Not in the name of Ambedkar

The winter session of Parliament that ended on Friday saw a new low in the functioning of the august institution as lawmakers first squabbled over their interpretations of history and then, filed police complaints alleging assault by an Opposition MP on two Treasury bench representatives. This soapy high drama hardly did justice to the voters who expected their representatives to address issues of the day — from food inflation to national security to the long-term concerns of the climate crisis.

The session, coming in the wake of the BJP winning the crucial assembly elections in Maharashtra, started on a raucous note with the Congress party stalling the House over a US court order on the Adani group. A section of the Opposition moved an unprecedented notice for the impeachment of vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar for his allegedly partisan conduct in running the Rajya Sabha — the vice chairman has refused to admit the notice. The consensus to have a four-day discussion to mark 75 years of the Indian Constitution was expected to be a welcome break from political grandstanding and yield a riveting discussion on the founding document that has become the glue holding the Republic together despite multiple fault lines and serves a lodestar to a nation aspiring to find its space at the global high table. Such expectations were belied as parties chose polemics over substantive discussions on the Constitution and the cues it offers to negotiate the nation’s future. Two important bills on simultaneous elections (one nation, one poll) were introduced in Parliament but have been forwarded to a joint parliamentary committee.

That the winter session pivoted around Ambedkar was not surprising. As chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, he infused the document with an egalitarian vision that sought a radical remaking of one of the world’s most unequal societies. The political and intellectual work he undertook was not appreciated in his lifetime — the Congress and the Hindu Right-wing, both saw him as an adversary and did their best to marginalise him; Jawaharlal Nehru invited him to join the Cabinet as India’s first law minister but did not stand by him when conservative Hindus attacked him over the Hindu Code Bill. However, the political empowerment of Dalits, a legacy of Ambedkar, has resulted in competition lately to appropriate him. It is this competition, in a manner that Ambedkar would have been uncomfortable with, that underlies the current face-off between the Congress and the BJP. The Opposition has weaponised Union home minister Amit Shah’s remark about Ambedkar to attack the BJP leadership, while the latter has leaned on the past to question the Congress’s appreciation of his work. Cut to the chase, the war of words, now stretching to allegations of physical assault and street mobilisations, is a political battle for the Dalit vote. In the melee, Ambedkar’s contribution as a nation-builder was ignored; and the odd reflective speech on the Constitution was lost in the noise.

The right tribute to Ambedkar would have been to discuss his intellectual legacy, his contribution to shaping modern India, and how it could guide our ship at a time of great global churn. Lawmakers could have addressed issues such as the plight of conservancy workers — a large majority of them are Dalits — or the state of public education, central to Ambedkar’s life mission. The low spectacle we were served did not do justice to Ambedkar, the Constitution, or the great institution of Parliament.

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