Was Ambedkar anti-Muslim?

4 min read

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14 highlights

  • The BJP’s adoption of Ambedkar has seen a measure of success. In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh election, for example, the party managed to attract a fair amount of Dalit support.

  • To make him fit into the BJP’s politics, therefore, his sharp critique of Hinduism and his conversion to Buddhism is often elided. Moreover, attempts have been made to paint him as anti-Muslim using his critique of Islam from his 1940 book Pakistan or the Partition of India.

  • Pakistan or the Partition of India, incidentally, has gained a second wind in the internet age after Frances Pritchett, a professor from Columbia University in the United States, put up the text of the book on her website.

  • Ambedkar’s arguments in the book were aimed at making a case for Pakistan

  • At one point he even compared the League’s demand of Pakistan to the Congress’ plan to create linguistic states. “If there is nothing shocking in the separation of Karnataka and Andhra, what is there to shock in the demand for the separation of Pakistan?”

  • Ambedkar’s support for Pakistan is not unexpected. He had allied with the League as a counter to the Congress, which Ambedkar saw as an upper caste party.1

  • It is no use saying that the Congress is not a Hindu body. A body which is Hindu in its composition is bound to reflect the Hindu mind and support Hindu aspirations. The only difference between the Congress and the Hindu Maha Sabha is that the latter is crude in its utterances and brutal in its actions while the Congress is politic and polite.2

  • The long cooperation meant that in 1947, as the Congress refused to nominate Ambedkar to the Constituent Assembly, it was the League that supported him. Ambedkar was therefore elected to the assembly from East Bengal, with votes from the Scheduled Caste Federation and the Muslim League.

  • Why did Ambedkar ally so closely with the League, even going so far as to become one of Pakistan’s earliest supporters? One reason is obvious: both considered the Congress to be their rival. The other is a bit subtler. There are enough indications to point to the fact that Ambedakar considered Jinnah’s politics to be a template that he could follow.3

  • “They [Muslims] are given separate electorates”, he wrote in March 1947, “because – and this is a fundamental fact – the social relations between the Hindus and the Musalmans are marked by social discrimination.”

  • Just before transfer of power, Ambedkar also made the case for population movements to make separate villages for Dalits.4

  • If his advocacy for Pakistan was not enough, after he resigned from the Nehru government in 1951, he would even argue that the Kashmir Valley should be handed over to Pakistan.5
  • What explains the gap between the historical Ambedkar, a dangerous radical and his co-option by mainstream Indian politics? “Every ruling class has constructed him in a particular manner,” explains Dalit scholar Anand Teltumbde, “Due to socio-political and economic changes, BR Ambedkar has now become an important and iconic figure for every party.”6
  • So while his (valid) critique of Muslim society is blown up and cherry picked out of context, his long alliance with the Muslim League, his support for Pakistan or insitutions such as separate electorates are pushed under the carpet.

Footnotes

  1. How does the author conclude this? Was this mentioned in any of Ambedkar’s writings? ↩

  2. Ambedkar’s words ↩

  3. Isn’t this just speculation masquerading as nuance? ↩

  4. Doesn’t this contradict his idea of urbanisation being one of the ways in which people can move away from their caste identity? Did Ambedkar ever write anything to this effect? ↩

  5. It would be interesting to know why he thought so ↩

  6. “[H]istorical Ambedkar” was “a dangerous radical”? ↩

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