Sunday, October 7, 2018

THE FATHER (MOTHER?) OF THE NATION




 
 

 





What was Ambedkar to you?

I would often ask myself-

A man who crossed the desert, the seas

A parrhesiast, no doubt

Speaking truth to power.

Somebody who understood

Hinduism from its lacunas,

Pitfalls, the harder way

And had turned to Buddhism.

 

Somebody who held everybody as equals

And rejected subordination and humiliation.

He went to Europe

To LSE for his studies, yes

And knew his sociology and Economics only too well

That crime was his.

But others, including Gandhi had done their studies abroad

And were influenced by western thought

A matter long forgotten

But his thought or action was never

Taken in that light.

 

He knew his society well enough

And its double standards

It had a way of putting people down

And elevating others.

He refused to accept it

And knew that the streams of thought that had

Composed the Indian's early beliefs

His approach to his neighbor

Was tainted by the hierarchies

And the injustices proclaimed as dharma

That gave the Brahmin his power

And curtailed the movements

And shattered those held to be lower in caste

And women, branding them as backward.

He knew his intellect to be

At par with anybody else’s

And that he had seen

Where the things fall apart.

 

He knew very well

That the strictures had to be challenged frontally

And the truth told.

Yes, he did betray those beliefs

Since he knew that the trickery and cheating

That had destroyed others

And subordinated the common people

Were not godsend.

 

In a country of vast differences

They founded the falsity

Of hierarchy and subjugation

Made other people carry their crap

And thought themselves pure

Forgetting that they carried that very shit in their bowels

When they entered their temples

And shat it out as others do.

 

They wanted dalits to carry their shits

To clean up the world for them

Dipping themselves in manholes and misery

To live deprived lives

Denied love or respect

While they waxed eloquent

About their nation in speeches abroad.

A nation built on its slaves bones

And casteism, murderous in every way.

A nation in which women were secondary

And only sex toys.

He organized the sex workers

And stood with the demands for their rights.

To take water from a pond

Was a struggle

If he had burned a book,

It was not because he rejected knowledge

But abhorred falsity

And because that book would only give him

A dogs place.

To find a place to live

Among equals

To live a respectable life

He fought back

And did not mind it

That the elite

Called him a British stooge for that.

In a nation where

Egalitarianism was banished

By its foundational thinkers

He exposed its crevices, aporias

And asked why millions of

Buddhist and Jain texts where burned or destroyed

To suit the elite

And they had no complaints.

 

If he converted to Buddhism,

And thought of the religious minorities as friends

It was because he had no faith in this nation

That would drive him and his folks 

Away from every right.

To be a panchama, an out caste

Or a Muslim

Where the worst affairs

In a land where faith

Was reduced to mere ritual

And democracy or equality

Remained a distant dream.

Ain’t I an Indian?

He would have to ask

For the toiling people.

 

He wrote many texts

Challenged Ramas and Krishnas of old

And exposed the stark injustices

Practiced in the name of ‘Dharma’.

 

God’s benevolence was for every one

Said he, when he converted himself

To the  Buddhist Dhamma.

People disliked his being dressed up

The way he did, like a European

But what would have been his fate

If he where to be clad in a dhothi

And had followed the caste occupations of a Mahar?

Would they have respected him?

He fought back and gained respect

Showing us that Philosophy

Was not merely a contemplation

About the perennial questions of life and death

But had to do with everyday life

And an argument had to be examined for its

‘Function’ and ‘Trace’.

He showed us so many of our towering figures

Had feets of clay

Howevever they were clothed,

Or whatever empty rhetoric

Filled their mouths.

 

He did not fight a war with weapons

Or go in for annihilation

But like a true Multi- culturalist

Openly challenged ideas with ideas

Trying to enter into a conversation with

Even those who were totally opposed to him

Calling for an end to segregation.

 

Ambedkar, to me is not just a Jurist

Who compiled a constitution for India

The limits of which he was well aware of

The legalese with which they trampled

The question of rights

Was not the end in itself

Since equal rights could not be extended

To properties and holdings,

Still Gandhi trusted him more than anyone else

To write the constitution

Because he knew that when Colonialism ended

There was still a war that had to be fought on all fronts

And none other than Ambedkar was equipped enough

For that.

He had organized trade unions

And knew the marks that caste left

On ordinary people’s lives.

 

A thinker of rare courage and integrity

A thorough multi- culturalist

Far before it became fashionable

And having the rare spirit of endarkenment

Still stands tall

The one who could have fathered this nation

Or rather nursed it as a mother

More than anybody else.

 

 

 

  Photo credits: Ambedkar.org

 

 

 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home