Ram Madhav writes: Shame, Opposition. Ruckus in Parliament over Ambedkar is distasteful

Where is any insult to Ambedkar in this? Shah’s intention was to expose the duplicity of the Congress party. His comment about heaven was not for the admirers of Ambedkar, but for parties like the Congress that view Ambedkar just as an instrument for garnering votes. The reality is that there were no protests from the Congress Party during the 90-minute speech of Shah. Only after several hours, as though at the instigation of someone, the Congress and its allies started protesting. Clearly, it was not any real sentiment of hurt, but a political afterthought.

Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Ambedkar and Savarkar shouldn’t be treated as the property of any one group or party. They are our national heroes. They did not always agree with each other. Gandhi wrote in one of his last statements that the Congress should not be allowed to become an instrument for power and it should be disbanded. Ambedkar was a life-long critic of Congress and said at one point that he would prefer suicide to joining that party. Savarkar too had his disagreements with Gandhi’s politics. Yet, they always demonstrated utmost maturity. It was Gandhi who told Nehru to include Opposition leaders like Ambedkar, Rajagopalachari and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee in the interim government of 1946. Savarkar invited Gandhi to Ratnagiri in 1934 and both held day-long discussions. Beyond their political differences lay their great contributions to the nation, its freedom and reconstruction.

The Opposition also demonstrated its immaturity through a futile attempt of cornering the ruling party on what scholar Shashi Shekhar Sharma called the “imagined manuvaad”. None of those waving copies of Manusmriti would have read it. But they sure did not read Ambedkar fully either. It is nobody’s case to insist that a code written several centuries ago should be considered appropriate in this age. But to identify one party or a group as Manuvaadis betrays intellectual bankruptcy.

Several codes, including Manusmriti, existed in ancient India. But none of them were made mandatory by any ruler. They were largely moral codes. There were some elements in those that outlived their purpose. Ambedkar fought against those regressive elements by symbolically burning down Manusmriti at a public event in 1927. But he was not blind to certain valuable elements in those smritis. Speaking in the Constituent Assembly on the Hindu Code Bill on February 24, 1949, Ambedkar said that Manu and Yagnavalkya “rank the highest among 137 who had tried their hands in framing smritis”, reminding the House that those smritikars had made daughters entitled to one-fourth share of the family inheritance. However, the British government had ruled that customs overruled texts. Ambedkar bemoaned that it “has destroyed the efficacy of the texts”. Complaining that the decision made it impossible for the judiciary to examine what laws were laid out by “our rishis and our smritikars”, Ambedkar rued that “if the privy council had not given that decision”, “some lawyer or a judge would have unearthed this text of Yagnavalkya and Manusmriti, and women today would have been enjoying, if not more, at least one-fourth of the share of their property”. On a couple of later occasions too,

Ambedkar stated that he had used Manusmriti for issues like caste determination and inheritance rights.

It is not unusual that great leaders are subjected to scrutiny and criticism. Bismarck was hailed as the greatest unifier in German history, the “Iron Chancellor”. Today, his legacy is both respected and critically examined. Abraham Lincoln is considered the greatest American president in history. Yet, he also endures criticism for using racist language and supporting Black voting rights very late in life. In the UK, Winston Churchill is regarded as the national saviour. But his complex history is a subject of great debate and criticism.

Can our political class imbibe that maturity about treating national heroes with respect while agreeing to have constructive differences of opinion, without deification or demonisation?

The writer, president, India Foundation, is with the BJP. Views are personal