Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 226
Palash Biswas
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| Dravidians and Nagas are one and the same people Who are the Dravidians? Are they different from the Nagas? Or are they two different names for a people of the same race? It is a fact that the term Dravidians and Nagas are merely two different names for the same people. It is not to be denied that very few will be prepared to admit the proposition that the Dravidians and Nagas are merely two different names for the same people and fewer that the Dravidians as Nagas occupied not merely South India but that they occupied the whole of India—South as well as North. Nonetheless these are historical truths. Dr.B.R.Ambedkar | ||
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
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<< Authors-A
- en
- Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891 — 1956). Indian jurist and political leader. ~ Biography
- es
- Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891 — 1956). Jurista y polĂtico indio. ~ BiografĂa
- fr
- Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891 — 1956). Juriste et homme politique indien. ~ Biographie
Works
English
- Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, 1917
- The Problem of Rupee, 1923
- The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India, 1925
- Ranade, Gandhi, and Jinnah
- Pakistan, or, the Partition of India
- The Buddha and His Dhamma
- Annihilation of Caste
- Problem of Rupee
- Who were the Sudras
- Constitution of India, Though, it was written by a committee, Dr. Ambedkar is generally considered as an architect of Indian Constitution, as he was the chairman of Drafting Committee.
B.R. Ambedkar was a man whose work unraveled the unique nature of the master-servant relationship in South Asia.Dr. Ambedkar was destined to reveal the central mystery of the South Asian social relationship which, has for its grounding a system of human grading or branding based on a classification known as the caste system. From his lifetime until now, the understanding of this issue has spread from small groups of militant intellectuals and activists to one that has spread into mainstream thinking, not only in South Asia but also throughout the world. Mahatma Gandhi spoke of Ambedkar as one of the few who had taken the radical stance of the interpretation of the entire history of India on the basis of caste. However, if that was a radical view then that is no longer the case.
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Today there is almost unanimous acceptance that without paying serious attention to the implication of the system that is called caste, there is hardly any possibility of understanding South Asian society, culture or politics. The same can be said of the understanding of South Asian conflicts which, in recent decades have turned into some of the world's most violence clashes. In the understanding of these clashes insight into the work of Ambedkar could be an enormous resource. In fact, much of the analysis of these clashes and conflicts is poorer for the lack of attention to the central issue of caste and its implications on countries where Indian culture had a foundational influence.
Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar was not only the Dalit Massiha but he was one of the famous leaders of national freedom movement. Social justice and human rights ideals in his practical approach of struggle raised him above most of the leaders at that time. He had a special space in the society. He had multi- dimentional qualities and credit of amazing achievements which made him a great social reformist, philosopher and legend in law affairs etc. His personality and ideology were deeply influenced by Gautam Budh, Sant Kabir and Mahatama Jyotiba Phulle. Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar held a very strong view that the left out tasks which Mahatama Jyotiba Phulle started should be completed. In addition to these influences he was impressed by Western Countries system of development and radical changes happening in those societies. That is why he supported the ideas of- Liberty, equality and brotherhood. Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar wanted to build future Indian society based upon these human values.
Desi Illuminati STAKES highly depend on the assessment of Indian economists that Developing countries, which account for 40 per cent of India's exports, can give a big cushion to country's external trade as they are not as badly hit by the global downturn as the US, Japan and Europe.
Manufacturing sector showed marginal signs of recovery in the second and third quarters of the last fiscal as compared to the
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A Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)-Ascon survey said five sectors - fertilisers, low and high density polythene, pig iron, steel and mopeds - moved from negative to moderate growth.
However, the year-wise comparison shows the manufacturing sector growth has significantly slowed during 2008-09 as compared to 2007-08, the report released Sunday said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday acknowledged prices of essential commodities were high but said they would fall because of an
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Though the inflation had come down, the prices of essential commodities were high. "The prices will come down since we expect a bumper crop this year", he told a press conference here.
"Our granaries are full and we will end the current year with record food stocks. Foodgrain production, which was only 213 million tonnes in 2003, hit a record of 231 million tonnes in 2007-08," he said.
Singh said his government had initiated various farmer-welfare programmes, including better support prices, and India was now producing bumper crops.
He said the five years of UPA rule had bettered the previous NDA rule on the economic front, saying Indian economy grew at an "unprecedented" growth rate of 8.5 percent during its tenure.
"Over the last five years, our economy has grown at an average rate of about 8.6 percent per year, a growth rate unprecedented in the history of India. In contrast, average growth rate during NDA period was only 5.8 percent. Growth of agriculture had gone up twice", he said.
Depite the global downturn, India's growth will stay above six percent, he said adding India was able to handle the economic downturn much better than most other countries.
Speaking on Centre-state relationship, he said more than Rs 56,000 crore had been allotted to Tamil Nadu during UPA's rule.
With the next government expected to take measures to give a fillip to slowing economy, global rating agency Fitch on Sunday said
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"There are counter-cyclical aspects to the expansionary fiscal position that may not necessarily result in a negative rating action," Fitch Head of Asia-Pacific Sovereign Ratings James McCormack told PTI.
The statement assumes significance in the wake of another global rating agency Standard and Poor's downgrading outlook of India's long term credit rating in February on rising fiscal deficit.
McCormack said it is important to remember that fiscal policy is now being considered in the context of global economic slowdown.
Fitch will certainly consider the fiscal policies undertaken by the new government to take a call on reviewing the rating, since public finance pressures were among the primary considerations when the country's local credit rating was placed on negative outlook last year, he added.
Last year, Fitch had cut the outlook to "negative" due to considerable deterioration in the central government's fiscal position, combined with a notable increase in government debt issuance to finance off-budget subsidies.
"Fitch will be focussed more on India's structural fiscal position, and whether the new government intends to restore public finances to a more sustainable path on the medium term," McCormack said.
He said, the agency is waiting for the upcoming report of the 13th Finance Commission to identify structural fiscal priorities.
"These will be very important in assessing the medium-term fiscal outlook," it added.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in his interim Budget speech said that the Finance Commission has been asked to lay down the roadmap for fiscal consolidation.
Fitch said fiscal position is the most significant negative factor from a rating perspective, but the economy is clearly facing other challenges.
Most notably, slower economic growth is proving a challenge, along with the availability of funding for the corporate sector, which had benefited from international capital flows that extended to most emerging markets.
"With the flows having stopped, access to capital may restrict growth further," he said.
India's economic growth slowed down to just 5.3 per cent in the third quarter of last fiscal, after notching more than 7.5 per cent growth in the first two quarters.
To counter the slowdown, the government has provided three stimulus packages by reducing excise duty by six per cent, service tax by two per cent among other things.
This has deteriorated the country's fiscal deficit, with the figures projected to touch six per cent in 2008-09 against earlier estimates of 2.5 per cent.
After S&P downgraded India's long term credit rating outlook, the Finance Ministry asked the agency to explain the rationale behind the downgrade, while pointing out that outlook for other nations which had seen soaring fiscal deficit were left unchanged.
The stock market is likely to climb substantially higher in 2010, if corporate India manages to raise up to $15 billion (about Rs
On the other hand,
The finance ministry wants an independent assessment of the government's flagship social and developmental programmes to ensure In Indian context, to fight against untouchablity and for equality of all was a very challenging task. The attitudes of disappointment amongst dalits were very deep rooted because of their social, economical and political exploitation from the centuries together .Because of these considerations, it was very challenging to motivate them to stand up to fight against their exploitation and for their self respect. Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar spent his whole life in this challenging task relentlessly. Dalits as other part of Indian society were themselves divided in to many castes and sub castes because of ignorance, backwardness and given social structure. According to Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar the caste system in India has been a divisive instrument from the very begining . He had a firm view that till this caste system continues, the outcastes liberation is not possible. This was the reason that he started a strong movement against caste system. To fight against the disparities in society and discrimination against dalits, he felt a need of cultural revolution and called the out caste people to come forward, get education, get united and fight against injustice. He also motivated them not to wait for someone to come for their rescue but to fight against this slavery themselves. The finance ministry has instructed ministries and departments to disclose the impact of the measures taken to stimulate the economy in the upcoming Budget, according to an official communication issued to various government departments. They have been told to include a chapter in the Budget documents specifying the concessions given, in addition to the budgetary provisions, and their impact on the economy. The government announced two fiscal incentive packages in December 2008 and January 2009, and wants the tax income it lost to be listed as tax expenditure. In early January, the government slashed excise duty to 8% from 12%. The taxes lost by the government, and the extra spending announced in the last fiscal year, were initially estimated to cost more than Rs 40,000 crore. The finance ministry had assumed that the money could be partly recovered in this fiscal year as the stimulus package would lead to higher production, leading in turn to greater tax receipts. The finance ministry has also asked ministries to calculate the cost of service delivery. This assessment will be used to make norms capping the cost of providing various services to the people. The feedback from this assessment will be used to modify various social sector schemes aimed at giving education to all, creation of unskilled rural jobs, providing mid-day meal and drinking water as well as healthcare services in rural areas. mbedkar be known to the World as an outstanding economist deserving recognition more than a noble prize in economics. Dr. BR Ambedkar was a professional economist and deserved recognition more than Dalit Messiah and author of the constitution of India. Various memoranda and statements that the scholar par at excellence submitted to the Government from time to time are indicative of the fact that he had mastered the subject of economics to a great extent a unique aspect of his scientific free mind. To save the Indian economy from the fiscal crisis of today caused by the so called global economic crisis, it would be relevant to adopt the canons of public expenditure advocated by Ambedkar. In 1949, while discussing the functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General Ambedkar said that during the framing of our Constitution, that Governments should spend the resources garnered from the public not only according to rules, laws and regulations, but should also see that 'faithfulness, wisdom and Economy' are adhered to in the acts of expenditure by public authorities. The remarkable thing about Ambedkar's canons of public expenditure is that they are ism-neutral. One can follow a policy of a large or small public sector and yet the principles behind these canons are applicable. First, the cannon of faithfulness, Faith in this context as defined by the dictionary a 'duty or commitment to fulfil a trust, promise...' Thus, it is necessary for the Government to be faithful to the original intentions. For example, if a certain sum is allocated to a centre for high education to improve the facilities without specifying the item of expenditure, a really faithful way of spending would be on libraries, laboratories and other items of teaching and research, rather than on frivolous things such as status or imposing buildings. Fidelity to the original intention must be tempered with wisdom, is the second canon of Ambedkar. A policy of the Government when executed may be faithful but may not be wise. While sagacity, prudence and commonsense are the all marks of a just and wise Governments, it should also possess experience and knowledge that can be applied critically and practically in specific areas. In the context of a just utilization of public funds, economic wisdom becomes a paramount necessity. The importance of the third cannon of Economy takes on a special meaning to achieve social well being. The apparent faithfulness to the original intentions and wisdom are not sufficient in themselves for public expenditure. Economy in public expenditure does not simply mean a low level of public spending, but is the intelligent use of funds, so that every paisa fetches the most benefit. These canons of Ambedkar are sufficiently flexible so that expenditure can be related to the state of the Indian economy. Ambedkar emphasized that the expenditure decision should closely relate to the specified objectives and the available resources, besides ensuring economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The allocation of expenditure among competing demands and the manner of utilization fall within the domain of these canons. Ambedkar's canons can be used as a touchstone to see whether a particular item of expenditure is necessary or not. Every single expenditure decision should be assessed in terms of the faithfulness to the will of the people; wisdom as provided by the professionals in the field, coupled with well-considered and honest judgement in execution. Following the canons scrupulously in individual items of expenditure can not always eliminate problems arising out of the broader economic policy pursued by the Government. But they can mitigate the harmful effects of ill-considered policies of the Government at the centre and the state level. Ambedkar proved to be the father of human resource development in India by virtue of the numerous safeguards incorporated in the Indian Constitution to improve the socio-economic, educational and cultural conditions of the Scheduled Castes He left no stone unturned in his efforts to postulate and pursue social policy that has direct bearing on the advancement of the untouchables. Accordingly, Ambedkar can be described as the architect of human resource development, the scope and significance of that form the core analysis in United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), formulating the case for human development strategy. In fact, Ambedkar's social policy is a forerunner of the contemporary human development school of though in public policy. The human development approach postulates Government intervention and regulation in the development of education, health, nutrition, protection of the environment and the interests of the poor masses and weaker sections. Ambedkar visualized a society where all social barriers between man and man were demolished where man was measured by his worth and not by his birth, and where equality between man and man was vigorously pursued. This meant that income inequalities caused by wealth and caste among the population had to be reduced. He emphasized the imperative necessity of uprooting the caste system, which weakened Indian Society. Ambedkar's prime weapon was arming depressed classes with political power by virtue of the numerous safeguards incorporated in the Indian Constitution to improve their socio-economic, educational and cultural conditions to augment their development from deprivation, social stigma and suffering. The identity and solidarity with which SCs are functioning and participating in the democratic elections is testimony to Ambedkar's intellectual vision, and the safeguard introduced for securing social justice to the most depressed section of the Indian population. The SCs achieved substantial progress in the sphere of education and representation in public services in free India by virtue of the constitutional safeguards he had proposed. Human Development Index (HDI) developed by UNDP since 1990 is an outstanding innovation for measuring the level of human development. It takes into account three basic elements of human well-being; longevity, knowledge and the access of resources required for living measured by life expectancy, adult literacy and mean years of schooling as well as real GDP per capita in purchasing power parity. HDI ranking of India is 127 out of 177 countries in the Human Development Report of 2005. But the achievements of human development over the last six decades reveals outstanding lesson asserting the benevolent role of public policy. High levels of human development can not be achieved at modest income levels unless the Government puts people at the centre of its plans. Although Ambedkar's prime concern was the uplift of the depressed classes, he anticipated the imperative of human development on a wider plane long ago. The current human development tide that endorses public for social development is the fruit of Ambedkar's endeavor. According to Ambedkar, the caste system is not merely division labour it is also division of labourers. It is a hierarchy in which the labourers are graded one above the other. Those who were at the bottom were known as untouchables and were not allowed to mingle with others and denied basic civil rights. The proactive of untouchability has ruined the nation and the economy as a whole. Ambedkar observed that 'as an economic system, it (the caste system) permits exploitation without obligation. Untouchably is not only a system of unmitigated economic exploitation but it is also a system of uncontrolled economic exploitation. Ambedkar believed that the caste system in India was a major obstacle to economic development. It generally did not allow people to teach professional skills to any other than their own casts members. Even if an individual did possess the skill necessary of a caste lower than his own. In a caste-minded society, there is no willingness on the part of the individuals to seek employment where they may be best suited. This inevitably reduces mobility of labour leading to inefficiency in production, thus impeding economic development. Ambedkar made every possible effort to eradicate untouchability in a very democratic and successful manner. He had also suggested a number of provisions for solving the problems of Indian labourers when appointed the labour member of Viceroy's Executive Committee in 1942, which was found to be a landmark in the history of labour legislation in India. Ambedkar believed that the thrust of strategy for India's economic development should be on eradication of poverty, elimination of inequalities and on ending exploitation of the masses. He accepted the Marxian view that there is exploitation in the world; that the rich exploit the poor; and that the enslavement of the masses by the privileged few, leads to perpetuation of poverty and its attendant suffering. Yet Ambedkar did not sympathize with the Marxist paradigm of development. In his essay 'Buddhism and Communism' Ambedkar expressed his view on communism. Unlike Marx, he did not accept economic relationships as the be-all and end-all of human life, and rejected the economic motive as the driving power behind all human activity. He emphasized economic, the social, religious and political dimensions of exploitation. Indeed, social and religious exploitation is no less oppressive than the economic exploitation in India. Ambedkar believed that communism stands for revolution and not for reformation. Communism advocates revolutionary methods for overcoming dictatorship, which he disliked, and believed those constitutional provisions and democratic means should be relied upon for the desired reformation. He rejected the totalitarian approach of Marxian progress, which thinks the State is a temporary institution that will 'wither away' in course of time. He believed in a classless society but not in a stateless society. He maintained that the State would continue to exist as long as human society survived. Indeed , in his book States and Minorities, he has entrusted the share with 'an obligation to plan the economic life of the people on line which will lead to highest point of productivity without closing every avenue to private enterprise, and also provide for equitable distribution of wealth. Ambedkar has advocated State ownership of agricultural land with democratic collectivized methods of cultivation and limited control of industries (i.e. heavy industries and large public utilities). Ambedkar perceived an active but well-defined role for the State in the economic life of the country. He did not favour the State imposition of arbitrary restraint on the economic processes. Thus, Ambedkar's economic ideas are of great use for our present economy of India capable of facing any kind of global economic crisis. We should adopt and execute his economic ideas so that we may enjoy a prosperous future in all times to come. Let Ambedkar is known to the World as an outstanding economist deserving recognition more than a noble prize in economics. | |
Meanwhile,Sensex may have gained 58% from its one-year low but did you know that over 400 companies have more than doubled their share prices from
Pick stocks on fundamentals Fiscal & revenue deficit Short-term plans are safe bets Five facts on stock falls Volatility: Bet on big guns
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Though , Investor confidence is likely to be put to test in the forthcoming week as India awaits its leader. Market analysts are keeping their fingers crossed and hoping for a stable government as a fractured verdict could be a major spoilsport. Market watchers are of the opinion that as long as BJP or a Congress-led alliance is in power, investors
As many as 20 largecaps such as RIL, SAIL, M&M , Sterlite, ICICI Bank and 30 mid-caps like Sesa Goa, Dish TV, Suzlon, Pantaloon and Unitech are among the 400-odd stocks which have given over 100% returns, if you would had bought them at their lows, an analysis of CMIE data shows.
Out of the 2600-odd stocks listed on the BSE and NSE, 405 stocks have at least doubled their values from their 365-day lows touched in October last year. Simply put, one out every six stocks has gained over 100% from their one-year bottom.
When Sensex dipped to 7,697 on October 27 last year, many stocks such as Jindal Steel and Power crashed to their lows as investor sentiment went for a toss.
However, the rise has been equally impressive with sensex now trading above the 12,000 mark. Shares of Jindal Steel, after languishing at Rs 517 on October 27, 2008, is now close to Rs 1,675 — tripling in value in a matter of just seven months.
The 10 most valued firms added Rs 41,538 crore to their valuation last week, taking the total market capitalisation of the elite club to Rs 12,89,157 crore at the end of trade on Friday.
Last week, valuation of the club, comprising four private and six public sector entities, was at Rs 12,47,619 crore.
Corporate behemoth RIL added Rs 14,841 crore to its market cap last week, taking its valuation to Rs 2,98,549 crore. The valuation of the Mukesh Ambani-led firm was at Rs 2,83,709 crore a week ago. Shares of RIL surged over five per cent to end at Rs 1,897 on the Bombay Stock Exchange last week.
However, amid overall gain in the broader market, three firms, NTPC, BHEL and ITC, lost a combined Rs 777 crore in a week.At the end of Friday's trade, power utility NTPC witnessed an erosion of Rs 289 crore from its valuation to Rs 1,56,499 crore. BHEL lost Rs 206 crore and FMCG major ITC Rs 283 crore.
he tracing of many of the existing violent conflicts in South Asia would clearly demonstrate that one of the most important contributory factors that continue to contribute to these conflicts is the culturally inherited habits of disproportionate and collective punishment towards the weaker sections of society. Many conflicts which have today blown up into so much violence that they have come to the notice of the global community are often the result of a limited protest of one or another weaker group within society, protesting on some issue and being subjected to disproportionate and collective punishment. The use of police fire power against small groups engaged in protests and the use of state sponsored riots to retaliate against some violent act done by a militant group has later developed into the type of crises that has undermined the stability of entire nations.
