Embrace Ambedkar and Gandhi, don’t choose: Guha

Over six decades of activism have not helped rid India of untouchability or alleviate the burdens of the caste system. But historian Ramachandra Guha is optimistic, pointing out that the caste system itself had a history of more than 5,000 years. Guha argues that Indians needn’t choose between two of its greatest opponents of casteism – MK Gandhi and BR Ambedkar.
Speaking at the Times Litfest on Saturday, Guha said that Gandhi and Ambedkar may have had their differences over how to fight casteism, they may have even been rivals, but there is no need for us, in 2015, to choose between the men as ideologues want us to.
Drawing parallels to the struggle against slavery in the US, or voting rights for women in Europe, he said: “Effective social change occurs only when people fight from above and below.”
Gandhi, born in a well-to-do upper caste family, fought from above while Ambedkar, from an impoverished background, fought from the bottom, Guha pointed out, arguing that India should embrace both the leaders.
“It’s important to know why we celebrate Gandhi in his loin cloth, while Ambedkar needs to be appreciated in his suit,” he said. “But our ideologues don’t let us do that. A few years ago, Arun Shourie penned a 600-page book criticizing Ambedkar, and a few years later, Arundhati Roy wrote a book-long criticism of Gandhi,” he said.
“I’d once said somewhere that Shourie was the Arundhati Roy of the ‘right’…or Arundhati is the Shourie of the ‘left’. Both use 5,000 words when 50 can do,” he added.
Gandhi wanted to purify and redeem Hinduism by abolishing untouchability, and fought in many stages from his return to India in 1915. “Initially, he didn’t argue for inter-dining or marriage, but eventually he completed his journey of struggle and fought for that,” Guha said.
Ambedkar felt there was no future for Dalits in Hinduism and wanted them to embrace another religion. “He met the Sikhs, Christians, those from Islam but embraced Buddhism because followers of these had also been affected by the caste system, something orthodox Hindus had managed to achieve.
“There were a lot of disagreements between them, but both were champions of the same cause. But today, the Gandhians have betrayed Gandhi and Ambedkarites have betrayed him. Both have been reduced to symbols,” he said.
Narrating an anecdote of how three schoolchildren in Mandya's Melukote district dressed as Gandhi, Ambedkar and Visvesvaraya embraced leaders of the nation, Guha said "If these boys can do it, then (the left and right or anyone else) can embrace Gandhi and Ambedkar together."