Which Ambedkar?

RSS can change its mind about Ambedkar. But it needs a frank reckoning with why, how it got here

THE MOST RECENT issue of the Organiser, the English journal of the RSS, has a picture of B.R. Ambedkar on its cover, hailing him as the “Ultimate Unifier”. The issue (dated April 17, 2016) features several articles on the great man, one saying he provided the “glue for nation building”, a second arguing that his “visions and actions resembled that of Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj, Arya Samaj, etc”, a third praising his interest in workers’ rights, a fourth calling him a “timeless leader” who apparently “was not against Brahmins but against [the] Brahmanical order”.

All the essays, and the issue as a whole, are entirely celebratory. But what did the RSS and its mouthpiece think of Ambedkar and his work while he was alive? In seeking an answer, I focused on the years 1949-50, when, as law minister in the government of India, Ambedkar was both finalising the Indian Constitution as well as advocating the reform of Hindu personal laws so as to give greater rights to women.

Notably, the RSS disapproved of both efforts. The Organiser’s issue for November 30, 1949 carried an editorial on the Constitution, whose final draft had just been presented to the Constituent Assembly by Ambedkar. “The worst [thing] about the new Constitution of Bharat,” wrote the RSS mouthpiece, “is that there is nothing Bharatiya about it... [T]here is no trace of ancient Bharatiya constitutional laws, institutions, nomenclature and phraseology in it”. There was, the Organiser complained, “no mention of the unique constitutional developments in ancient Bharat. Manu’s laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity [among Hindus in India]. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing”.

Ambedkar was not mentioned by name, but clearly, as the premier constitutional pundit, he was a major target for the RSS. The Sangh was even more critical of the personal law reforms proposed by Ambedkar. The RSS sarsanghchalak, M.S. Golwalkar, complained in a speech of August 1949 that the reforms piloted by Ambedkar “has nothing Bharatiya about it. The questions like those of marriage