The use of disproportionate and collective punishment by those in power leads the more self-conscious sections among the protestors to take precautions for their security by adopting methodologies that can equal the ways of disproportionate and collective punishment of their opponents. In this way a conflict is magnified from its very inception because of the fear of annihilation by such disproportionate and collective punishment.
In this kind of conflict those who represent the state develop the ideology of the total annihilation of the opponent. In preparation for this the protestors also acquire a similar mentality and prepare themselves for a kind of battle which has, for its aim, the annihilation of the state counterparts.
Such conflicts defy any form of resolution by way of agreements arrived at on the basis of the mutual understanding of each other's legitimate positions. Even the very thought of a dialogue or compromise does not enter into a mindset that is full of fear of disproportionate and collective punishment.
The state, when faced with a conflict abandons the rule of law rapidly. The concept of the rule of law is based on the idea of proportionality of punishment to the offense and the total rejection of collective punishment. Within the rule of law context offenders are always individuals and it is the guilt or otherwise of the individual that the judicial system deals with. By this means the rule of law system when properly used prevents the conflicts degenerating into collective conflicts. When the state abandons the rule of law and goes back to the cultural habits of trying to deal with opponents with ideologies of annihilation there is no room for any mediators to deal with the parties to the conflict with a view to bring about a rational discourse leading to settlements which both sides can accept as legitimate.
While almost all leaders of the independence movements in South Asian countries attempt to romanticise and glorify the cultural traditions of their countries, B.R. Ambedkar alone raised the issue of the internal contradictions which were inherent within all cultural traditions which had the Indian culture as its core by pointing to the nature of the master-servant relationship within this setup rooted in the organisation of caste. By raising this issue he provided the basis for the understanding of conflicts in the post independence societies of South Asia. His life and work and the enormous amount of writings that he left behind remain a guide to the understanding of the type of conflicts that many people have thought of as defying any kind of rational understanding.
Economic Times reports:
CHA Karpe, a wealth manager in Mumbai, has her hands full these days. Her clients, all high net worth individuals, are consulting her more often than usual. The problem is wealth. Karpe's job is to find ways to help them preserve money in these testing times.
These people seem to have nothing to be worried about as their net worths range between Rs 10 crore and Rs 200 crore. And a small bump in the stock markets shouldn't propel them to sell their Rolls Royce or change their luxurious lifestyle.
Yet her clients are concerned, she says, as they are finding it difficult to come to terms with the sudden erosion in notional wealth. For them, the crisis was first disbelief, then reconciliation and now they are trying to understand how they can move forward.
As per financial service major Credit Suisse's India market strategy report, a host of companies, including Aditya Bira Nuvo, Bajaj Hindusthan, Adani Power, are planning to tap the capital markets in the coming months through various routes including private placement
"If Indian companies succeed in raising $10-15 billion over the next few months, even if equity markets were to reverse later in the year on global factors or on domestic policy tightening, corporate fundamentals could be on the way for market to be substantially higher in 2010," Credit Suisse research analyst Nilesh Jasani said in a report.
The report advised investors, who are confident of the political outcome and global rally, to pick from the list of companies about to finish funding.
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"Some of those who need money are likely to be quicker, more efficient and less valuation demanding than others. Those who succeed will have their long-term business fundamentals changed even if markets were to reverse again," it added.
Meanwhile, as per general assumptions if too many firms issue equities to raise money in a roaring stock market, at some point it may stop going up and might even come down.
This argument is generally seen as valid with hindsight but it is never easy to forecast how much a rising market would be able to absorb in new shares before getting tired, Jasani added.
The report pointed out that it believes that Indian fundamental story in 2008 got derailed because highly geared and negative cash flow business groups could no longer raise money in capital markets.
The companies are planning to raise funds up to Rs 29,547 crore (about $6 billion) from capital markets in the coming months. According to reports, the companies planning to raise funds include Aditya Birla Nuvo for its life insurance business (Rs 150 crore), Bajaj Hindusthan (Rs 1,500 crore), GMR Infra (Rs 3000 crore through private equity route).
Other firms include -- Indiabulls Real Estate whose board has approved a plan to raise Rs 3,000 crore through Qualified Institutional Placement of securities, Pantaloon Retail to mop up Rs 1,500 crore through a mix of preferential allotment of shares to promoters and PE funding.
Further, Adani Power has recently refiled the draft prospectus for an initial public offer with the market regulator SEBI.
http://economictimes.
What are the HARD facts about UNREGULATED INDIAN Economy and INFLATEDSatyam Asatyam FUNDAMENTALS and all the Hype about Growth and Development, let us see!
Work-related ailments like heart diseases, strokes and diabetes will likely cost India's exchequer around $160 billion between
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The paper, jointly prepared by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) and auditing major PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), said: "Due to tensions arising out of transitional liberalisation and current working environment in private and government sectors, the number of people with hypertension in India is expected to see a quantum leap of over 135 million."
Though India is a fast-developing country, it is yet to create facilities to mitigate tension and high blood pressure from work-related stress, which often leads to cardiovascular diseases, said Assocham president Sajjan Jindal in the report.
According to the paper, the number of deaths from chronic diseases in India would exceed seven million by 2015.
The country's national income is hard hit as it does not have adequate health centres even for routine check-ups. On the other side, most of the employers are under huge pressure at their work places and are working over-time to retain their jobs, Jindal said.
This breeds tension and hypertension that cause heart attacks, he added.
According to the report, to prevent chronic diseases, Indians should reduce tobacco intake, eat healthier diet and exercise regularly.
India is the world's second largest consumer of tobacco.
According to government estimates, by 2020, chronic diseases would be the major reason for almost 66 percent of the deaths.
India's total health care expense is less than 3 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), lower than the world average of 9 percent, Assocham added.
India runs huge trade gap despite anti-dumping steps
NEW DELHI: Swift rise in the measures to stop dumping of goods did not help India contain its imports for the larger part of fiscal 2008-09 that
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While over 14 per cent expansion in imports in the midst of global downturn would show India as one of the most liberal countries for inward trade, New Delhi topping the table of initiation of anti-dumping measures in the second-half of calendar 2008 paradoxically conveys an opposite impression.
India initiated the highest number of anti-dumping investigations at 42, between July and December, 2008, followed by Brazil and China, according to a WTO report.
Against USD 168 billion exports, imports went up to USD 287.75 billion for the financial year 2008-09.
"This (WTO report) is just a compilation. It does not mean that India is adopting protectionist postures," a FICCI official, dealing with international trade, said.
He said the number of anti-dumping investigations increased, especially after October, when countries like China, with global manufacturing capacity, found demand recession in the US and Europe and were looking for an alternative market.
RBI should come out with norms for verifying bank a/cs: SFIO
NEW DELHI: The Serious Fraud Investigation Office in its report on the Satyam fraud has suggested that the RBI should come out with definite
"(The) RBI may examine this (the procedure for issuing BCC) and issue necessary guidelines to ensure that forged balance confirmation certificates are not used for perpetration of fraud," the investigation arm of the Corporate Affairs Ministry said.
In case of Satyam, the statutory auditor Price Waterhouse relied on forged balance confirmation certificates produced by the Satyam management to certify accounts of the IT company.
The SFIO report further added that the auditors did not make any enquiry to ascertain the factual position on outstanding balance in current accounts and fixed deposits as required under ICAI directives.
"The... lapse on the part of statutory auditors has enabled the Satyam executives to perpetrate a massive fraud, as it was noticed that... many of the balance confirmation certificates were fake and forged," the report said.
Satyam, under disgraced founder B Ramalinga Raju, relied on forged fixed deposit receipts and bank accounts to present a rosy picture of the company. The company even paid taxes on interest on non-existing fixed deposits.
The banks, SFIO said, were not aware of the forgery till reference was made by the investigating agency seeking the veracity of the accounts.
In order to prevent such frauds in future, SFIO suggested that each BCC should be issued by banks only after receiving a written request and should also contain a serial number.
In respect of fixed deposit receipts, SFIO said FDR number and the date of issue should be specially mentioned.
In addition, it said, RBI should make it mandatory for issuing banks to retain a copy of the certificate for atleast 10 years.
Tatas, SBI, Infosys among world's top 50 reputed firms
ASHINGTON: The Tata Group, State Bank of India (SBI) and Infosys Technologies are among 17 Indian firms that figure among the top 50 in a list
With a pulse score of 80.89 on a scale of 0-100, the US-based Reputation Institute ranked the Tata Group 11th above global giants like Google, Microsoft, General electric, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Intel and Unilever. Italy-based chocolate producer Ferrero was ranked as the most reputable company on the planet right now. With its pulse score moving from 83.52 last year up to 85.17, Ferrero came up from fourth place last year to first, more than a full point ahead of second ranked IKEA. "However it is the people of India who love their companies the best," noted US business magazine Forbes. "Of India's 27 corporations ranked by the institute, 24 (89 percent) placed above the average. Seventeen of them landed in the top third of the list." The Reputation Institute's global pulse of 600 companies is a measure of corporate reputation calculated by averaging perceptions of four indicators, trust, esteem, admiration and good feeling, obtained from a representative sample of at least 100 respondents in the companies' home countries. SBI, India's largest bank, is ranked 29th with a score of 78.11. India's second largest software exporter Infosys is at 39th, with a pulse score of 77.45. Larsen & Toubro comes next at 47th position with a pulse score of 76.58, while India's largest carmaker Maruti Suzki has been ranked 49th with a pulse score of of 76.26. Other Indian firms in the top 200 are: Hindustan Unilever (69 - 74.99); ITC Ltd (95 - 73.50); Canara Bank (102- 73.34); Hindustan Petroleum (111 - 73.08); Indian Oil (112 - 73.01); Wipro (116 - 72.77); Mahindra & Mahindra (137 - 71.61); Bharti Airtel (163 - 70.32); Bank of Baroda(174 -- 69.81); Bharat Petroleum(175 - 69.79) and Punjab National Bank (177- 69.67.) Johnson & Johnson, which placed first in the US for reputation, lands third globally. Kraft Foods places eighth, making the US one of only two countries with two businesses in the global top 10. Brazil is the other. Its Petrobras and Sadia landed fourth and fifth respectively. Brazil had the second highest percentage of its participating companies ranked above the global average at 76 percent, while 62 percent of American companies received pulse scores above the average. | |||
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Some biggies on list of LGT Bank account holders
EW DELHI: A few well-known industrialists, a couple of small-time politicians and a large number of not-so-prominent traders and businessmen
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Whereas India has received the list of its nationals with bank accounts in Lechtenstein, a small German-speaking monarchy bordering Switzerland and Austria, it is yet to receive details of people with large deposits in Swiss banks because of a bilateral tax pact.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has started investigating whether there is any case of tax evasion against those with large cash deposits in LGT Bank, the official said requesting anonymity. The German government on March 18 this year passed on a disc to Indian authorities related to Lechtenstein, but the finance ministry has refused to divulge its details.
The list of Indian account holders is said to contain around 50 names, although two ministry officials, with whom SundayET had separate meetings, did not confirm the figure. "We have decided to maintain strict confidentiality on details of the CD that Germany has given it to us," a CBDT official said.
Another finance ministry official who had previewed the list said may be traders and businessmen who had opened accounts wanted to evade taxes.
No top Indian politicians figured in the list, but a few well-known names of India Inc and a couple of small-time politicians were listed, the official said.
The principal opposition party, the BJP, has alleged that the government hsd made no serious attempt to bring back billions of dollars stashed away in secret Swiss bank accounts although the government claimed that it has been seriously pursuing the matter.
The Centre told the Supreme Court on May 2 that it had approached the Swiss government to renegotiate the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) to ensure exchange of information on bank accounts of Indians.
In a separate development, the income-tax department has raised a tax demand of Rs 71,000 crore on a Pune-based stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan and others after his Swiss bank account details were allegedly recovered from a laptop in Khan's house.
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Tata Sons joins global firms against corruption
NITED NATIONS: Chief executives from some of the world's leading companies, including Tata Sons of India, have thrown their support behind a
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In a letter addressed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the CEOs noted that the UN Convention against Corruption - signed by 140 countries and ratified by 136 to date - holds "the promise of curbing corruption and creates a level playing field for all participants in the global economy."
The letter characterised the Convention as "an essential instrument in the fight against corruption," which is crucial in the current period of financial and economic turmoil to prevent an "erosion of ethical standards that will be hard to reverse."
They also underscored the importance for the Conference of States Parties to the Convention, held in Doha in November, to establish an effective implementation review mechanism. "Hoping that the Convention's measures will work, without follow-up reviews, would be a dangerous mistake," wrote the CEOs.
"The adoption of a rigorous implementation review mechanism will send a very positive message to international business," read the letter.
Signatories included the CEOs of Fuji Xerox of Japan, General Electric Company of the US, IKEA of Sweden, Royal Dutch Shell of the Netherlands, Sinosteel Corporation of China, and Zurich Financial Group of Switzerland.
The letter was written at the invitation of the four global, multi-industry, anti-corruption initiatives addressing the corporate sector: the International Chamber of Commerce, Transparency International, the UN Global Compact and the World Economic Forum Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI).
Education recession: 57% flunk PU exam
BANGALORE: The wake-up couldn't have been more rude. Only 43.34% students have cleared the II PU exam held in April. That's a failure of nearly
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Sadly, this has been the trend in recent years. It's only in 2005 and 2006 that the results crossed 50%. In 2008, the results dipped by 9%. This year, the increase is rather negligible — 2.03%. Of the 4.26 lakh freshers who took the exam, just 2.17 lakh cleared it, a mere 50.88%.
Bangalore boy Harsha N Bhushan of Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College has topped the Science stream by scoring 98.17%. The Arts topper Shruthi S K from Davanagere has scored 94%. The Commerce topper is from Udupi district, Swathi S with a stunning 98.5%.
Urban students fared better than their rural counterparts . While Bangalore South recorded 62.01% to be at fourth position, North recorded 61.53%. Students in Rural performed badly at 47.04%. While 56.11% girls (freshers) cleared the exam, only 45.57% boys passed.
Not a single student passed in 74 colleges. Surprisingly , the numbers are more in private unaided colleges.
"We are not happy with the pass percentage. However, even if it is 2% there has been some progress compared to last year's results' ' is all PU commissioner S G Hegde said.
Educationists said there is more than one reason for the poor pass percentage, the primary one being ensuring quality control. Since the nofail policy is in place in primary schools to ensure that children do not drop out of school due to bad performance , at the higher level, there ought to be stringent evaluation methods.
| Pink slips, but cos still spend more on salary Companies like Tech Mahindra, HCL, Wipro, TCS, Pfizer, NTBC, Geojit Finance pay more in January-March. Desperation often sinks high-income job seekers Job seekers looking for six-figure salaries are often so worried about their prospects that they ruin their chances with silly mistakes. Jobs at risk in Britain as steel plant faces closure: Corus Nearly 2,000 jobs are at risk at one of Britain's biggest steel plants after four major international buyers pulled out of a contract, owners Corus said on Friday. Layoffs might ease, but firms in no mood to hire Cos will have little appetite to ramp up hiring until they feel the economy is truly out of the woods & a recovery is firmly rooted. India Inc to beat slump with 7-8% salary hike Hewitt, Hay Group & Watson Wyatt predict high single digit salary hike. Recession effect: UK cuts jobs for foreign workers British govt has cut the number and categories of jobs available for migrants from outside the EU, including from India. India Inc freezes hiring ; no layoffs: PwC Most Indian cos have frozen their hiring plans for the short term, even as majority of them still rule out layoffs. India Inc may hike salaries by 6-8% in 2009: Mercer FMCG and infrastructure are expected to get the highest hikes. Companies back on the hunt, rev up hiring in April April seems to have activated the hiring process in the economy after a dismal quarter that witnessed a proliferation of pay cuts and pink slips. KPIT freezes new recruitments, halves variable pay Mid-size IT firm KPIT Cummins Infosystem has frozen fresh recruitments for next three-four quarters. MBAs face dismal job market Salaries are down by 25%, international offers have dried up, and at some top business schools nearly half the graduates can't find jobs. Reliance Money to sack about 300 employees The total workforce of Reliance Money across all its verticals, including broking, money transfer and gold coins, is over 2,000 employees. IT services may see over one lakh layoffs by Sep The Indian IT services sector may see up to five per cent layoffs -- amounting to more than one lakh job cuts. India Inc to offer 7% pay hike this year While FMCG and pharma sectors are more robust in terms of salary hikes, the likes of banking, IT and auto are sharply reducing their increments. Watch out for a sudden online UK job offer Unsuspecting Indian engineering grad are falling prey to new racket offering jobs in UK. | ||
nterviews
| Richard Boucher, US asst secretary of state, south and central Asian affairs | |
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Liquidity drives market rally this time
MUMBAI: It was around the same time in 2006 when the Sensex had touched the 12,000-mark for the first time in its history. And now, it's back to
Yet, the pace and timing of the recent rally have taken everybody by surprise. On Monday, the Sensex climbed 732 points, or 6.4%, to close at 12,135, recording a 1,133-point jump in just two sessions. The rally was much sharper than in 2006 when it took 16 trading sessions for the index to move from 11K to 12K. Three years ago, the move to 12,000 was fuelled by the announcement of strong quarterly numbers by corporates. This time around, corporate numbers have been disappointing, but strong liquidity flows have more than compensated for it. According to BSE's provisional data, FIIs were net-buyers for Rs 1,417 crore on Monday. Since mid-March, these players have net-bought shares worth $2 billion. "It's a liquidity-driven rally. We have already seen most of the worst and we hope there will be a gradual improvement in fundamentals from hereon. There had been huge withdrawals of foreign money, but that seems to have stopped now," said Centrum Broking MD Devesh Kumar. He, however, cautions investors that there will be a major correction before a new government is formed. The next keenly-awaited event is the outcome of the general elections. While it is widely felt that either the UPA or the NDA would form the government with the help of their respective allies, brokers feel any possibility outside of this would not augur well for the market. The 2006 rally had also some element of elections in it. The Sensex had moved up from 11,079 on March 27 to 12,040 on April 20, 2006, ahead of assembly elections in five states which ended on May 8. A few key factors that kept the mood upbeat then were robust Q4 earnings numbers, Infosys' better-than-expected guidance, RBI's decision to keep short-term rates unchanged and the rally in metal prices. There has been some participation of retail investors in the current market. "Though a bit cautious initially, retail investors have been gradually entering the market after the Sensex crossed 10,000. Some of them would be looking to recoup last year's losses, before the market heads for one more round of correction," says Alok Churiwala, director of Churiwala Securities. Reflecting retail presence in the market, the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices rose 3.9% and 3.6%, respectively on Monday. | |||
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Worst is over for Indian economy: SBI chief
OLKATA: The worst is over for the Indian economy and credit has again started flowing into key sectors, O P Bhatt, chairman of the country's
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'The worst is over for the economy. Auto and housing loans have started picking up already,' Bhatt told reporters after releasing the bank's financial results.
SBI, which accounts for about 25 percent of all loans and deposits in the country, has posted a net profit of Rs 9,121 crore for 2008-09 as against Rs 6,729 crore the year before, a rise of 35.5 per cent.
