• The Untouchables: Who Were they and why they Became Untouchables (1948)
• Who Were the Shudras? (1946)
• The Constitution of India
• Riddles in Hinduism
• Philosophy of Hinduism
• Thoughts on Pakistan (1941)
• State and Minorities: What are their Rights and how to Secure them in the Constitution of Free India (1947)
• Rise and Fall of Hindu Woman (1955)
• Federation Verses Freedom (1939)
• India and Communism
• The Buddha and his Dharma (1957)
• Ambedkar: An Overview
• Waiting For A Visa (1935-1936)
…and many more books and articles.
Dr Ambedkar's Later Belief in Buddhism
Dr Ambedkar was a liberal humanist defining religion as having multiple meanings bereft of true morality. God is a meme stemming from supernatural magic, evolving into prayers for the soul. However, Dharma is morality because it is fundamental reality and is of a social nature. Dharma constitutes society which personal religion undercuts, and therefore the dharma (understanding and love) must be offered to society as a government instrument to create liberty. A dharma-led society via a dharma-government is secured when the Buddha is respected in equating dharma with morality and holding both as sacred.
Ambedkar’s approach to dharma as a social description is very proactive and outward-looking in being rule based rather than based on matter and laws of the cosmos. He detested Hinduism and secured the liberation of the subservient people - the untouchables - through legislation, but saw this simply as dharma rule, thus living out true Buddhism. I therefore think of him as a buddha but also as a Maitreya. As today, although he rejected the term when alive, people’s hero Baba Saheb was called a bodhisattva.
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