23 Jan, 2025

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi writes in his autobiography, "I do not want to be called Mahatma. I am a humble servant of the people. I have no desire to be elevated to a position of greatness. I am just a man who is trying to serve humanity."

But the honorific, apparently conferred by Rabindranath Tagore in 1915, remained in popular use all through the rest of his life, and he never really issued any fatwa against it, as it were.
Anand Teltumbde doesn’t tell us whether Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar ever discouraged his followers from hailing him as Babasaheb, but he stresses, “Ambedkar did not want devotees, he wanted followers. And he explicitly stated how the followers ought to behave:

‘There is no ingratitude in the disciple not accepting the maxims or the conclusions of his master. For even when he rejects them, he is bound to acknowledge to his master in deep reverence. ‘You awakened me to be myself; for that I thank you.’

As with Gandhi, Ambedkar, who became an icon to millions of his followers during his lifetime, could do little to staunch the flow of encomiums.

There is a touching tribute from noted Tamil poet Bharati to Gandhi – You’re indeed a Mahatma who appeared on this earth to redeem a people debased and trapped in poverty…

Actually, the homage would be equally or even more befitting Ambedkar himself in as much the segment he dedicated his life to was in a far more pitiable plight than the general lot of Indians and it did call for almost superhuman efforts to make the panchamars seem human in the eyes of the rulers. He did rise to the occasion and more, but unfortunately the job left unfinished has only been channeled along quite undesirable channels by those who speak in his name.

Teltumbde has taken upon himself the unenviable task of ‘demolishing’ the icon, with a view to awakening the Dalits at large to be themselves as the master had wanted and fight for their long-denied rights without any blinkers, without being misled by self-serving bhakts.

Easily the most appalling of the late leader’s views was his crass anti-feminism. Even though he encouraged women to join his agitations or the outfits he floated, he didn’t really like them to be independent.

Attacking the Congress for inducting a large contingent of women to the parliament, Ambedkar fumed, “When these women return home with files under their arm, after spending the entire day in the Lok Sabha, are their husbands to serve them food on the table? Should these women go to the Parliament and Assemblies and, on returning in the evenings, ask their husbands, ‘Dear, I’ve returned from Parliament. Has all the house-work been done or not?’ These women are to go to parliament and who is supposed to look after their children? One child is crying, the second has a snotty nose, and the third has gone off somewhere. Then who is going to manage such children? Everything is being turned upside down...”

Not only did he go on to cast aspersions on the character of the women parliamentarians, he had, on another occasion, lashed out at Mahar sex-workers and charged them with bringing a bad name to the entire community.

At a convention in Mumbai in 1936 to exhort Dalits to ditch Hinduism as the only available option to overcome the disabilities they were facing at every turn, Ambedkar admitted the conference was confined to the Mahar sect, but justified it saying it was so designed to gauge the magnitude of support for conversion among them, and went on to declare that ‘each caste should independently decide on what is best for their emancipation.’

Such was the model promoted by him, his own appeal was limited to the Mahars “and equivalent castes in other regions (generally most populous caste among Untouchables), which identified him as their caste hero.”

Teltumbde dwells at length on Ambedkar’s strident opposition to communism, but glosses over the possibility that he was perhaps put off by the Stalinist perversions of the times. Possible too he was aghast over the steady erosion of his ranks as the appeal of Marxism caught the imagination of many oppressed, as the author astutely points out.

The book also makes a scathing criticism of many leading Ambedkarites, some of them happily becoming agents of the Hindutva bigots.

In an earlier work, ‘Dalits Past, present and future’, he exposes the opportunism of many leaders but two things bear mention here. One, the multifarious splits in the Republican Party of India largely correspond to the Mahar subsect divisions, secondly Savita Ambedkar, the Babasaheb’s second wife and who nursed him towards his last days, was hounded out of public life essentially because she was a Brahmin.

This is a piece of some extraordinary iconoclasm and much called for too. Anand Teltumbde could well afford to take such a risk without being pilloried by self-proclaimed devotees – not only is he a respected Ambedkar scholar but he has also married a granddaughter of the late leader, Rama.

Those who have made Ambedkar worship their fulltime vocation can only wince in silence. So far none has dared question his motives. We need many more crusaders like Anand Teltumbde everywhere.

Karl Marx once declared he was not a Marxist himself, irritated as he was by the squabbles among his followers. If only there had been a soul-searching in the communist movement at any point of time, perhaps Orwell would not have had to write Animal Farm or 1984. When totalitarian horrors are categorically disowned by mainstream Marxist parties, they are less likely to become the bogeymen they are made out to be by vested interests.