'Net profit for the fourth quarter (January-March) of 2008-09 increased 45.62 per cent to Rs 2,742 crore from Rs 1,883 crore in the corresponding quarter of 2007-08,' Bhatt said.
On the overseas operations of the bank, he said SBI would concentrate on 'consolidating the existing business network'. The bank is present in 33 countries.
It has plans to increase its Singapore operations from the present five branches to 12 this year and to 20 next fiscal.
Asked about its plans of entering the general insurance business
The net non-performing assets (NPAs) ratio of SBI for 2008-09 stood at 1.76 per cent, compared to 1.78 per cent in 2007-08. The total amount restructured during the year was Rs.8,310 crore.
The capital adequacy ratio of the bank is above 14 per cent.
SBI's total income for the fiscal rose 33 percent to Rs 76,479.2 crore from the previous year's Rs 57,645.2 crore.
Consolidated net profit was at Rs.10,955.2 crore, a 22 percent increase from Rs.8,960.6 crore in 2007-08.
The bank declared a 290 percent dividend at Rs.29 per share for fiscal 2008-09 that ended March 31.
| Ambedkar |
| In 1920, he started a Marathi Weekly paper called 'Mooknayak' to champion the cause of the depressed classes. He attended the depressed classes Conference on March the same year, under the Presidency of Chatrapati Sahu Maharaj at Kolhapur. He later resigned Professorship at Sydenham College to resume his studies in London. He returned to India on April 1923 and started to practice in the Bombay High Court. He also attended the three Round Table Conferences that were held in London to enable representatives of the various Indian communities and the three British Political parties to consider proposals for the future constitution of India. He founded the 'Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha' on July 20, 1924 for the upliftment of the depressed classes. The aims of the Sabha were Educate, Agitate, and Organise. He opened a hostel for untouchable students at Barshi. He was nominated as a member of the Bombay Legislative Council in 1926. He started Satyagraha at Mahad, a place in Kolaba district to secure to the untouchables the Right of access to the Chavdar Tank. He also started Satyagraha at Kalram Temple, Nasik to secure the Right of entry into the temple by the untouchables. On September 1932, he signed the Poona Pact with M.K.Gandhi giving up the separate electorates granted to the depressed classes by Ramsay MacDonald's communal Award, and instead accepting representation through Joint Electorates which greatly increased the number of reserved seats. By signing this Pact, Ambedkar marked his emergence as the most influential leader of the untouchables. From 1932-34, he became a member of joint parliamentary committee on the Indian Constitutional Reform. A historical Yeola Conversion Conference was held under the Presidentship of Dr.Ambedkar on Oct 13th, 1935. There he exhorted the depressed classes to leave Hinduism and embrace an other religion. He declared: 'I was born as a Hindu but I will not die as a Hindu'. These activities made him unpopular in the mainstream Hindu caste opinion. He was invited by the Jat Pat Todak Mandal of Lahore to preside over the conference. Dr. Ambedkar prepared his historical speech- 'The Annihilation of Caste'. But the conference was cancelled by the Mandal on the ground that Dr. Ambedkar's thoughts were revolutionary. Finally, he refused to preside and published his speech in book form in 1937. Ambedkar founded the Independent Labor Party and took part in the provincial elections that were held under the Government of India Act, 1935. With the outbreak of World War in 1939, Ambedkar regarded the Nazi ideology as a direct threat to the liberties of the Indian people. In 1941, he was appointed to the Defence Advisory Committee and in the following year joined the Viceroy's Executive Council as Labour Member. During the same period, he transformed the Independent Labor Party into the All-India Scheduled Caste Federation. In 1938, the Congress party introduced a bill making a change in the name of untouchables. i.e. they would be called Harijans meaning Sons of God. Dr. Ambedkar criticized the bill, as in his opinion the change of name would make no real change in their conditions. Dr. Ambedkar and Bhaurav Gaikwad protested against the use of the term Harijans in legal matters. In 1947 Aug 15 India obtained her Independence. Dr. Ambedkar was elected to the constitution assembly by the Bombay Legislature Congress Party. He joined Nehru's cabinet. He became the First Law Minister of Independent India. The Constitution Assembly appointed him to the drafting committee, which elected him as a Chairman on 29th August 1947. He completed the Draft Constitution of Indian Republic by Feb 1948. The Constituent Assembly adopted Article 17 of the Constitution for the abolition of Untouchability. On Sept 9 1951, he resigned from the Nehru cabinet because of the withdrawal of its support to the Hindu Code Bill. The Untouchability Bill was introduced in the Parliament in the Nehru Government in 1953. Later in his life he embraced Buddhism as he felt it as the best religion which does not consider Untouchability. In 1950, he visited Sri Lanka where he addressed a meeting of the World Fellowship of Buddhists. In 1951 he wrote an article defending the Buddha against the charge that he has been responsible for the decrease in the women's status in ancient India. The same year, he compiled the 'Baudha Upasana Patha', which is a small collection of Buddhist devotional texts. In 1955 he founded the Buddhist Society of India and installed a image of Buddha in a temple near Poona. Addressing the thousands of Untouchables who had assembled for the occasion, he declared that henceforth he would devote himself to the propagation of Buddhism in India. Ambedkar died on 6 December 1956. He was cremated at Dadar Chawpatti- which is now known as Chaitya Bhoomi Dadar in Bombay. His birth date is now a public holiday in India known as Ambedkar Jayanti. As a sign of respect, many Indians use the title 'Babasaheb' infront of his name. Bharat Ratna Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was a champion of the depressed classes. Being himself one of them and a mass orator, he roused his followers to stand up for their human rights. He was a veritable phenomenon in the 20th century. There may scarcely be a parallel indeed in the annals of human history to the saga of struggle his life represented. Only the concerted struggle of many committed people can restore true Ambedkar to his people. Few other important writings of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Some of the Important Quotations of the famous Orator: Compiled By: - Kalapala Hima Deepthi. http://www.ceeby.com/people/ambedkar.cfm
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Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born on 14th April, 1891. He was born in Central India as the fourteenth child to parents who belonged to the very lowest caste of Hindu society who are known as the dalits or untouchables. In 1908, Ambedkar passed the Matriculation exam from Bombay University. After graduating from Elfinstone College, Bombay in 1912, he joined Columbia University where he was awarded Ph.D for a thesis which he published in book form as "The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India". Later he joined the London School of Economics and obtained a degree of D.Sc for his thesis, "The Problem of the Rupee". He became a Professor of Political Economy in the Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, Bombay in 1918. mbedkar's Contributions to Indian Economics
"Earlier I remarked that it was unfortunate for the economics profession that Ambedkar decided to 'changeover from economics to law and politics' as he remarked in the preface of the Indian edition of The Problem of the Rupee in 1947″, says Mr. S. Ambirajan
I am deeply touched by the honour bestowed upon me by the University of Madras to give the Ambedkar Memorial Lecture. I must at once state that I accepted this invitation only after considerable hesitation because I am by no means an expert on Ambedkar's life, politics, legal and social writings, as well as his brilliant if chequered, career. However I have had some acquaintance with his writings in economics, and it is my intention to highlight a few aspects of his contributions to the study of Indian economics. Before I proceed, I wish to remark on one aspect of Ambedkar's present status with which many of you may not agree. I am somewhat distressed to see that he is portrayed as a leader of the 'dalit' community and nothing else. Partly it is the fault of the Indian political leadership in the post-independent era. It succeeded in its effort to marginalise him politically. But equally it is the fault of the community itself for having projected him exclusively as its own leader. This led to the repercussion of other much inferior people propelled as leaders of other communities, and the result was that Ambedkar got equated on a politico-intellectual plane with regional pygmies devoid of any significant national presence. It is my conviction that in reality we have had only two major personalities who could be considered the founding fathers of modern India. Vallabhbhai Patel unified and organised whatever bits and pieces left of a brutally partitioned geographical entity into a nation state. Ambedkar provided the cementing framework in the form of a Constitution that gave the newly born state a measure of feasibility and stability. All the remaining leaders were mere bit-players in this great story of the building of our sovereign democratic republic. I may be wrong, but there is enough ground for suspicion that the present Indian political class which seeks to honour Ambedkar by awarding posthumous titles, instituting fellowships and other memorials, is doing all this, not for genuinely honouring the departed leader but with the very utilitarian-selfish motive of securing the votes of those in whom he tried to instill a sense of self-respect. I must also make another melancholy reflection that in these days when the minority communities are claiming affinity with dalits – no doubt with the intention of strengthening their electoral clout – it would be worthwhile to remember that they treated dalits as no better than the caste Hindus. Ambedkar wrote of his experiences: Although on conversion to Christianity, the husband had become liberal in thought "the wife had remained orthodox in her ways and would not have consented to harbour an untouchable in her house…I learnt that a person who is an untouchable to a Hindu is also an untouchable to a Parsi…a person who is an untouchable to a Hindu is also an untouchable to a Mohammedan" (XII, 677, 678, 685). There must be something in the Indian soil and ethos that despite the lofty ideals of all religions, in the social and human sphere, much barbarism prevails.
While Ambedkar achieved great things in life, especially in the national-political arena, it is a matter of regret that he did not pursue economics which was his main interest during his early career. Ambedkar was among the first set of Indians who were trained in economics systematically and practised it professionally. India has had a hoary tradition of economic studies in ancient times as classics like Arthasastra, Sukraniti, and Tirukkural will attest. However the study of economics untainted by these texts and receiving its inspiration from the largely western (Judeo-Grecian-enlightenment) tradition for analytic study began in the middle of the 19th century. Those who studied economics and wrote economic treatises were not strictly speaking professional economists. They used economics as a political tool. Thus the distinct contributions of Dadabhai Naoroji, Mahadev Govinda Ranade, G V Joshi and numerous other thinker-activists remain polemical writings notwithstanding solid and substantial analytical content. With the 20th century dawning, and universities coming to be established, a professional academic economic community began to evolve. A number of Indians went abroad during the first quarter of this century to get advanced training in the discipline of economics to become professional economists, and they set the tone of economics studies in India until the 1960s. In this first group of foreign trained professional economists we can name C N Vakil, P N Banerjea, Jehangir Coyajee, Gyan Chand, D R Gadgil, P S Lokanathan, J P Niyogi, P J Thomas, P P Pillai, John Mathai, Radhakamal Mukherjea to name a few. Ambedkar belonged to this group to receive education abroad under some of the most eminent economists of the time, but unfortunately he left the pursuit of academic professional economics very soon after coming to India having served for a brief period as professor of political economy at the Sydenham College of Commerce, Bombay. Our main interest today is to examine his solid contributions to the subject before he left the discipline and also see whether anything of the deep understanding of economics he had acquired during the early years, surfaced later.
The first thing that strikes us is that Ambedkar had studied under the foremost authorities of the time both at the Columbia University in the US and at the University of London. He came under the influence of the outstanding American philosopher of the time, John Dewey who was among Ambedkar's teachers at the Columbia University. Dewey had forsaken the then dominant Hegelian theory of ideas, and formulated an instrumentalist theory of knowledge, which conceived ideas as instruments to solve social problems. Ambedkar internalised Dewey's message, which considered philosophy, in its essentials, as criticism involving reconstruction. He could also have been influenced by one of the leading anthropologists of the US, A A Goldenweiser in whose seminar, Ambedkar was encouraged to present a paper on castes in India which was later published in the Indian Antiquary (May 1917). What was most fortuitous was Ambedkar's teacher of public finance, Edwin R A Seligman who was then the McVickar professor of political economy at Columbia, and firmly placed among the most outstanding students of public finance and history of economic thought at that time. You will know that he edited the monumental Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences published in the 1930s. Subsequently, when Ambedkar went to London, his teacher was an equally eminent economist, Edwin Cannan who was also an acknowledged authority on the history of economic thought. It is worth remembering that Cannan's edition of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was the most used edition until very recently when the Glasgow edition replaced it.
Ambedkar's major writings are easily listed because after the late 1920s, he seems to have written almost nothing, though he has made some extremely insightful comments here and there one of which I shall elaborate at the end. The major economics publications are The Problem of the Rupee: Its Origin and Its Solution (P S King and Son Ltd, London 1923), and The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India – A Study in the Provincial Decentralisation of Imperial Finance (P S King and Son Ltd, London 1925). There is one significant academic paper he wrote in 1918, 'Small Holdings in India and Their Remedies' in Journal of the Indian Economic Society, Vol I, 1918. Besides these, there is his unpublished MA thesis, Administration and Finance of the East India Company (Columbia University, 1915). Apart from these academic economic writings, there are his Memoranda and evidence given to various government commissions, speeches in the different legislative bodies, and book reviews which all have some economic content. All of these have been brought together by the government of Maharashtra in a multi-volumed complete edition, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches. It is a matter of some regret that while much devotion and dedication has gone into the production of this edition, adequate attention to proper editing and scholarly annotating has not been tendered.
Earlier I remarked that it was unfortunate for the economics profession that Ambedkar decided to "changeover from economics to law and politics" as he remarked in the preface of the Indian edition of The Problem of the Rupee in 1947. It would appear that even at that stage, he hoped to come back to the subject by bringing the financial history from 1923 onwards in a second volume, and wrote "I can give them (readers) an assurance that they will not have to wait long for volume two. I am determined to bring it out with the least possible delay" (VI, p 323). But alas! within two months of writing this, India became free, and Ambedkar was caught once more in the world of law and politics, and he could not keep this promise.
I shall now examine four broad themes that Ambedkar concerned himself in his professional writings. Firstly, the policies examined by Ambedkar in his The Problem of the Rupee mainly, and elsewhere, deal with monetary standards as they had evolved during the previous few decades. The basic Indian currency unit, the rupee, has had a long history. Until 1893, it was based on a silver standard which means that the Indian rupee was based on the value of the silver content in it. From 1841 onwards gold coins also became legal tender at one mohur as equal to 15 silver rupees. Owing to vast gold discoveries in Australia and US, gold value fell, and from 1853 onwards gold coins ceased to be legal tender. Though many suggestions were made to introduce gold coinage especially after 1872, these were not heeded despite from 1873 onwards, due to enormous silver discoveries, the price of silver fell and hence the price of rupee slipped in terms of gold. From 1872 to 1893, this acted as a continued devaluation of the Indian currency which while was good for Indian exports, was not good for the Indian economy, it had to produce more rupees to remit expenses undertaken in England by India which were in sterling (i e, gold) terms. In 1893, the government stopped coining silver rupees though agreed to coin rupees in exchange of gold at a ratio of one pound four pence per rupee. It became managed currency with the government reserving the right to coin rupees whenever it was found necessary. The idea was to introduce eventually a gold standard with gold currency replacing the existing (managed) silver standard. In 1899, at the suggestion of the currency committee headed by H H Fowler, Indian mints were thrown open to issue gold coins. Gold was sought to be used widely, but it also recommended the silver rupee to remain unlimited legal tender. This was mistaken because under gold currency, rupee should have been token coin. From now on, many events took place till the gold exchange standard came to be established in 1906. According to this system, silver rupee was guaranteed convertibility into sterling pounds (based on gold value) at a fixed price, and make it available without any limit. The accumulated gold in India, instead of supporting a gold standard with gold currency in India, was kept in London to maintain the stability of the rate of exchange. However the system broke down in 1916 with the enormous rise in the value of the silver. Silver rupee more or less ceased to be merely token, and the system effectively became silver standard. Ambedkar's writings took all this and argued stridently for a proper gold standard with gold currency as he was highly critical of the gold exchange standard though the latter received powerful theoretical support from all the then leading authorities including John Maynard Keynes. Ambedkar's main thrust was to criticise the "reckless issue of rupee currency" made possible by the gold exchange standard. He highlighted the perversity of the system because gold reserves which were supposed to guard a run on the currency, depend actually upon adding to the currency stock. In general by removing the automaticity of the currency supply within the country, this system vests the government enormous power to bloat the money supply. The excessive importance given to maintain the stability of exchange as against internal stability of the value of currency was not a proper policy for India, he contended. Neither was Ambedkar a votary of deliberate lowering of the exchange rate whether planned or unplanned. Low exchange rate increases exports and boosts internal prices. This benefits the trading classes at the expense of the poorer people at home.
In a gold exchange standard, the coinage is manipulated by the government to keep it at par with the value of gold. Ambedkar asked: Was the job of currency management only important for the amount of gold it will procure in the external market? Obviously not, because "what really concerns those who use money is not how much gold that money is worth, but how much of things in general (of which gold is an infinitesimal part) that money is worth. Everywhere, therefore, the attempt is to keep money stable in terms of commodities in general, and that is but proper, for what ministers to the welfare of people is not so much the precious metals as commodities and services of more direct utility" (VI, p 563). Ambedkar's commitment was internal stability, and he was convinced that only an automatic system based on gold standard with gold currency could achieve this desirable end. Like every economist of his generation, he was a believer in the quantity theory of money and was afraid that governments will tend to artificially increase money in circulation. In his memorandum given to the Hilton Young Commission in 1925 he pointed out: "a managed currency is to be altogether avoided when the management is to be in the hands of the government". While there is less risk with monetary management by a private bank because "the penalty for imprudent issue, or mismanagement is visited by disaster directly upon the property of the issuer". In the case of the government "the chance of mismanagement is greater" because the issue of money "is authorised and conducted by men who are never under any present responsibility for private loss in case of bad judgment or mismanagement" (VI, p 627). In short, Ambedkar's conclusion is clearly towards price stability through conservative and automatic monetary management. This is of such current relevance that in these days of burgeoning budget deficits and their automatic monetisation, it would appear that we could do with an effective restraint on liquidity creation through an automatic mechanism.
The second theme that Ambedkar discussed in his academic publication The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India (1925) relates to public finances. Ambedkar draws his main conclusions from his study of the Indian system which are probably even more relevant now than it was at the time he wrote. What arrangements can be made in a public fiscal system that will enable it to be "administratively workable"? The main objective according to him was: "To make administrative polities independent by requiring them to finance themselves entirely out of their own respective resources without having to depend upon one another must always be regarded as a very important end to be kept in view in devising a new financial arrangement". This is not always possible because of "several concurrent or overlapping tax jurisdiction". The two methods to solve the problem, i e, 'system of divided heads' and 'contributions' both have advantages and disadvantages.
Ambedkar looked at some of the consequences of the Montague-Chelmsford reforms in provincial finances. What he cites from the despatch of the secretary of state could have been written now: "If the financial stability of the Provinces is not to be undermined, with ultimate jeopardy to the Government of India itself, it is impossible to contemplate the continuance of a series of Provincial deficits financed by borrowing either direct from the public or from the Central Government". The similarity does not end. The provinces proposed an increase in their resources by revising the financial arrangements enunciated in the Act. What the secretary of state said in 1922, might have been said by Yashwant Sinha today: "Equilibrium can only be achieved by reduction of expenditure and the adoption of measures which will lead to an increase in revenue". Ambedkar of course is scathing towards what he calls the "very unreasonable attitude" of the provinces, and points out how they have all failed their duty. Years later in 1939, he was to remark that "patriotism vanishes when you touch a man's pocket and I am sure that the States representatives will prefer their own financial interest to the necessities of a common front" (I, p 347). He squarely blames the governments for lacking political will to achieve efficient and equitable economic administration: "National prosperity may be great and growing and the increase of national wealth may be proceeding unchecked. If under such circumstances enough revenue is not obtained the fault does not lie with the social income. Rather it is a fault of the government which must be said to have failed to organise and marshal the national resources for fiscal purposes. The same is to some extent true of the Indian government. As for the base of taxation, Ambedkar considered income from land as the most likely source to augment state revenue, but he was vehemently opposed to the "pernicious effect of the system which bases the tax on a unit land held" (VI, 302ff). Ambedkar knew the problem clearly of tax proposals. Under the diarchy, when the government is run by a ministry recruited from the elected members of the provincial legislature, it would be futile to expect tax increases. More generally he said that if "nomination was the general mode of obtaining a seat in the Legislature", it was not necessary to "mind the prejudices of the electors". If however, the "seat is in the gift of the elector a candidate to the Legislature who proposes to touch his pocket has a small chance of success, even though the new taxes are to result in more than proportionate benefit". In any case a political party which "has won power from a bureaucracy by accusing it of heavy taxation cannot easily disgrace itself by continuing the same policy". But can they reduce public expenditure by enforcing administrative economies? Not likely because under diarchy, the governor in council will not allow retrenchment as he has no particular interest in effecting economies in public expenditure. The result was that "the chances of an early equilibrium in Provincial finance are very small". One wonders whether Ambedkar was talking of state finances in India in 1999?
Ambedkar's criticism of diarchy has a modern ring to it. Again in Ambedkar's words: "if there is no sound finance in the Provinces it is because diarchy is not a good form of government. Now, why is diarchy not a good form of government apart from its basic undemocratic character? The answer …. is very simple….it is opposed to the principle of collective responsibility". If an administration has to work smoothly, "it must recognise the principle of impartibility of governmental work and a collective responsibility of the administrators in the execution thereof". It is not easily understood that government work by nature is invisible because in practice "the functions of government can be and commonly are partitioned, as they are between local bodies and between departments" (VI, p 303). This does not mean that there is no "common thread that runs through them all: that no function of government acts in vacuo; that each reacts on some other function, and that the various functions cannot act at all produce orderly progress unless there is some force to harmonise them". Collective responsibility is this harmonising force. The conclusion is unmistakable: "Hybrid executives, divided responsibility, division of functions, reservation of powers, cannot make for a good system of government, and where there is no good system of government, there can be little hope for a sound system of finance" (VI, p 307). There is some discussion on public expenditure. The main point he makes is that an alien government cannot be expected to use the funds it has to the betterment of the people. As he made it clear: "if the Executive in India did not do certain things most conducive to progress it was because by reason of its being impersonal and also by reason of its character, motives and interests it could not sympathise with the living forces operating in the Indian Society, was not charged with its wants, its pains, its cravings and its desires, was inimical to its aspirations, did not advance education, disfavoured Swadeshi or snapped at anything that smacked of nationalism, it was because all these things went against its grain". In other words, the government "not being of the people could not feel the pulse of the people". One would have expected that Ambedkar would have given detailed treatment to problems of taxation and expenditure having been a student of Seligman, but as his concerns were different, he did not give much importance. But his interest surfaced on these issues when dealing with the Indian Constitution almost at the fag end of his professional career.
This leads me to the third theme of Ambedkarian economics. One has heard of the famous canons of taxation enunciated by Adam Smith more than 200-years ago, but has there been any similar canons regarding public expenditure? Nothing so pithy and pointed came my way in my not necessarily exhaustive studies of public finance literature until I happened to notice recently such canons in a most unlikely place. B R Ambedkar while discussing the functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General said in 1949 during the framing of our Constitution that governments should spend the resources garnered from the public not only as per rules, laws and regulations, but also to see that "faithfulness, wisdom and economy" have gone into the acts of expenditure by public authorities. Firstly, the question of faithfulness. Faith in this context as defined by the dictionary is "duty or commitment to fulfil a trust, promise …" A main reason for the existence of public finance is that human beings living in society require certain things like roads, law and order, etc. that cannot be enjoyed exclusively. As the costs and benefits of such items cannot be internalised, they will not be supplied through the free market mechanism. Governments exist to provide these common requirements. Citizens in democratic forms of government are promised by their representatives to improve their welfare by judicious provision of such public goods and services, and they place their trust in the government by delegating authority to take taxation and expenditure decisions. How the individual acts of public spending results in the augmentation of social welfare may not always be obvious because of spillover effects and long gestation periods. When the citizens are thus not in a position to comprehend clearly the consequences of government action, it is so easy to mislead them by false claims. Hence it becomes all the more necessary for the government to be faithful to the original intentions. For example, if a certain sum is allotted to a centre for higher education to improve its facilities without specifying the item of expenditure, a more faithful way of spending would be on libraries, laboratories and other items of teaching and research rather than on frivolous things such as statues of past professors or air conditioned limousine for its vice chancellor. The fidelity to the original intention must be tempered by 'wisdom'. For example, the original intention of the policy may be to spread appropriate information through expenditure on the activities of the DAVP or information departments. But such a policy when executed may be faithful to the intentions but may not be wise. In other words, expenditure should transcend the personal, the ephemeral and the showy, but must be done with circumspection and understanding of the deeper issues involved. While sagacity, prudence and common sense are the hallmarks of a just and wise ruler, he should also possess experience and knowledge that can be applied critically and practically in specific areas. In the context of a just utilisation of public funds, economic wisdom becomes a paramount necessity. But mere apparent faithfulness to the original intentions and wisdom are not sufficient in themselves for public expenditure to achieve social well-being. The importance of the third canon of public expenditure takes a special meaning here. 'Economy' in public expenditure does not simply mean a low level of public spending, but it is the intelligent use of funds so that every paise fetches the most benefit. Those in charge of public funds must strive to evaluate alternative methods of achieving the objectives and see to it that leakages do not occur. The remarkable thing about Ambedkar's canons is that they are ism-neutral. One can follow a policy of a large or a small public sector and yet the principles behind these canons are applicable. The canons are sufficiently flexible so that expenditure decisions can be related to the state of the economy. For example, what may be economic wisdom in undertaking a particular item of expenditure in one country may be economic stupidity at other times and other places. The canons emphasise that the expenditure decisions should closely relate to the specified objectives and the available resources besides ensuring economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the implementation of government decisions. While the determination of the aggregate level of expenditure is a matter of overall policy based on the democratic will of the people, allocation of that total among competing demands and the manner of utilisation fall within the domain of these canons. Following the canons scrupulously in individual items of expenditure cannot always eliminate problems arising out of the broader economic policy pursued by the government. But they can mitigate the harmful effects of ill-considered policies of our governments. In the present context of high fiscal deficits, a rigorous application of the Ambedkar canons can help reduce the quantum of public expenditure.
The last theme I wish to discuss relates to his ideas on agrarian economy. In his paper 'Small holdings in India and their remedies' (I, 453ff) published in 1918, he takes on a problem that is still haunting Indian agrarian system. At that time, British administrators and academics in India who were used to their own country where large agricultural land holdings was the norm, were appalled at the low productivity of Indian land. This they ascribed to the minuscule size of the farm land cultivated by Indian peasants. A number of suggestions emanated from sympathetic observers like H S Jevons of Allahabad University, Harold Mann and G F Keatinge of Bombay, and the committee appointed to make proposals on the consolidation of small and scattered holdings in the Baroda State (1917). They all proposed to consolidate and/or enlarge the holdings in the hands of individual farmers through interesting administrative measures. Ambedkar made a critical examination of the above, and in the process arrived at some very advanced conclusions. To begin with, he struck at the very root of the proposals by arguing that there can be no such thing as a correct size of agricultural holding. As he argued, land is only one of the many factors of production and the productivity of one factor of production is dependent upon the proportion in which the other factors of production are combined. In his words: "the chief object of an efficient production consists in making every factor in the concern contribute its highest; and it can do that only when it can co-operate with its fellow of the required capacity. Thus, there is an ideal of proportions that ought to subsist among the various factors combined, though the ideal will vary with the changes in proportions". From this he proceeds to say that if agriculture "is to be treated as an economic enterprise, then, by itself, there could be no such thing as a large or small holding". If this is so, what is the problem? Certainly it is not due to a want of efficiency in utilising whatever the peasant has. Ambedkar cites with approval an English civil servant: "The ryots have a keen eye to the results of a good system of farming as exhibited on model farms". Ambedkar's answer rests on the inadequacy of other factors of production. The insufficiency of capital which is needed for acquiring "agricultural stock and implements" arises from savings. But as Ambedkar remarks "that saving is possible where there is surplus is a common place of political economy". Even this is a surface reason, the ultimate cause being "the parent evil of the mal-adjustment in her social economy". This is partly defined as the non-availability of sufficient land in India to give her prosperity through the means of agriculture alone. There is almost a prophetic statement made by him long before modern theorists of development systematised notions of disguised unemployment or under-employment: "A large agricultural population with the lowest proportion of land in actual cultivation means that a large part of the agricultural population is superfluous and idle." Even if the lands are consolidated and enlarged and cultivated through capitalistic enterprise, it will not solve the problem as it will only aggravate "the evils by adding to our stock of idle labour". The only way out of this impasse is to take people away from land. This will automatically "lessen and destroy the premium that at present weighs heavily on land in India" and large "economic holding will force itself upon us as a pure gain". He concludes that "Industrialisation of India is the soundest remedy for the agricultural problems of India". This can generate adequate surplus that will also eventually benefit the agricultural sector. Indeed a shift from primary industry to secondary industry is vital and it must be attempted seriously to prevent the present enlargement of the rural population that was being witnessed and remedies based on what he calls "faulty political economy" were being advocated.
What can we conclude from this brief foray into the various economic themes with which Ambedkar was concerned? To begin, his main purpose in the pursuit of the discipline was normative. In other words, he hoped that his study of economics will lead to useful policy conclusions. Thus policy oriented welfare issues interested him more than studying the technical aspects of the discipline to demonstrate economic theorems. This however does not mean that he did not show any regard for theoretical conclusions derived by others. Indeed it is significant that his knowledge of economic theory was amazingly up-to-date. Not only was his reading of contemporary economic literature wide and deep, he applied whatever that was in the cutting edge of the discipline to concrete situations, very imaginatively. Just to give an example, in a paper he wrote in 1918, he refers to the contributions that appeared in the American Economic Review issued a few months earlier. Another example of his penchant for using received economic theory to critically examine arguments is in an obscure review written in 1918 of Bertrand Russell's book Principles of Social Reconstruction. Ambedkar takes him on the question of the 'Love of money' leading to human beings to "mutilate their own nature from a mistaken theory of what constitutes success" with the consequence of promoting a dead uniformity of "character and purpose, a diminution in the joy of life, and a stress and strain which leaves whole communities weary, discouraged and disillusioned". Ambedkar tears into this argument of the 'moralists' against 'love of money' showing that this philosophy is connected to a particular economic circumstances, and not of universal validity. In any case, money is required for something, and it is the purpose for which money is loved "will endow it with credit or cover it with shame" (I, 483ff). He brings the heavy artillery of neo-classical theory of marginal utility developed by as he says "Cournot, Gossen, Walras, Menger and Jevons" to counter Russell's position that it is all due to individual preference, and that people will give up things as soon as they have too much of anything. His books and papers are full of appropriate citations from the great contemporary economists, Irving Fisher, Alfred Marshall, Richard Ely, Alfred Kemmerer, Allyn Young, and John Maynard Keynes to name a few.
Ambedkar was not content with the current corpus of thought because he had a tremendous historical sense because he was fully aware that present situations wear the scars of the past. In almost all his academic works, he employed the historical method. Whether it is the currency conundrums or public finance, Ambedkar digs deep in the bowels of history to understand the significance the events he was currently analysing. It was analytical rather than the dialectical method he used though occasionally one does find a dialectical approach in his writings. Thus dealing with the need for legal solutions to social problems, he said: "Society is always conservative. It does not change unless it is compelled to and that too very slowly. When change begins, there is always a struggle between the old and the new, and the new is always in danger of being eliminated in the struggle for survival unless it is supported" (XII, p 115). However dialectics as a method of approaching any subject is absent in Ambedkar's work.
In many areas of Indian economic history, he was truly a pioneer and he faced all the problems that a pioneer faces as he pointed out in the preface of his The Evolution of Provincial Finance. Like Karl Marx some decades earlier, Ambedkar too pored over voluminous government reports and blue books to arrive at firm conclusions. Arising from his conscious use of history, was his use of statistical data. Notwithstanding the various lacunae of the official data, he skillfully marshalled the available data and used whatever statistical techniques that were available at that time. The value of his conclusions are substantial precisely because his analysis was based on sound empirical and historical foundations.
Thanks to Ambedkar's study under Cannan and Seligman, he was deeply read in the history of economic thought which came in most useful in all his writing. Apart from that he was widely read in history, jurisprudence, literature and classics. All this shows in the remarkable clarity and style one sees in his books, papers, speeches and so on.
One cannot but marvel at the amount of writing he had accomplished and that too in pioneer areas and difficult subjects. And all these before he had crossed his 30 years. The range too is remarkable, from a disquisition on ancient Indian commerce to the current problems faced by the Indian rural population. In all his academic writings – as indeed in his later political life – he was never overawed by authority. If something warranted criticism, he did not hesitate to voice his opinion even if it meant going against the most acclaimed author of the age or his own teacher as in the case of Edwin Cannan. The criticism was always based on sound judgment, and never used in a spirit of bellicosity.
Ambedkar firmly belonged to the Judeo-Greek-enlightenment tradition and was an uncompromising modernist. This shows in his approach to economics, politics, law, society and everything else including the matter of sartorial habits. He himself was always impeccably dressed in western clothes, and chastised Mahatma Gandhi for going to the Round Table Conference in London to discuss political settlement "as though he was going to a Vaishnava shrine singing Narsi Mehta's Songs" (I, p 351). His preference for a modernist approach comes most clearly when he compared Ranade and Gandhi: "In the age of Ranade the leaders struggled to modernise India. In the age of Gandhi the leaders are making her a living specimen of antiquity. In the age of Ranade leaders depended upon experience as a corrective method of their thought and their deeds. The leaders of the present age depend upon their inner voice as their guide. Not only is there a difference in their mental make up, there is a difference even in their viewpoint regarding external appearance. The leaders of the old age took care to be well clad while the leaders of the present age take pride in being half-clad" (I, p 352). But more importantly he believed in material progress, constitutional approach to solving problems, rule of law, right to property, civil liberties, democracy based on the liberty, equality and fraternity principles enunciated by the French Revolution. His extensive critique of the caste system is also based on enlightenment principles of economic efficiency through private initiative, individual liberties and human equality.
It is possible to construe from his later – especially in the 1940s – that he moved away from the strict mainstream economic theoretical position. It is no doubt true that he moved towards an economy based on state socialism where he proposed "state ownership in agriculture with a collectivised method of cultivation", state ownership of industry, nationalisation of insurance and so on. It was probably more due to functional reasons than any fundamental change in his enlightenment economic ideology, because he felt that private sector had not achieved growth and his rational mind told him that we should "put an obligation on the state to plan the economic life of the people on lines which would lead to highest point of productivity without closing every avenue to private enterprise, and also provide for the equitable distribution of wealth" (I, p 408). We must recollect that Ambedkar placed much value on democracy and individual liberty which he thought could be preserved by judicious state action. In a sense this conforms to the classic Smithian position. The causal chain that Adam Smith envisaged was that economic and social freedom/equality will propel the society towards political equality/freedom. And this is long lasting than the other way round where first you get political freedom and strive to achieve economic and social equality/freedom. In almost all his writings, Ambedkar while fighting for political emancipation, does not forget the need for social and economic reforms. Again it was Ambedkar's strong belief in the primacy of rationally directed social and economic development that he advocated centralisation of economic activities. Whether it is his signal achievements in formulating a coherent national water policy (done during his membership of Viceroy's Council 1942-1946) as elaborated in a recent book Ambedkar's Role in Economic Planning and Water Policy by Sukhadeo Thorat, or his helping to give a unitary bias to the Indian Constitution, Ambedkar's anxiety was to promote economic and social development of the Indian nation as quickly as possible. Indian Constitution is more unitary than federal which in a sense is a reflection of Ambedkar's long standing bias as he said in 1939 at the Gokhale School of Politics while delivering Kale Memorial Lecture: "I am not opposed to a Federal Form of Government. I confess I have a partiality for a Unitary form of Government. I think India needs it" (I, p 353).
This is not a place to involve myself in a controversy especially about Ambedkar's writings after 1925. But frequently mention is made about Buddhism and Marx while discussing Ambedkar's ideas. Obviously he was appreciative of the humanitarian and anti-exploitative sentiments that are in Buddhist and Marxian thought, but there is no evidence of them in his academic works. Even in later years when he did study Buddhism deeply in order to convert to that religion, his reading of Buddhist economics is at variance with that of others especially Schumacher, who in his Small Is Beautiful writes a substantial essay on Buddhist economics. There is more in common with the anti-modernist Mahatma Gandhi rather than with the modernist Ambedkar.
The four themes from the early writings of Ambedkar that I have sketched here shows in ample measure his keen economic mind and there is every possibility that he might have achieved substantial success in academic economics had he chosen to continue in the groves of academe. But he must have been touched by what the great enlightenment Scottish philosopher, Adam Ferguson stated in 1767 in his monumental An Essay on the History of Civil Society: "Where power is already established, where the strong are unwilling to suffer restraint, or the weak unable to find a protection, the defects of law are marks of the most perfect corruption". This could have led him to the study of law and jurisprudence so that he could reform the legal system to make it more equitable and civilised. But law and economics are very much intertwined and though he might have exiled himself from the academic pursuit of economics, the practice of that discipline was not totally absent in his legal and political career. We can end our tribute to this great son of India no better than what the unfortunate Pope Gregory VII, the great reforming Head of the Catholic Church of the 11th century said: Dilexi justitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilion (I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile).
[I am grateful to Professor Kuppuswamy, Ambedkar Professor at the Madras University not only for inviting me to deliver this lecture but also for providing me with necessary books and other materials. References in the brackets refer to the volume and page of Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches brought out by the Government of Maharashtra.]
Source: EPW
http://atrocitynews.wordpress.com/2007/03/24/ambedkars-contributions-to-indian-economics/
The Social Context of an Ideology: Ambedkar's Political and Social Thought (Hardcover)
by M S Gore (Author)Editorial Reviews
Social movements are not idiosyncratic events which occur randomly; rather, they are collective attempts to bring about--or prevent-- either individual or institutional social change by means characterized in identifiable patterns of behavior. In this major study, Gore examines the nature of an ideology of protest and locates it within the broader framework of a study of both social movements and the sociology of idea-systems. Predicated on the need to more fully explore and discuss the doctrine of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, this volume approaches his work from substantive as well as theoretical perspectives in its presentation of his arguments promoting the rights of individuals trapped within the lower levels of the caste system. This integration of Ambedkar's philosophy with a historical overview of social protest provides an excellent balance of ideological positing with established fact. As an introduction to Ambedkar, The Social Context of An Ideology is a broad and useful reference; as the catalyst for renewed study and debate, it is a valuable resource. "A valuable sociological treatise. The most important single distinguishing feature of Gore's endeavor is that he has characterised Ambedkar's movement as a protest movement. It is this protest framework that enables one to understand and even appreciate Ambedkar's critique of the efforts of early and contemporary social reformers directed towards the eradicating of untouchability." --Freedom First "The author has successfully shown how Dr. Ambedkar's efforts were different in nature, contents and style from his predecessors in the social field and his contemporaries in the political field. the author has succeeded in scrutinising 'Amdedkar ideology' by putting it in a theoretical context and establishing linkage between social context, role of leadership and ideology.... The book is an important addition to the literature about Dr. Ambedkar's thought and movement. The compact and analytical treatment of the subject is helpful to both the students of political sociology and social activists in understanding Dr. Ambedkar and his protest movement in a better manner." --The Downtrodden India "There is enough in these pages to set off other researches on related themes....The sections on Ambedkar's ideology and his participation in the national political scene are the most interesting and provocative, and it is for these that the book will be noticed, read, and remembered. On the whole, it is the author's presentation of Ambedkar's thought that will win this volume a wide readership." --Economic and Political Weekly "This book can legitimately claim a special status in the literature on Ambedkar and his social and political philosophy . . . . Prof. Gore's is a well-researched, elegant work on Ambedkar's ideology of struggle and its social setting. This should be read with great interest by all serious students of Indian society and polity." -Deccan Herald "Being a professional social scientist with a firm grip over sociological concepts, the author has been able to deal with his theoretical framework with ease." -New Quest "This book is of immense value to those who want to get a correct picture of the nature of life in Ambedkar." --The Hindu "The book under review is a brilliant research by Professor Gore into the life and career of Ambedkar and the implications of the Ambedkaian ideology of protest vis-a-vis the Hindu social order. . . . His review of the performance of Ambedkar as a politician is superbly authentic. . . . The book is superb by all yardsticks and will prove rewarding to the scores of practical politicians." --Business Standard "An in-depth analysis of Ambedkar's ideology and its social origins." --South Asia
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover
- The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India (Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society) by Nandini Gooptu on page 171, page 177, and Back Matter
- Outside the Fold by Gauri Viswanathan in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- A Dictionary of Asian Christianity by Scott W. Sunquist on page 17
- The Oxford India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology by Veena Das on page 557
- Dalit Identity and Politics (Cultural Subordination and the Dalit Challenge) by Ghanshyam Shah in Back Matter
B. R. Ambedkar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar | |
|---|---|
 B. R. Ambedkar | |
| Alternate name(s): | Baba Saheb |
| Date of birth: | April 14, 1891 |
| Place of birth: | Mhow, Central Provinces, British India |
| Date of death: | December 6, 1956 |
| Place of death: | Delhi, India |
| Movement: | Dalit Buddhist movement |
| Major organizations: | Independent Labour Party, Scheduled Castes Federation, Republican Party of India |
| Religion: | Buddhism |
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (Marathi: डॊ.ŕ¤ीमराव रामजी आंबेडकर) (April 14, 1891 — December 6, 1956), also known as Babasaheb, was an Indian nationalist, jurist, Dalit political leader and a Buddhist revivalist. He was also the chief architect of the Indian Constitution. Born into a poor Untouchable family, Ambedkar spent his whole life fighting against social discrimination, the system of Chaturvarna — the Hindu categorization of human society into four varnas — and the Indian caste system. He is also credited with having sparked the Dalit Buddhist movement. Ambedkar has been honoured with the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award.
Overcoming numerous social and financial obstacles, Ambedkar became one of the first "untouchables" to obtain a college education in India. Eventually earning law degrees and multiple doctorates for his study and research in law, economics and political science from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, Ambedkar returned home a famous scholar and practiced law for a few years before publishing journals advocating political rights and social freedom for India's untouchables.
Contents[hide] |
Early life
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born in the British-founded town and military cantonment of Mhow in the Central Provinces (now in Madhya Pradesh).[1] He was the 14th and last child of Ramji Maloji Sakpal and Bhimabai Murbadkar.[2] His family was of Marathi background from the town of Ambavade in the Ratnagiri district of modern-day Maharashtra. They belonged to the Hindu Mahar caste, who were treated as untouchables and subjected to intense socio-economic discrimination. Ambedkar's ancestors had for long been in the employment of the army of the British East India Company, and his father served in the Indian Army at the Mhow cantonment. He had received a degree of formal education in Marathi and English, and encouraged his children to learn and work hard at school.
Belonging to the Kabir Panth, Ramji Sakpal encouraged his children to read the Hindu classics. He used his position in the army to lobby for his children to study at the government school, as they faced resistance owing to their caste. Although able to attend school, Ambedkar and other Untouchable children were segregated and given no attention or assistance by the teachers. They were not allowed to sit inside the class. Even if they needed to drink water somebody from a higher caste would have to pour that water from a height as they were not allowed to touch either the water or the vessel that contained it. This task was usually performed for the young Ambedkar by the school peon, and if he could not be found Ambedkar went without water.[2] Ramji Sakpal retired in 1894 and the family moved to Satara two years later. Shortly after their move, Ambedkar's mother died. The children were cared for by their paternal aunt, and lived in difficult circumstances. Only three sons — Balaram, Anandrao and Bhimrao — and two daughters — Manjula and Tulasa — of the Ambedkars would go on to survive them. Of his brothers and sisters, only Ambedkar succeeded in passing his examinations and graduating to a higher school. His native village name was "Ambavade" in Ratnagiri District so he changed his name from "Sakpal" to "Ambedkar" with the recommendation and faith of Mahadev Ambedkar, a Deshasta Brahmin teacher who believed in him.[1]
Ramji Sakpal remarried in 1898, and the family moved to Mumbai (then Bombay), where Ambedkar became the first untouchable student at the Government High School near Elphinstone Road.[3] Although excelling in his studies, Ambedkar was increasingly disturbed by the segregation and discrimination that he faced. In 1907, he passed his matriculation examination and entered the University of Bombay, becoming one of the first persons of untouchable origin to enter a college in India. This success provoked celebrations in his community, and after a public ceremony he was presented with a biography of the Buddha by his teacher Krishnaji Arjun Keluskar also known as Dada Keluskar, a Maratha caste scholar. Ambedkar's marriage had been arranged the previous year as per Hindu custom, to Ramabai, a nine-year old girl from Dapoli.[3] In 1908, he entered Elphinstone College and obtained a scholarship of twenty five rupees a month from the Gayakwad ruler of Baroda, Sahyaji Rao III for higher studies in the USA. By 1912, he obtained his degree in economics and political science, and prepared to take up employment with the Baroda state government. His wife gave birth to his first son, Yashwant, in the same year. Ambedkar had just moved his young family and started work, when he dashed back to Mumbai to see his ailing father, who died on February 2, 1913.
Fight against untouchability
As a leading Indian scholar, Ambedkar had been invited to testify before the Southborough Committee, which was preparing the Government of India Act 1919. At this hearing, Ambedkar argued for creating separate electorates and reservations for Dalits and other religious communities. In 1920, he began the publication of the weekly Mooknayak (Leader of the Silent) in Mumbai. Attaining popularity, Ambedkar used this journal to criticize orthodox Hindu politicians and a perceived reluctance of the Indian political community to fight caste discrimination. His speech at a Depressed Classes Conference in Kolhapur impressed the local state ruler Shahu IV, who shocked orthodox society by dining with Ambekdar. Ambedkar established a successful legal practise, and also organised the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha to promote education and socio-economic uplifting of the depressed classes. In 1926, he became a nominated member of the Bombay Legislative Council. By 1927 Dr. Ambedkar decided to launch active movements against untouchability. He began with public movements and marches to open up and share public drinking water resources, also he began a struggle for the right to enter Hindu temples. He led a satyagraha in Mahad to fight for the right of the untouchable community to draw water from the main water tank of the town.
He was appointed to the Bombay Presidency Committee to work with the all-European Simon Commission in 1928. This commission had sparked great protests across India, and while its report was ignored by most Indians, Ambedkar himself wrote a separate set of recommendations for future constitutional reformers.
Poona Pact
By now Ambedkar had become one of the most prominent untouchable political figures of the time. He had grown increasingly critical of mainstream Indian political parties for their perceived lack of emphasis for the elimination of the caste system. Ambedkar criticized the Indian National Congress and its leader Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, whom he accused of reducing the untouchable community to a figure of pathos. Ambedkar was also dissatisfied with the failures of British rule, and advocated a political identity for untouchables separate from both the Congress and the British. At a Depressed Classes Conference on August 8, 1930 Ambedkar outlined his political vision, insisting that the safety of the Depressed Classes hinged on their being independent of the Government and the Congress both:
We must shape our course ourselves and by ourselves... Political power cannot be a panacea for the ills of the Depressed Classes. Their salvation lies in their social elevation. They must cleanse their evil habits. They must improve their bad ways of living.... They must be educated.... There is a great necessity to disturb their pathetic contentment and to instill into them that divine discontent which is the spring of all elevation.[2]
In this speech, Ambedkar criticized the Salt Satyagraha launched by Gandhi and the Congress. Ambedkar's criticisms and political work had made him very unpopular with orthodox Hindus, as well as with many Congress politicians who had earlier condemned untouchability and worked against discrimination across India. This was largely because these "liberal" politicians usually stopped short of advocating full equality for untouchables.
In 1932, M. C. Rajah concluded a pact with two right-wingers in the Indian National Congress, Dr. B. S. Moonje [4][5] and Jadhav. According to this pact, Moonje offered reserved seats to scheduled castes in return for Rajah's support. This demand prompted Ambedkar to make an official demand for Separate Electorate System on an all-India basis. Ambedkar's prominence and popular support amongst the untouchable community had increased, and he was invited to attend the Second Round Table Conference in London in 1931. Here he sparred verbally with Gandhi on the question of awarding separate electorates to untouchables.[2] A fierce opponent of separate electorates on religious and sectarian lines, Gandhi feared that separate electorates for untouchables would divide Hindu society for future generations.
When the British agreed with Ambedkar and announced the awarding of separate electorates, Gandhi began a fast-unto-death while imprisoned in the Yeravada Central Jail of Pune in 1932. Exhorting orthodox Hindu society to eliminate discrimination and untouchability, Gandhi asked for the political and social unity of Hindus. Gandhi's fast provoked great public support across India, and orthodox Hindu leaders, Congress politicians and activists such as Madan Mohan Malaviya and Palwankar Baloo organized joint meetings with Ambedkar and his supporters at Yeravada. Fearing a communal reprisal and killings of untouchables in the event of Gandhi's death, Ambedkar agreed under massive coercion from the supporters of Gandhi to drop the demand for separate electorates, and settled for a reservation of seats. This agreement, which saw Gandhi end his fast, in the end achieved more representation for the untouchables, while dropping the demand for separate electorates that was promised through the British Communal Award prior to Ambedkar's meeting with Gandhi. Ambedkar was to later criticise this fast of Gandhi as a gimmick to deny political rights to the untouchables and increase the coercion he had faced to give up the demand for separate electorates.
Political career
In 1935, Ambedkar was appointed principal of the Government Law College, a position he held for two years. Settling in Mumbai, Ambedkar oversaw the construction of a large house, and stocked his personal library with more than 50,000 books.[6] His wife Ramabai died after a long illness in the same year. It had been her long-standing wish to go on a pilgrimage to Pandharpur, but Ambedkar had refused to let her go, telling her that he would create a new Pandharpur for her instead of Hinduism's Pandharpur which treated them as untouchables. His own views and attitudes had hardened against orthodox Hindus, despite a significant increase in momentum across India for the fight against untouchability. and he began criticizing them even as he was criticized himself by large numbers of Hindu activists. Speaking at the Yeola Conversion Conference on October 13 near Nasik, Ambedkar announced his intention to convert to a different religion and exhorted his followers to leave Hinduism.[6] He would repeat his message at numerous public meetings across India.
In 1936, Ambedkar founded the Independent Labour Party, which won 15 seats in the 1937 elections to the Central Legislative Assembly. He published his book The Annihilation of Caste in the same year, based on the thesis he had written in New York. Attaining immense popular success, Ambedkar's work strongly criticized Hindu religious leaders and the caste system in general. He protested the Congress decision to call the untouchable community Harijans (Children of God), a name coined by Gandhi.[6] Ambedkar served on the Defence Advisory Committee and the Viceroy's Executive Council as minister for labour.
Between 1941 and 1945, he published a large number of highly controversial books and pamphlets, including Thoughts on Pakistan, in which he criticized the Muslim League's demand for a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. With What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, Ambedkar intensified his attacks on Gandhi and the Congress, charging them with hypocrisy. [7] In his work Who Were the Shudras?, Ambedkar attempted to explain the formation of the Shudras i.e. the lowest caste in hierarchy of Hindu caste system. He also emphasised how Shudras are separate from Untouchables. Ambedkar oversaw the transformation of his political party into the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, although it performed poorly in the elections held in 1946 for the Constituent Assembly of India. In writing a sequel to Who Were the Shudras? in 1948, Ambedkar lambasted Hinduism in the The Untouchables: A Thesis on the Origins of Untouchability:
The Hindu Civilisation.... is a diabolical contrivance to suppress and enslave humanity. Its proper name would be infamy. What else can be said of a civilisation which has produced a mass of people... who are treated as an entity beyond human intercourse and whose mere touch is enough to cause pollution?
Ambedkar was also critical of Islam and its practices in South Asia. While justifying the Partition of India, he condemned the practice of child marriage in Muslim society, as well as the mistreatment of women. He said,
No words can adequately express the great and many evils of polygamy and concubinage, and especially as a source of misery to a Muslim woman. Take the caste system. Everybody infers that Islam must be free from slavery and caste.[While slavery existed], much of its support was derived from Islam and Islamic countries. While the prescriptions by the Prophet regarding the just and humane treatment of slaves contained in the Koran are praiseworthy, there is nothing whatever in Islam that lends support to the abolition of this curse. But if slavery has gone, caste among Musalmans [Muslims] has remained.[8]
He wrote that Muslim society is "even more full of social evils than Hindu Society is" and criticized Muslims for sugarcoating their sectarian caste system with euphemisms like "brotherhood". He also criticized the discrimination against the Arzal classes among Muslims who were regarded as "degraded", as well as the oppression of women in Muslim society through the oppressive purdah system. He alleged that while Purdah was also practiced by Hindus, only among Muslims was it sanctioned by religion. He criticized their fanaticism regarding Islam on the grounds that their literalist interpretations of Islamic doctrine made their society very rigid and impermeable to change. He further wrote that Indian Muslims have failed to reform their society unlike Muslims in other countries like Turkey.[8]
In a "communal malaise", both groups [Hindus and Muslims] ignore the urgent claims of social justice.[8]
While he was extremely critical of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the communally divisive strategies of the Muslim League, he argued that Hindus and Muslims should segregate and the State of Pakistan be formed, as ethnic nationalism within the same country would only lead to more violence. He cited precedents in historical events such as the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Czechoslovakia to bolster his views regarding the Hindu-Muslim communal divide.[8]
However, he questioned whether the need for Pakistan was sufficient and suggested that it might be possible to resolve Hindu-Muslim differences in a less drastic way. He wrote that Pakistan must "justify its existence" accordingly. Since other countries such as Canada have also had communal issues with the French and English and have lived together, it might not be impossible for Hindus and Muslims to live together.[8]
He warned that the actual implementation of a two-state solution would be extremely problematic with massive population transfers and border disputes. This claim was prophetic, looking forward to the violent Partition of India after Independence.[8]
Architect of India's constitution
Upon India's independence on August 15, 1947, the new Congress-led government invited Ambedkar to serve as the nation's first law minister, which he accepted. On August 29, Ambedkar was appointed chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, charged by the Assembly to write free India's new Constitution. Ambedkar won great praise from his colleagues and contemporary observers for his drafting work. In this task Ambedkar's study of sangha practice among early Buddhists and his extensive reading in Buddhist scriptures was to come to his aid. Sangha practice incorporated voting by ballot, rules of debate and precedence and the use of agendas, committees and proposals to conduct business. Sangha practice itself was modelled on the oligarchic system of governance followed by tribal republics of ancient India such as the Shakyas and the Lichchavis. Thus, although Ambedkar used Western models to give his Constitution shape, its spirit was Indian and, indeed, tribal.
The text prepared by Ambedkar provided constitutional guarantees and protections for a wide range of civil liberties for individual citizens, including freedom of religion, the abolition of untouchability and the outlawing of all forms of discrimination Ambedkar argued for extensive economic and social rights for women, and also won the Assembly's support for introducing a system of reservations of jobs in the civil services, schools and colleges for members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, a system akin to affirmative action. India's lawmakers hoped to eradicate the socio-economic inequalities and lack of opportunities for India's depressed classes through this measure, which had been originally envisioned as temporary on a need basis. The Constitution was adopted on November 26, 1949 by the Constituent Assembly. Speaking after the completion of his work, Ambedkar said:
Ambedkar resigned from the cabinet in 1951 following the stalling in parliament of his draft of the Hindu Code Bill, which sought to expound gender equality in the laws of inheritance, marriage and the economy. Although supported by Prime Minister Nehru, the cabinet and many other Congress leaders, it received criticism from a large number of members of parliament. Ambedkar independently contested an election in 1952 to the lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha but was defeated. He was appointed to the upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha in March 1952 and would remain a member until his death.
Conversion to Buddhism
In the 1950s, Ambedkar turned his attention to Buddhism and travelled to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to attend a convention of Buddhist scholars and monks. While dedicating a new Buddhist vihara near Pune, Ambedkar announced that he was writing a book on Buddhism, and that as soon as it was finished, he planned to make a formal conversion to Buddhism.[9] Ambedkar twice visited Burma in 1954; the second time in order to attend the third conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists in Rangoon. In 1955, he founded the Bharatiya Bauddha Mahasabha, or the Buddhist Society of India. He completed his final work, The Buddha and His Dhamma, in 1956. It was published posthumously.
After meetings with the Sri Lankan Buddhist monk Hammalawa Saddhatissa,[10] Ambedkar organised a formal public ceremony for himself and his supporters in Nagpur on October 14, 1956. Accepting the Three Refuges and Five Precepts from a Buddhist monk in the traditional manner, Ambedkar completed his own conversion. He then proceeded to convert an estimated 500,000 of his supporters who were gathered around him.[9] Taking the 22 Vows, Ambedkar and his supporters explicitly condemned and rejected Hinduism and Hindu philosophy. He then traveled to Kathmandu in Nepal to attend the Fourth World Buddhist Conference. He completed his final manuscript, The Buddha or Karl Marx on December 2, 1956.
Death / Mahanirvana
Since 1948, Ambedkar had been suffering from diabetes. He was bed-ridden from June to October in 1954 owing to clinical depression and failing eyesight.[9] He had been increasingly embittered by political issues, which took a toll on his health. His health worsened as he furiously worked through 1955. Just three days after completing his final manuscript The Buddha and His Dhamma, it is said that Ambedkar died in his sleep on December 6, 1956 at his home in Delhi.
Since the Caste hindus denied the cremation at Dadar crematorium, A Buddhist-style cremation was organised for him at Chowpatty beach on December 7, attended by hundreds of thousands of supporters, activists and admirers.
Ambedkar was survived by his second wife Savita Ambedkar, born as a caste Brahmin and converted to Buddhism with him. His wife's name before marriage was Sharda Kabir. Savita Ambedkar died as a Buddhist in 2002. Ambedkar's grandson, Prakash Yaswant Ambedkar leads the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangha and has served in both houses of the Indian Parliament.
A number of unfinished typescripts and handwritten drafts were found among Ambedkar's notes and papers and gradually made available. Among these were Waiting for a Visa, which probably dates from 1935-36 and is an autobiographical work, and the Untouchables, or the Children of India's Ghetto, which refers to the census of 1951.[9]
A memorial for Ambedkar was established in his Delhi house at 26 Alipur Road. His birthdate is celebrated as a public holiday known as Ambedkar Jayanti. He was posthumously awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna in 1990. Many public institutions are named in his honour, such as the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, B. R. Ambedkar Bihar University, Muzaffarpur, the other being Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport in Nagpur, which was otherwise known as Sonegaon Airport. A large official portrait of Ambedkar is on display in the Indian Parliament building.
On the anniversary of his birth (14 April) and death (6 December) and on Dhamma Chakra Pravartan Din, 14th Oct at Nagpur, at least half a million people gather to pay homage to him at his memorial in Mumbai. Thousands of bookshops are set up, and books are sold. His message to his followers was " Educate!!!, Organize!!!, Agitate!!!".
Ambedkar v. Gandhi on village life
Ambedkar was a fierce critic of Mahatma Gandhi (and the Indian National Congress). He was criticized by his contemporaries and modern scholars for this opposition to Gandhi, who had been one of the first Indian leaders to call for the abolition of untouchability and discrimination.
Gandhi had a more positive, arguably romanticised view of traditional village life in India and a sentimental approach to the untouchables, calling them Harijan (children of God) and saying he was "of" them. Ambedkar rejected the epithet "Harijan" as condescending. He tended to encourage his followers to leave their home villages, move to the cities, and get an education.
Criticism and legacy
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Ambedkar's legacy as a socio-political reformer, had a deep effect on modern India. In post-Independence India his socio-political thought has acquired respect across the political spectrum. His initiatives have influenced various spheres of life and transformed the way India today looks at socio-economic policies, education and affirmative action through socio-economic and legal incentives. His reputation as a scholar led to his appointment as free India's first law minister, and chairman of the committee responsible to draft a constitution. He passionately believed in the freedom of the individual and criticised equally both orthodox casteist Hindu society. His polemical condemnation of Hinduism and its foundation of caste system, made him controversial, although his conversion to Buddhism sparked a revival in interest in Buddhist philosophy in India and abroad.
Dr. Ambedkar condemned Gandhi's support for Hindu caste system and perpetuating untouchability. Dr.Ambedkar warned people,"Don't call Gandhi a saint. He is a seasoned politician. When everything else fails, Gandhi will resort to intrigue." "Don't fall under Gandhi's spell, he's not God... Mahatmas have come and Mahatmas have gone but untouchables have remained untouchables."
Ambedkar's political philosophy has given rise to a large number of Dalit political parties, publications and workers' unions that remain active across India, especially in Maharashtra. His promotion of the Dalit Buddhist movement has rejuvenated interest in Buddhist philosophy in many parts of India. Mass conversion ceremonies have been organized by Dalit activists in modern times, emulating Ambedkar's Nagpur ceremony of 1956.
Dr. Ambedkar also compared the hatred against the Scheduled Castes with apartheid and antisemitism.
Some scholars, including some from the affected castes, took the view that the British were more even-handed between castes, and that continuance of British rule would have helped to eradicate many evil practices. This political opinion was shared by quite a number of social activists including Jyotirao Phule.
Some, in modern India, question the continued institution of reservations initiated by Ambedkar as outdated and anti-meritocratic.
Aftermath
Frequent violent clashes between Buddhist groups and orthodox Hindus have occurred over the years. When in 1994 a garland of shoes was hung around a statue of Ambedkar in Mumbai, sectarian violence and strikes paralyzed the city for over a week. When the following year similar disturbances occurred, a statue of Ambedkar was destroyed. Upper-caste groups in Tamil Nadu have also engaged in violence against Buddhists[citation needed]. In addition, some Dalits who had converted to Buddhism have rioted against Hindus (such as the 2006 Dalit protests in Maharashtra) and desecrated Hindu temples, often incited into doing so by anti-Hindu elements and replacing deities with pictures of Ambedkar[11]. The radical Ambedkarite "Dalit Panthers Movement" has even gone so far as to attempt to assassinate academics who have been critical of Ambedkar's understanding of Buddhism.[12]
Film
Jabbar Patel directed the English-language movie (also dubbed in Hindi and other Indian languages)Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar [2] about the life of Ambedkar, released in 2000, starring the Indian actor Mammootty as Ambedkar. Sponsored by India's National Film Development Corporation and the Ministry of Social Justice, the film was released after a long and controversial gestation period. Mammootty won the National Film Award for Best Actor for the role of Ambedkar, which he portrayed in this film.
Dr. David Blundell, professor of anthropology at UCLA and Historical Ethnographer, has established [3] a long-term project; a series of films and events that are intended to stimulate interest and knowledge about the social and welfare conditions in India. Arising Light is a film on the life on Dr B. R. Ambedkar and social welfare in India.
References
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Learning resources from Wikiversity- ^ Jaffrelot, Christophe (2005). Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 2. ISBN 0-231-13602-1.
- ^ a b c d Pritchett, Frances. "In the 1890s" (PHP). http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/timeline/1890s.html. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.
- ^ a b Pritchett, Frances. "In the 1900s" (PHP). http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/timeline/1900s.html. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.
- ^ Pritchett. "Rajah, Rao Bahadur M. C.". University of Columbia. http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar/web/individuals/6750.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-05.
- ^ Kothari, R. (2004). Caste in Indian Politics. Orient Blackswan. pp. 46. ISBN 8125006370, ISBN 9788125006374.
- ^ a b c Pritchett, Frances. "In the 1930s" (PHP). http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/timeline/1930s.html. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.
- ^ a b Pritchett, Frances. "In the 1940s" (PHP). http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/timeline/1940s.html. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.
- ^ a b c d e f Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji (1946). "Chapter X: Social Stagnation". Pakistan or the Partition of India. Bombay: Thackers Publishers. pp. 215–219.
- ^ a b c d Pritchett, Frances. "In the 1950s" (PHP). http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/timeline/1950s.html. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.
- ^ http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2005/03/20/fea31.html
- ^ Shalini Ramachandran,'Poisoned Bread': Protest in Dalit Short Stories,Race & Class, Vol. 45, No. 4, 27-44 (2004)
- ^ J. Kulkarni: Historical Truths & Untruths Exposed, Itihas Patrika Prakashan,1991, esp. Ch.1, "Ambedkar and His 'Dhamma'", and Ch.2, "False Notions of Atrocities Committed on Harijans".
Further reading
- Mahar, Buddhist. Religious Conversion and Socio-Political Emancipation by Johannes Beltz, 2005, New Delhi, Manohar.
- Reconstructing the World: B.R. Ambedkar and Buddhism in India edited by Johannes Beltz and S. JondhaleNew Delhi: OUP.
- Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analyzing and Fighting Caste by Christophe Jaffrelot (2005) ISBN 0-231-13602-1
- Ambedkar and Buddhism by Urgyen Sangharakshita ISBN 0-904766-28-4
- Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened India by Gail Omvedt ISBN 0-670-04991-3
- Life of Babasaheb Ambedkar by C. Gautam, Published by Ambedkar Memorial Trust, London, Milan House, 8 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DA Second Edition, May 2000
- Thus Spoke Ambedkar Vol-I* (Selected Speeches of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar) Compiled and edited by Bhagwan Das, published by Dalit Today Parkashan,18/455,Indira Nagar, Lucknow (U.P.)India-226016
- Revival of Buddhism in India and Role of Dr. BabaSaheb B.R. Ambedkar by Bhagwan Das, published by Dalit Today Prakashan,18/455,Indira Nagar, Lucknow (U.P.)India-226016
- Dr. Ambedkar: A Critical Study by W.N. Kuber, published by People's Publishing House, New Delhi, India.
- Dr Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar : Anubhav Ani Athavani by Bhaskar Laxman Bholay, A Sahitya Akademi translation award winning book, 2001, Nagpur
- Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission by Dhananjay Keer published by Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, India.
- Economic Philosophy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar by M.L. Kasare published by B.I. Publications Pvt. Ltd.,New Delhi, India.
- The Legacy Of Dr. Ambedkar by D.C. Ahir published by B.R.Publishing Corporation, Delhi-110007,India. (ISBN 81-7018-603-X Code No. L00522)
- Ajnat, Surendra: Ambedkar on Islam. Buddhist Publ., Jalandhar 1986.
- Fernando, W. J. Basil: Demoralisation and Hope: Creating the Social Foundation for Sustaining Democracy -- A comparative study of N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783 -1872) Denmark and B. R. Ambedkar (1881-1956) India. AHRC Publication., Hong Kong 2000. (ISBN 962-8314-08-4)
- http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/ambedkar_partition/index.html Pakistan or the Partition of India
External links & Writings
- BAMCEF: The All India Backward (SC, ST, OBC) And Minority Communities Employees Federation
- Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and His People
- Jabbar Patel's Award-Winning Movie Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar
- Ambedkar Center for Justice and Peace
- Dr. Ambedkar International Mission
- Bharat Ratna Baba Saheb
- Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar in Columbia University
- Ambedkar's statue at Columbia University
- University of Heidelberg
- "The Buddha and His Dhamma" with unpublished preface
- Article on Ambedkar's Neo-Buddhism by Edmund Weber
- Short Movie on Life of Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar
- Audio Lectures on Dr. Ambedkar
- Babasaheb Ambedkar devotional song in Marathi
- Babasaheb Ambedkar devotional song in Hindi
- WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES
- Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Ancient India
- Small Holdings in India and their Remedies
- Untouchables or the Children of India's Ghetto
- THOUGHTS ON LINGUISTIC STATES
- NOTES ON HISTORY OF INDIA
- PAKISTAN OR THE PARTITION OF INDIA
- WHO WERE THE SHUDRAS ?
- THE UNTOUCHABLES WHO WERE THEY AND WHY THEY BECAME UNTOUCHABLES ?
- THE UNTOUCHABLES AND THE PAX BRITANNICA
- Philosophy of Hinduism
- RIDDLES IN HINDUISM
- RANADE, GANDHI AND JINNAH
- THE PRESENT PROBLEM IN INDIAN CURRENCY-I
- THE PRESENT PROBLEM IN INDIAN CURRENCY- II
- Dr. Ambedkar in Rationalism, Humanism and Atheism in Twentieth Century Indian Thought
- Works by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (public domain in Canada)
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From Untouchable to Dalit - Essays on the Ambedkar Movement
by Eleanor Zilliot (Author ALERT)
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Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION
BACKGROUND
Chokhamela and Eknath: Two Bhakti Modes of Legitimacy for Modern Change
The Nineteenth Century Background of the Mahar and Non-Brahman Movements in Maharashtra
POLITICS
The Leadership of Babasaheb Ambedkar
The American Experience of Dr B R Ambedkar
Learning the Use of Political Means: The Mahars of Maharashtra
Buddhism and Politics in Maharashtra
Gandhi and Ambedkar: A Study in Leadership
Addendum to Part II
RELIGION
The Revival of Buddhism in India
Religion and Legitimization in the Mahar Movement
The Psychological Dimension of the Buddhist Conversion
Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Indian
Buddhism: Activities and Observances
Buddhist Sects in Contemporary India: Identity and Organization
The Buddhist Literature of modern Maharashtra
ADDENDUM TO PART III
Dalit Literature
Dalit-New Cultural Context for an Old Marathi World
India's Ex-Untouchables: New Past, New Future and the new Poetry
The Folklore of Pride: Three Components of Contemporary Dalit Belief
ADDENDUM TO PART IV
Select Bibliography (see also Addendum to Sections II, III, IV, and each chapter of I)
INDEX
About the AuthorELENOR ZILLIOT is Professor of History at Carleton college. She has published extensively in the area of Social and Cultural history of Western India.
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| Dalit movement and politics |  |  |  |
| Written by Correspondent | |
| Tuesday, 21 April 2009 | |
 Dalit leaders are self-obsessed. They have not been able to carry forward the legacy of the movement started by Dr BR Ambedkar. They are more interested in personal gain and have neglected their community. They are only concerned with getting votes.The Sun of self-respect burst into flame Let it burn up these castes Smash, break, destroy These walls of hatred Crush to smithereens this eons-old school of blindness, Rise, O People! This poignant piece of Dalit poetry encapsulates but a part of what the Dalit movement in India signifies: A cry of heart rending anguish at the trauma of birth as a "lowly untouchable." (Source: merinews.com, 21 April 2009, http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=15766436&catID=2&category=India ) | |
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Up Against Caste : Comparative Study of Ambedkar and Periyar/Debi Chatterjee. New Delhi, Rawat, 2004, viii, 235 p., ISBN 81-7033-860-3.
Contents: I. Historical background: 1. Caste in historical perspective. II. Social movements: 2. Ambedkar: mobilising social movements. 3. EVR: from Khadi to self-respect. III. Political struggles: 4. Ambedkar's political struggles. 5. Periyar and the unfurling Non-Brahmin identity in the Tamil land. IV. On economics: 6. Ambedkar: a socialist with a difference. 7. Periyar, Samadharma and the classical Marxists. V. Interface with religion: 8. Ambedkar and his Dhamma. 9. Periyar: a no-God solution. VI. Conclusion: 10. From Ambedkar and EVR: unfolding of the Dalit Non-Brahmin movement. 11. Dalit's search for justice: from the national to the international. 12. Understanding the caste-class link: need for a comprehensive approach. Appendices. Index.
"The struggle for social justice and human rights in India is inextricably linked to the question of caste and caste-based social structure which continue to be what Marx had termed "decisive impediments to India's progress."
Struggles against caste and the caste system have a long history. In modern times, the contributions of B.R. Ambedkar and E.V. Ramasami (popularly known as Periyar) are particularly significant. Ambedkar, hailing from an untouchable caste background, was the pioneer in teaching the untouchables the art of using political weapons for the betterment of their conditions. Through his scholarly works and social and political struggles, Ambedkar challenged the Brahmanical order of society and sought to uphold the basic human rights of the depressed classes. E.V. Ramasami's contributions were no less significant. The imprint of his struggles are to be found in the social and political spheres of the Tamil region in Southern India. His challenge to Brahmanism was sought to be posited through an alternative, democratic culture. It was the unique self-respect movement.
While the ideas and movements of both Ambedkar and Periyar have been separately studied by many scholars, there is a dearth of comparative material. It is this area of comparative study that this book primarily deals with. The book analyses the relevance of their struggles in the context of contemporary conditions, noting the diverse trends in the post-Ambedkar and post-Periyar Dalit struggles." (jacket)
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https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no36825.htm
Theorising The Dalit Movement: A Viewpoint
Anand Teltumbde
INTRODUCTION
The Dalit movement, in the familiar sense of organised resistance of the ex-untouchables to caste oppression, may not be traced beyond colonial times. However, in a wider sense of the struggle of lower castes against the hegemony of Brahminical ideology, it has to coexist with the history of caste itself. The broad framework of caste remaining the same, the Dalit movement could also be seen in a historical continuum with its previous phases. In another sense, it could be taken as the articulation phase of the numerous faceless struggles against the iniquitous socio-economic formation ordained by the caste system, that has occupied vast spaces of Indian history. By any reckoning it seems to have done well in identifying its friends and foes, putting in place its strategies and tactics and more importantly, carving out a space for itself in every sphere. It kept pace with the changes taking place in socio-political sphere during the colonial times and thus displayed significant learning during this phase. However, it could not do so thereafter when it had to consolidate its gains particularly in the context of substantial changes that befell during the post-independence times.
During this period, it appears to have been eclipsed by the shadow of its own past. In an attempt to grasp certain generalities of the Dalit movement, this paper will try to present a hypothesis that all the predominant attributes that the contemporary Dalit movement tends to reflect, are basically acquired from the circumstances that brought it into existence. In corollary, the hypothesis is extended to state that the Dalit movement did not assimilate any significant learning through changes in these circumstances and so allowed itself to degenerate and to be used by the very set of people whom it intended to fight. While wading through the web of Indian reality around the Dalit movement it is expected to throw up issues the clarity on which is considered prerequisite to chalk out a road map for its liberation.
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
The mythologized history of India does not provide many clues to the direct rebellions of the oppressed masses against their oppression. But it is inconceivable that they did not take place at all over a long period of two millennia that nibbled at their existence every moment with a 'divine' contrivance called caste. The extraordinary success of this contrivance of social stratification is as much attributable to its own design that effectively obviated coalescence of the oppressed castes and facilitated establishment and maintenance of the ideological hegemony as to its purported divine origination. None could ordinarily raise a question as it meant incurring divine wrath and consequent ruination of the prospects of getting a better birth in their next life. Thus the caste system held society in a metaphysical engagement and at the same time in physical alienation with itself. Materially, it provided for the security of every one through caste professions and psychologically an aspirational space for every caste including the non-caste untouchables to feel superior to some other. Since, this superstructure was pivoted on the religio-ideological foundation, the manifestation of resistance to the caste system always used the metaphysical toolkit that contrived its arguments into the religious form. Right from the early revolts like Buddhism and Jainism down to the Bhakti movement in the medieval age, one finds articulation of opposition to the caste system materialising in a religio-ideological idiom. This trend in fact extends well down to modern times that marks a new awakening of the oppressed castes and the birth of the contemporary Dalit movement. All anti-caste movements thus, from the beginning to the present, invariably appear engaged in religious or metaphysical confrontation with Brahminism, either in terms of its denouncement or of adoption of some other religion.
The religious discourse is thus a common feature of all the anti-caste movements. For example, the Satnami movement of the Chamars in the Chhattisgarh plains in Eastern Madhya Pradesh that eventually became an independent religious sect (Russel 1916); the Dravid Kazhagam movement of Periyar EVR Ramaswamy Naicker which created a stir by publicly burning the effigy of Rama and celebrating the virtuousness of Ravana; the Nadar Mahajana Sabha in Tamilnadu (Hardgrave 1969); the Ezhava movement of Narayana Guru which culminated in establishment of a new religious sect called Sree Narayan Dharma Pratipalana Yogam in Kerala (Thomas 1965; Aiyappan 1944; Samuel 1973), and the most pervasive Dalit movement (Zelliot 1969) led by Babasaheb Ambedkar curiously reaching its climax of mass conversion to Buddhism; they all signify an overriding hatred for the religious code of Manu and a proposition of an alternate faith for themselves. It essentially embodied dejection with the Brahminism, which was perceived to be the root cause for their sufferings. The most articulate expression of this dejection is found in Ambedkar's own analyses that holds overthrowing of 'Hindu' religious ideological hegemony as a necessary condition for the liberation of Dalits (Omvedt, 1994).
Notwithstanding the views of some people who contend that the caste system was not a rigid system that had disallowed inter-caste movement of people, the fact remains that it does not have any evidence of having brought in a change in the forces of production or in the relations of production till the advent of British rule. With its quasi-autonomous villages it remained in a fossilised form for centuries. This feature of the Indian society precisely impelled Marx to disdainfully comment that India did not have history and to commend the British colonial rule for waking it up from its slumber to Western modernity. The first cultural shock this Indian society received was through the Moslem invaders. For the first time the Indians got to relate with some other religion and to realise that not only could there be alternative religious systems but also the gods postulating them. Egalitarian Islam initially treated all Indians equally but soon the imperative of their political strategies made them realise the utility of the intrinsic divisions existing in the Indian society and they not only decided to compromise their egalitarian zeal but also allowed adulteration of their cultural broth with the poison of caste.
Bhagawan Das (1983) quotes Ibn Batuta, a Moslem scholar who accompanied Mahmud Ghaznavi stating that the Moslem invaders at first treated all Indians alike but later took advantage of the cleavages existing in Indian society. The compulsions of politics overtook religious spirits, which meant the Brahminic social order, based on castes remained largely unhindered and even influenced the emergent Moslem society with the Hindu converts. Even then this process spelt a sea of opportunity to the untouchables living outside the cities and villages. It was the Moslem invaders who first opened the gates of their cities to these 'Untouchables'. Many 'Untouchables' and low caste people embraced Islam and joined the invaders, partly to avoid persecution and partly in search of better status and fortunes. Those who embraced Islam and joined the armies of Moslem invaders imitated the customs and manners of their new masters. They gradually merged and integrated into Moslem society. Besides those who formally embraced Islam, whether voluntarily or under compulsion, there were millions of those who belonged to the artisan castes like weavers, masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, basket makers, potters, dyers etc., who slowly came to be Moslems.
There were even some high caste Hindus including Brahmins who converted to Islam for various reasons. These converts coming from diverse castes brought in their respective cultural modes of living into the emergent Moslem society and along with it the caste divisions. Thus, although conversions to Islam could not rid the untouchables from their caste status fully, going by the intensity of oppression, they certainly must have experienced a great relief. First of all, the conversion enabled them to come out of their caste professions, which had been the mainstay of their low social status. Secondly, in renouncing their religion they must have had a sense of revenge against the ignominy heaped upon them and a vague sense of belonging to the ruling community. Thirdly, the opportunity to wield the sword in itself meant many things to them: it meant notional raise in their caste status catapulting them from a non-caste untouchable to that of Kshatriya - a penultimate rung in the caste hierarchy; it meant realisation of their manhood for the first time; it meant restoration of their confidence and most importantly, it meant economic betterment.
It is a moot point whether these conversions could be called a social movement insofar as technically the latter insists upon an organisation striving for some collective goal of social change. It certainly reflects a spirit of rebellion at least at the individual level to defy the caste code and embrace a different faith. Insofar as caste society had the intrinsic organisations of castes that governed their respective caste behaviours and managed the community life within the caste framework, it is a difficult proposition to say that this rebellion materialised without any organisational backing. An individual in the caste society was too small an entity to transcend the dictate of his caste organisation. In all probability these kinds of people's choices particularly in large numbers, get exercised only with social connivance. As could be seen from the later instances of conversions (Minakshipuram in Tamilnadu and several conversions of Dalits to Buddhism), the religious conversions never took place in any significant scale without there being a social movement to support it. In this sense, one could surmise the existence of some movement of untouchables that spearheaded the conversion to Islam.
The above overview highlights the following:
· Indian society as a whole never accepted hierarchy as a basic value system.
· The anti-caste movements essentially were against the creed of Brahminism that had ordained the iniquitous social structure.
· They were always articulated in terms of constituting an anti-theses to oppressive aspects of the 'Hindu' religion.
· They invariably materialised in the form of denouncements of these aspects and in corollary, adoption of a different faith, which in their perception was better.
· These movements invariably needed certain extraneous enablers especially the political congeniality.
BIRTH OF AN AUTONOMOUS DALIT MOVEMENT
Unlike the Moslem invaders, who had ruled India on the strength of their developed feudalism, far superior to the priest-ridden Indian system, the British conquest of the country was based on their superior technique of production and social form (the bourgeois), that was much more efficient than the technique of feudalism. The British colonisation with its bourgeois liberal ethos coupled with the imperatives of their ruling strategy, created space for working up subaltern identities, mainly in terms of caste and religion. The institutional changes (judiciary, civil administration, commodity markets), cultural changes (modernity, western mode of living, English education, exposure to western treasure of knowledge and scholarship), economic changes (zamindari and ryotwari systems in place of jajmani-balutedari), and emergent social changes that came in during the colonial rule gave impetus to the aspirations of the lower castes. The development opportunities that these changes created came into conflict with traditional social relations, which still shackled them through caste bondage.
There appears to be some kind of capability threshold that takes into account a balance of all resources with a social group, below which social movements are not possible. The colonial rule lent various opportunities to the disadvantaged sections and pushed them up past this threshold. It was thus natural that the first of the social resistance movements was by the Shudra castes. Because, as the labouring caste, they constituted an immediate interface with the parasitic upper castes, and in terms of resources they got over the threshold sooner than, say, the more oppressed untouchables. These movements broadly exposed the fraud perpetrated by Brahmins in the name of religion. They denounced their exploitation and praised British rule as an enemy of the enemy. In this formulation Dalits were vaguely bracketed as the co-oppressed ally. But the anti-Brahmin consciousness of these movements could not hold out in the face of the contradictions these castes had with the untouchable castes. Although, the Dalit movement was significantly influenced by the non-Brahmin movement of backward castes, it soon drifted away from the latter. With the advent of Ambedkar, it soon secured national prominence.
Around this time, there was a strong revolutionary movement all across the globe that drew its inspiration from the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. It claimed its ideological strength from the theories of historical materialism, dialectical materialism and scientific socialism propounded by Karl Marx. The Russian revolution had ignited hope of emancipation in oppressed humanity. In India too, it soon took roots and came to be reckoned as a political force, especially in the urban centres where it had a particular appeal among the workers of various factories. The leadership of this communist movement however came from the middle class educated youth who for historical reasons had to come from the upper castes, the majority being the Brahmin itself. Their comprehension of the philosophy of communism was acutely constrained on one hand by the lack of systematic political education compounded by the non-availability of much of the original literature, and on the other by their class and caste consciousness. It rested on the dictums like class struggle, dictatorship of proletariat and notions of the base and superstructure without the underlying dialectics that lent it its specific meanings. This movement was essentially pitted against British imperialism that brought them nearer some sections of the nationalists and tended to ignore the caste as a superstructural identity. The emergence of autonomous Dalit movement could not therefore be taken kindly by the communist movement, as it saw the Dalit movement to be dividing the workers, diffusing the focus of the anti-imperialist struggle and being non-scientific. On its part, the Dalit movement not only did not find any answer to their specific caste exploitation but on the contrary total apathy about it in the communist movement. In their strategic formulation, the open anti-State stance of the communists moreover did not found favour with the Dalits.
As Gail Omvedt perceptibly observes, the autonomous Dalit movement had to engage with three forces in colonial society:
1. It developed in opposition to the socially and culturally pervasive and historically deep-rooted hegemony of Brahminical Hinduism.
2. It had to contend with the hegemony of the nationalist movement, which under the leadership of the Congress, strove to take over the agendas of several subaltern movements while restraining their democratic and egalitarian potential.
3. It had to face a difficult relationship with the communist movement which otherwise should have been its natural ally.
OPPOSITION TO BRAHMINICAL HEGEMONY
While dealing with Brahminical hegemony, the autonomous Dalit movement naturally perceived an ally in the backward castes. The anti-Brahmin movement launched by the creative and visionary genius of Mahatma Phule in Maharashtra in many ways inspired the Dalit movement (e.g., early proponents of the Dalit movement like Shivram Janaba Kamble were followers of Phule). In spite of the difference in time period marking out different transitory phases in the history of the country; differences in dispositions, equipment and social backgrounds between Phule and Ambedkar, one finds essential similarities in their characterisation of the social structure and the movements they launched and led. Both Phule and Ambedkar regarded British rule positively for introducing modernity into the moribund Hindu society but simultaneously both showed its limitations; both repudiated the claims of nationalists that India was a nation; both had no faith in the Indian National Congress; both came to characterise and oppose it similarly; both declared their vehement opposition to Brahminism but still did not hate Brahmins; both were rationalist; both had hated the parasitic class of priests, landlords, moneylenders and capitalists and sought to organise their victims; both emphasised the importance of education in the scheme of liberation of Dalits and backward castes; and so on and so forth. The pious formulation of Phule and to a certain degree of Ambedkar hoped to bring together all the Untouchables and the Shudra castes in opposition to Brahminism. Howsoever underestimated or grossly overlooked the contradictions between the Shudra backward castes and the non-caste Dalits may be in the village setting where precisely the caste problem is to be confronted, the Shudra castes came to share the mantle of Brahminism in relation to Dalits. This is basically strengthened by the economic contradictions between these farmer castes and the Dalits who are the farm labourers dependent on them. This legacy of Manu could neither be overcome by the powerful non-Brahmin movement of Mahatma Phule, who had certainly shown how to bring them together during his life time; nor by the Dalit movement despite its significant investment for bringing about a broad unity of all the labouring people during Ambedkar's time. Immediately after the death of Mahatma Phule his Satyashodhak Movement lost its anti-caste zeal. Even the attempts for reviving and revitalising it under the patronage of Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur could not succeed and by 1920 it completely lost its anti-Brahminism character and degenerated (barring a few who spearheaded leftist struggles) into a political addendum of ruling class.
The majority from the Shudra castes, as marginal or small farmers or artisans labouring in the jajmani-balutedari (client-patron) system, is variously exploited and is poor. A minority of them, as big farmers and middle farmers, were well off. Some of them were vested with the traditional powers of village administrators. These people of the farmer castes came to don the role of exploiter in the village setting. During the post-independence period the imperatives of electoral politics provided the motive force for the consolidation of the middle castes. These castes received disproportionate benefits from the policies and programmes implemented during this period. The most significant have been the land reforms that sought to restore the lands to tenants and later the green revolution that channelled significant investments into agriculture and raised its productivity. The former could not reach real tenants who in most cases were Dalits because the government machinery would not know that there operated a layered tenancy in villages as a Dalit tenant could not be dealt with by the high caste landlord directly. So, by default, it recognised the intermediaries as the legal tenants who invariably belonged to these farmer castes. Many of the benami transfers also went to them, as they were the confidants of the former landlords. The green revolution, as numerous studies concluded, clearly benefited the bigger farmers who again belonged to these castes. The empowerment of a section from these Shudra castes impelled them to create a formidable constituency for themselves in nexus with the capitalist class and to wield significant political power. The contradiction between them and the Brahmins that impelled the non-Brahmin movements during the colonial times were overcome in this process, which enabled them to assume the hegemonic role in the rural setting.
All the castes under this generic Shudra caste-group were not well off economically and equal socially. Many of them, the artisan and service castes, were as poor as Dalits and lay at various rungs in the caste hierarchy. However, they could be bracketed together socially in caste terms and economically as farmers as most of them had land. The caste divisions between them were really imperceptible in hierarchical terms. In relations to Dalits however they were placed socially and culturally clearly apart as the caste Hindus. Their superiority perception in relation to the increasingly assertive Dalits was deliberately worked up by the powerful elements in villages, which thwarted any possibility of their making common cause with Dalits. All these Shudra castes came to pose as a single block in opposition to Dalits for mainly two reasons. One, their superiority in the caste hierarchy to Dalits lent them power over them to extract more and more economic surplus and two, the assertiveness of the majority Dalit caste induced by their political consciousness (through the Dalit movement) and their economic betterment (through reservation policy) made them vulnerable and defensive. These dynamics achieved two things for the rural rich. One, it obfuscated their exploitative relations with their own caste fellows and two, it provided them the requisite mass base to claim political power.
While the caste identity consolidated the middle castes into a powerful block, the same identity was used to catalyse disablement of Dalits by dividing them into various caste groups. Historically, all the Dalit castes were not economically equal. Most of them had a specific caste calling and so had a reason to perceive a stake in the system. But, there was a caste engaged to do low skilled miscellaneous village jobs, by virtue of which it came to be relatively more populous and remained, economically, most vulnerable. Paradoxically, they constituted the interface between the village and town, which enabled them to acquire a self-identity as humans particularly during the alien rule. With nothing to lose, they therefore were the first to rebel against the caste system. There is enough evidence that the other Dalit castes also initially made common cause with this anti-caste movement. But, with the advent of parliamentary electoral politics the ruling class could easily engineer their detachment from the Dalit mainstream movement. Later, the contradiction between the middle caste hegemony and the Dalit struggle accentuated this division and put a cap on the prospects of Dalit unity.
This debacle embodied a larger debate relating to class vs. caste and the concomitant question of how to wage class struggle and also how to annihilate castes. Insofar as the working class in India collectively come from the Dalit and Shudra castes, it is important that they come together to become a class. In the same manner, the question of annihilation of castes is intimately linked to the coming together of the Dalits and lower-rung Shudra castes against the upper caste hegemony in every sphere of power. The class notion subsumes economic exploitation, which cannot be isolated from the notion of social hierarchy in the semi-feudal setting of Indian villages, and is thus essentially intertwined with the notion of caste. But the protagonists of class comprehended it in a restrictive manner and hence failed to tackle caste, which was the tangible and lived reality of the Indian proletariat. They were inevitably led to ignore it till they were compelled to acknowledge its existence by continual blows from concrete reality. It is to be said to the credit of Phule and Ambedkar that they unmistakably understood the crux of the problem, when they took up caste as a comprehensive exploitation-category for their movements and put forth a native agenda for democratisation of Indian society.
Unfortunately, this essentially anti-class, anti-caste agenda got juxtaposed against the class agenda of the communists and unleashed a sterile debate, which refuses to die even today. Caste or class, both these categories, to be workable, need to expand their boundaries to represent the current mode of exploitation in the country. This process would essentially bring out a large interface between them. This ought to happen however through the medium of concrete struggle based on caste or class-consciousness and not through any wishful amalgamation of caste and class conceived in the brains of some intellectual.
Insofar as the Shudra castes largely represent the class of have-nots together with the Dalit castes, and simultaneously functions as the nearest representative of Brahminism and also as the exploiting class, the need to apply a class filter to it cannot be overemphasised. The same principle is applicable to Dalits insofar as there is an evidence of class formation among them. It therefore needs to be understood that mere caste identity is not only going to be inadequate but is also going to prove dysfunctional. The usage of the caste idiom may bring in temporary electoral gains to the parliamentary players but it can never bring the real social change desired by the revolutionists. The prerequisite for this to happen is both, a strong Dalit movement which while fighting the remnant Brahminism is capable of orienting itself as a class assimilating the toiling masses from all the other castes, and a strong communist movement which incorporates into its class struggle the agenda of the struggles against social and cultural discrimination. The struggle shall have to be waged along both the axes of exploitation simultaneously, viz., caste and class. The Dalits as the most proletarianised people will have to be the vanguard of both these struggles.
The opposition to Brahminical Hinduism led naturally to its rejection by Dalits but not of the religion itself. On the contrary, it gave rise to the Dalit-obsession of religion that curiously refuses to wane even when the organised religions ceased to ordain social affairs as they did many years before. As we know religion is a product of particular socio-economic phase in history that served the purpose to resolve certain crises on the basis of accumulated knowledge available then. The religious resolution invariably took the form of suppression of man's desire to seek a good life by promising him a better after-life (Neusch, 1982). Marx dismissed religion outright as a vestige of superstition and a tool of social control used to enslave the masses. For Marx, religion existed not to console, but to control; it was "the opium of the people,"-a drug that dulled the will to throw off the chains of oppression. When Dalits rejected Hinduism, it might have been necessary to fill the void. But it was not necessary to fill it with some alternate organised religion. Buddhism, howsoever radical in its pristine form, came to be an organised religion with its package of aberrations. In its pure form, it may not even qualify to be a religion but in its popular form, with its own mythology, rituals, and mumbo jumbo, it was no different from any other. The consequence of this change has been in terms disorienting the Dalit masses from the material world where their real problems are rooted.
ISSUES WITH THE HEGEMONY OF NATIONALIST MOVEMENT
The second factor would seem out-of-date as it relates with a specific moment in the past. However, there are a few vital questions that crop up in its conjunction that are still consequential to the discourse of revolutionary change in India and that should impel us to its discussion.
Nation
The first is about what constitutes a nation. The Dalit movement dismissed the premise of the mainstream nationalist movement that India was a nation. Ambedkar, for instance, repudiated the notion of a nation in a caste society and challenged it saying that each caste was a nation. Phule, who was Ambedkar's preceptor, had said that "unless all the people in the Balisthan (his term for India), including the Shudras, Ati-Shudras, Bhill, Koli etc. become educated and are able to think over and unite, they cannot constitute a nation." At some other place, Ambedkar observed, "I am of the opinion that in believing that we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion". He questioned," How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation?" and said that "these castes were anti-national." At another occasion he had said that, "unless you change your social order you can achieve little by way of progress. You cannot mobilise the community either for defence or for offence. You cannot build up a nation; you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole"(Khairmode, 1958). Despite these forewarnings and subsequent nationality movements bloodying the bosom of the country, the ruling classes are yet not awake to India's multi-national character. The vested interests still keep on exhorting the gullible masses to sacrifice for the non-existent nation or dismiss genuine peoples' movements calling them anti-national. Paradoxically, as they do it the nationality problem in India waxes in complexity with the accentuation of inequalities engendered by the capitalist development.
Nation, inasmuch as it is a phenomenon associated with the capitalist development, the pre-capitalist caste has to be antithetical to the concept of nation. Dalit movement by squarely posing this problem has indeed contributed to India's nation building efforts. The Indian National Congress, which spearheaded the national struggle for independence, represented the emerging Indian bourgeoisie's drive for overall political and economic control, whereas the Dalit movement under Ambedkar sought to strengthen the most disadvantaged people in the Indian society and set in the process of internal consolidation of the Indian nation.
With Ambedkar's taking upon a role of a constitution maker and a position in the Nehru cabinet, many of these lofty theoretical standpoints that could provide a framework for the Dalit movement got shifted to background. Although his commitment to his people - the basic propeller for these moves remained undiminished, its expression particularly with reference to the means of its fulfilment suffered from compromise. Notwithstanding his lamentations and exhortations against the post-independence political system, the emergent framework of the Dalit movement could not escape distortion in the powerful vortex of ruling class parliamentary politics. The particularity of the tactics of law-abiding posture of its early phase got universalised into the new constitutionalism that set the parameters of the Dalit movement. Ambedkar's programme for annihilation of caste system thus was completely way laid by the ruling class.
In the context of nation, the question here is what should be the relationship between the Dalit and nationality movements. The nationality struggles invariably land up using certain primordial identities in their anxiety to secure themselves uniqueness but are essentially underscored by the exploitations experienced by a set of people. As Ambedkar argued, Dalit struggle has the characteristics of a nationality struggle. It thus gets linked to the struggles of all the oppressed nationalities the world over. However, the concept of nationality is prone to be abused by a section of ruling classes to settle scores against another and hence warrants a critical examination of the underlying issues and the forces driving it. The alliance of Dalit movement with the genuine struggles of other oppressed nationalities will have a congenial acculturation impact and strengthen the Dalit movement.
Imperialism
The second question is about the struggle against the British imperialism. It is a common feature of anti-caste movements that they did not support the freedom movements and to some extent saw the colonial rule in congenial terms vis-Ă -vis their objectives of eliminating caste disability and gaining a due share of power. It is a fact that the Dalits and the downtrodden castes had certainly favoured the alien rule to the oppressive Brahmin rule even before they expected anything positive from the former. In most of the decisive battles that established British colonialism in the country, Dalit soldiers had played a heroic role. It is said that while the Brahmins mourned the fall of Peshawa in Koregaon battle, all others celebrated the event as their liberation by distributing sweets all over Pune. It was the spontaneous revelry of the oppressed over the downfall of the oppressor. The British did many positive things: foremost, they admitted Dalits into their army, they made them compulsorily educated, they introduced a modern legal system, which at least in principle disowned caste as the basis for law; they opened up new employment opportunities for the 'Untochables' in the European families, in mills and factories, in the railway and in shipping; and later they introduced political reservation for them. All this opened a new chapter in the lives of the 'Untouchables' (Ellinwood 1978; Galanter 1972; Kananaikil 1981). Phule summarised these sentiments when he said, "We would be grateful to the Britishers because they did not honour the laws of Manu" (Keer, 1965)
It was not for any love for Dalits that the colonial rulers did favourable things to them. Most of it sprang from their strategic imperative and somewhat from a sense of superiority as victors. They did not hesitate reverting them when these reforms proved an impediment in their colonial interests. As for the anti-caste movements, it would be wrong to say that they were for the continuance of colonial rule. Even Phule who otherwise showered so much praise over the British rulers for having introduced elements of modernity and rule of justice in utter disregard to the demonic caste code of Manu, did not hesitate to highlight the fact that not enough was being done for the have-nots under the colonial rule. They were aware of the limitation of the alien rule. Ambedkar had squarely exposed the exploitative character of the colonial rule not only in his scholarly treatises but also in public. For instance, once he said to Dalits, "..you cannot sit singing the praises of the British bureaucracy for simply giving us improved roads, improved canals, railways, stable administration and new ideas of geography or for stopping internal wars….. I would be the first to agree that the praise given to the British would vanish once we turned our attention to the forcible extraction of profit by big capitalists and landlords from the poor working people of this country…"(Ambedkar 1930). At other time he perceptively said, "we must have a Government in which men in power, knowing where obedience will end and resistance will begin, will not be afraid to amend the social and economic code of life which the dictates of justice and expediency so urgently calls for. This role, the British Government will never be able to play". (Kshirsagar, 1992).
Thus, although the anti-caste movement in general and Dalit movement in particular acknowledged the positive aspects of colonial rule and tactically sought to make use of their contradiction with the bourgeoisie nationalists to exert pressure on the latter to agree for desired reforms and devolution of power to the lower castes, it never was so overwhelmed as not to see its long term interests lying in the demise of alien rule.
Today the menace of imperialism has engulfed the entire world through its credo of globalisation, which is being promoted through its agencies like the IMF and the World Bank. The underlying economic philosophy of these programmes is to rely more on market forces, dismantle controls, reduce the role of State, liberalise prices, and replace the public with private sector. It is going to mean privatisation of government-owned entities, doing away with superfluous labour force, structural changes in the economy aimed at export-led growth, free entry of foreign capital and technology without any let, hindrance or conditions, free entry and exit of foreign firms including financial and services industries, free cross border movement of capital and other funds, legislative safeguards for protection of intellectual property rights, creation of legal climate for enforcement of legal contracts, private property rights; and free entry and exit of business, industrial and financial firms and curbing of peoples' rights to organise and resist. The experience with this package all over the globe is uniformly anti-people and directly proportional to the degree of their marginalisation. Dalits being the most marginalised people in India, their movement ought to have been concerned with these policies. While accepting the proven fact that globalisation hits poor people the hardest, some intellectuals expect that it might do good in terms of removal of social disability of Dalits. The argument though not entirely misfounded, betrays inadequate learning from the experience with the capitalist operations of over a century in this country. As capitalism has made skilful use of caste, globalisation, which is essentially capitalism in the era of information and communication technology, is not going to impact it positively. Rather, in the wake of the increasing hardship of the general mass of people through declining jobs, rising inflation, teasing consumerism, reducing public services and cruel competition, caste, as a divisive instrument, will come in handy for the ruling classes to contain the people's ire. Of particular relevance to Dalits are certain implications of these policies of the free market.
One, the competitive advantage based investment would drive the corporatisation of agriculture and agri-business. The resultant consolidation of farms by the big agro-MNCs to have economies of scale is going to spell doom for the hopes of land reform. In so far the caste question is linked to this material key; it impels one to rethink the consequences. Two, the privatisation of the public sector and reduction of government jobs through the minimalist State that globalisation envisages, will directly hit the job-prospects of Dalits. Even the premature free market ethos unleashed by these policies and so enthusiastically upheld by the high caste bureaucracy, has already impacted Dalit interests adversely. It has many negative implications in terms of exploitation of Dalit women, Dalit culture and most importantly their hopes to struggle out their own emancipation. Dalit movement will have to understand the yawning contradiction between them and the imperialist agenda and devise strategies to counter it in their movement.
State
The third question that could be discerned from this moment is about the attitude of the Dalit movement towards the State. The Dalit movement reflects distinctly an attitude of one who looks at the State as an impartial, sans caste and class arbiter in the quarrel of classes and castes. Some times, the State is seen as the one genuinely interested in the welfare of downtrodden masses; a benevolent entity. This pro-State attitude could be understood when we see that the very birth of the Dalit movement was attributable to the factors provided by the State. Unless the colonial State had not brought in the western legal framework that treated all Indians equally and had offered certain opportunities of employment and education given to Dalits, the Dalit movement could not have been possible. The Colonial State comes out to be the basic enabler and catalyst of the Dalit movement. One of the first struggles that were launched at Mahad for reclaiming Dalit rights to access the public tank was basically to restore the writ of the State. Even later struggles cared not to violate the legal framework and thus tacitly expected the support of the State.
While contending with the hegemony of the nationalist movement under the nationalist bourgeoisie and while opposing the hegemony of Brahminism, the Dalit movement had essentially to take stock of its resources and opportunities held out by circumstances. In the Mahad Satyagraha, Ambedkar categorically explains his strategic calculation that he could not fight the formidable enemy with his meagre resources on several fronts. He exhorted his people not to violate the law and incur the wrath of the State. As a matter of fact it was the State that had provided them the space to basically raise the issue of violation of their human rights. Their battles were essentially formulated on the strength of the State provision, the strategy being to use the existing law to assert the Dalit rights and expand the former to support the new ones.
Later, with the political reforms the Dalit movement forsook mass struggles and adopted the electoral path to secure political power. Political power was rightly seen as the key to all the problems. However, the concept of political power was acutely constrained by the framework laid down by the State. It was a well thought out strategy, to use the alien State as the bulwark to secure gains for Dalits from the competing camps. But the fact remains that the liberal democratic thought driving the contemporary Dalit movement did neither have any significant variant of this strategy nor any alternate concept of political power in its repertoire. As a result, the Dalit movement, which was conscious of its compulsions during the early days, got stuck in the traps laid out by the ruling classes. It forgot the transition from the colonial rule to the rule of native bourgeois landlord combine in 1947. In its fight for equality, reliance on colonial State as an arbiter could be a strategic decision, but when this State itself represents the adversary power, the continuance of the same behaviour is not only indefensible but also grossly self-defeating.
The Dalit movement linked the concept of State power with its claim of equality. The gamut of reservations basically sprang from this. If Dalits are represented in various parts of State machinery in the ratio of their population then it is assumed that due share of power is enjoyed by Dalits. The flaw in this schema is on account of the State character. The State irrespective of whether it is a welfare State or any other kind of State, admittedly is a coercive organ of the ruling class against the ruled ones. If therefore the ruled classes opted to be the part of such an organ voluntarily, it has to be beneficial to the latter. Generally, when it is difficult to win over an adversarial class in direct confrontation, the ruling class always adopts the strategy of co-opting. It very well knows that the co-opted minority would be submerged by its majority. In simple language, it is a pure bribe to buy-in an opponent. The Dalit strategy of becoming a part of this exploitative mechanism out of their volition in ultimate analysis thus serves the ruling class interest.
There is no denying the fact that following the strategy of sharing State power in the prevailing circumstances certainly brought significant gains to Dalits. Through the mechanism of reservations in education, employment and politics, many Dalits are catapulted to positions which otherwise would have been unthinkable to them. But the buy-ins are always associated with gains. The truth cannot be denied that this process, instead of strengthening Dalits, has emasculated them politically and caused the creation of a separate class of beneficiaries from amongst them, which if at all, had a very tenuous linkage with the Dalit masses. This class has completely distorted the ideology of Dalit liberation. Dalits as the native proletarian class cannot be liberated by sops granted in a prison. Their liberation is only conceivable in dynamiting this prison and constructing a new shelter in its place as per their own desire.
The profile of a Dalit notwithstanding the changes that has befallen to some due to the post-independence buy-ins is that of an illiterate, half-fed landless labourer utterly dependent upon his high caste patron who is constantly preyed upon by all kinds of vultures. He is the victim of a complex system evolved over several millennia. The Dalit movement may well have taken a tactical approach to make use of the State but they all should be dovetailed to serve its long-term strategy to destroy it and install a Dalit-worker State in its place.
RELATION WITH THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT
The third factor is about its unsatisfactory relation with the communist movement. This factor will stand as the single most unfortunate paradox of contemporary Indian history. It stemmed from, not so much the ideological differences, which certainly existed in the form of certain unclear theoretical constructs in the mind of Ambedkar - the one who shaped the Dalit movement - as from the attitudes of the communist leaders towards the Dalit movement. These leaders working in Bombay in the Trade Unions dogmatically regarded the caste question as an unimportant superstructural issue, which would automatically disappear when the revolution takes place. The Dalit movement put the question on its head and asked that with the castes intact how would the revolution itself take place. The trade unions (Tus) under these communist leaders were tight-lipped on the discrimination faced by Dalits in not getting jobs in better remunerative departments like weaving in textile mills. The economic condition of Dalits was much worse than their savarna counterparts. Ambedkar observed that the communists used these TUs for their political gains rather than for the welfare of the working class. Whenever they took precipitate action to strike work, the workers tended to suffer differentially, owing to their caste-wise placements.
Ambedkar's objection to this 'irresponsible' TU behaviour was on two counts: (i) they were driven by raw 'economism' to the detriment of prospects of enhancing the political consciousness of the working class, (ii) they were using the working class as cannon fodder in the promotion of their political interests. Ambedkar's writing on communism or Marxism is heavily imbued with his annoyance with the Bombay-Communists. This legacy to identify Marxism with its self-appointed practitioners still appears to be followed by Dalits. They cite examples of the parliamentary communist parties to show the lacuna or inapplicability of Marxism. It is necessary for them to understand that Marxism intrinsically solicits criticism but it presupposes its careful study.
Much of the misunderstanding got reinforced during the course of the petit bourgeoisisation of the Dalit movement. The vested interests used the stray quotations of Ambedkar to denigrate communism. It was a deliberate distortion. For, although Ambedkar could not discuss the philosophy of communism in the manner it deserved, he was never antagonistically disposed towards it. Rather, he acknowledged the beauty of communist philosophy and said that it was closer to his own. Preoccupied with the mission of liberating the Dalits, he insisted, quite like Marx, that the test of the philosophy was in practice, and opined that if communists worked from that perspective, to win success in India would be far easier than in Russia (Janata, 15 January, 1938). He always regarded it (communism) as the ultimate benchmark to assess his highest ideal - Buddhism. With bitter experience with communist dogma and vulgarity of his times, he did sound polemically against Communism and appeared at times even professing its doom but it all underscored his wrath against the dogma that occupied the communist practice. After the collapse of communism in erstwhile Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, the anti-communism argument is gleefully put by certain people to claim Ambedkar right. Indeed, he was right but the kind of attitude embedded in this glee is totally unfortunate. It not only reflects their ignorance of both communism and Ambedkar but also and more importantly, alienates Dalits from the ideology that is specifically dedicated to have-nots of the world. Dalit movement will have to revise its position vis-Ă -vis its most potential ally.
CONCLUSION
The Dalit movement has to revisit its stand on the issues of State, Religion, other modes of exploitation and culture. It needs to restate its objective in clearer terms, whether it aims at establishing a society based on liberty, equality, and fraternity or at just reversing the sides in the equation of exploitation. It will have to rethink about its friends and foes in this context. The era of globalisation increasingly demands clearer stands by various classes of people. It already appears sans its vitality and badly stagnated in the past. Its consequent degeneration has already hit the Dalit masses. It needs serious self-criticism.
While there is a need for ruthless self-criticism in the Dalit movement along the above lines it should not mean denying its positive aspects. There are many of them: it implanted positive values of liberty, equality and fraternity; it promoted political consciousness to struggle against exploitation and injustice; it declared its allegiance to scientific rationalism and opposition to humbug of any kind. In terms of its gains, it has created significant resource base for itself in terms of education, organisational experience, and experience of working with the apparatus of its adversary. It is no mean an achievement to have secured this wherewithal in a short time. What is saddening is that it appears to be rapidly losing its grip over these gains and is straying into the channels created by the enemy. It could not consolidate its gains and hold together its constituents to work in a coordinated fashion for its long-term goal. This is possible only if it liberates itself from the grip of petty bourgeois hegemony and orients itself to serve the Dalit masses. The rhetorical aspects of such statements can be easily overcome by establishing certain ground rules, such as fixing priorities as per their salience to the majority Dalit masses; creating the structural space for their participation in decision making; promoting revolutionary culture among them, establishing values of struggle against any act of injustice, and anchoring the vision at achieving liberation of mankind to counter intrusion of any parochial tendencies. It certainly means a complete overhaul of itself. The consciousness and attitude of Dalit movements appears to have been frozen at its birth. It needs to recognise that the post-independence reality presents a far intricate complexity than in the colonial times.
References
Aiyappan, A., Social Revolution in a Kerala Village, Bombay, Asia Publishing House, 1965. Ambedkar, B. R., Speech for the Depressed Classes Conference, Nagpur, 1930, in M. F. Ganjare (ed.), Babasaheb Ambedkaranchi Bhashane, Khand 2, Nagpur, Ashok Prakashan, 1974, pp. 78-80.
Das, Bhagwan, Untouchability, Scheduled Castes and Nation Building in Jose Kananaikil, (Ed.) Scheduled Caste and Struggle Against Inequality- Strategies to Empower the Marginalised, New Delhi, Indian Social Institute, 1983.
Galanter, Marc, 'Untouchability and the Law', in Michael Mahar (Ed.), The Untouchables in Contemporary India, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1972, pp 226-314.
Hardgrave, Robert L. Jr., The Nadars of Tamilnadu, Berkeley University of California, 1969.
Kananaikil, Jose, Marginalisation of the Scheduled Castes: A Sociological Interpretation, in Jose Kananaikil, (Ed.) Scheduled Caste and Struggle Against Inequality- Strategies to Empower the Marginalised, New Delhi, Indian Social Institute, 1983, pp. 52-53.
Keer, Dhananjay, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1965, p. 227.
Khairmode, C.B., Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar Charitra, Vol. II, Bauddha Jan Panchayat, Parel, Bombay, 1958, p. 106.
Kshirsagar, R.K., Political Thought of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Intellectual Publishing House, New Delhi. 1992, p.24.
Neusch, Marcel, The Sources of Modern Atheism, Ramsey, N.J., Paulist Press, 1982, pp. 62-63.
Omvedt, Gail, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution, Sage publications, New Delhi, 1994, p.338.
Russel,R.V. and Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, London, Macmillan, 1916.
Samuel, V.T., One Caste, One Religion and One God for Man: A Study of Sree Narayana Guru (1854-1928) of Kerala, India, Connecticut, Hartford 1973.
Thomas, M.M. and R.W. Taylor eds., Tribal Awakening, Bangalore Christian Institute for Study of Religion and Society, 1965.
Zelliot, Eleanor, Dr. Ambedkar and the Mahar Movement' Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1969.
Dr. Anand Teltumbde
A keen student of the peoples' emancipatory struggles; association with and participation in various movements connected with students, slum dwellers, human rights etc. His thoughtful analyses of various social issues exude high level of commitment to the cause of disadvantaged people. His recent publication include a book in Marathi- 'Arthik Sudhar ani Dalit Shyoshit', a monograph 'Impact of New Economic Reforms on Dalits in India' and a book - ''Ambedkar' in and for the Post-Ambedkar Dalit Movement' in English as well as in translations. A Mechanical Engineer by profession, he has postgraduate degree in management from IIM, Ahmedabad, and Ph. D. in Management from University of Bombay. Has participated and presented/ published research papers in many prestigious international conferences and journals. He is on the advisory / editorial boards of many international journals.
Contact: tanand@vsnl.com
| Report of the Activities of COD 2006 |
| Phule Ambedkar Report |
| REPORT OF THE ONE-DAY SEMINAR ON The One-Day Seminar on "Phule and Ambedkar: Directions to the Liberation Movement Today" was held on the 11th day of April 2006 at India Peace Center, Nagpur. The seminar was attended by participants from different backgrounds. The students from Law College, students of Social work, from the SCM local unit, local Church participants, Church leaders, teachers, social activists and scholars. Nearly 60 participants attended this seminar. Prior to the beginning of the seminar, few of the participants led by Bp. DK Sahu, the General Secretary of NCCI, garlanded the statue of Shri Mahatma Phule in the city of Nagpur.
Rt. Rev. Dr. D.K. Sahu, the General Secretary of NCCI in his inaugural address, said that the commonality among all the Dalits today is not religion, but the dalitness that all share. Both Phule and Ambedkar have paved the way for all of us to stand united in our struggle for liberation of all that are oppressed. He further said that time has come now to widen the narrow boundaries, and create a new charter of salvation to the Dalits, i.e. Human Dignity. His address was thought provoking and was in the tone and tempo of a social activist. Dr. Bhau Lokhande, Director, School of Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar Studies, Nagpur spoke on "the contributions of Phule and Ambedkar." He has exposed various prolific contributions of Phule and Ambedkar in their times. Dr.Lokhande said that Jotirao Phule was the first Indian who revolted against the priest craft and the caste system, and started a social movement for the liberation of the lower classes, the under privileged, the down trodden and the Indian women. He agitated for the welfare of Indian peasants and workers, and the Indian labour movement is an offshoot of his social movement. It was Phule's aim to reconstruct the social order on the basis of social equality, justice and reason. He challenged 'brahminical patriarchy' and was first to do so. He was the first Indian to start a school for the poor and subalterns, and a girl's school in Maharastra. He was the champion who stood for the dignity of human being, religious toleration and human rights. For his untiring work in uplifting the subalterns, Phule was conferred with the title, "Mahatma" a high-soul personage by the common people. Dr. Lokhande further said that, following the footsteps of Phule, it was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who carried the saga of liberation. As a social reformer, Ambedkar ushered in a new era in India's social-political history. He was bold in questioning the validity of caste system and made the Dalits aware of their rights and duties. He stood against religious oppression and towards the end of his life he embraced Neo- Buddhism so as to free his people from brahminical subjugation. He led the march at Mahad, Maharashtra to establish the rights of the untouchables to taste water from the Public Chawdar Lake', traditionally prohibited to them. This marked the beginning of anti-caste & anti-priest movement. The temple entry movement launched by Dr. Ambedkar in 1930 at the Kalaram Temple, Nashik, Maharashtra is another landmark in the struggle for human rights & political justice. With the slogan of 'Educate-Agitate-Organize', the social movement led by Dr. Ambedkar aimed at Annihilation of Caste & the Reconstruction of Indian Society on the basis of equality of human beings. He was the architect of the Indian constitution. The session ended in a lengthy and meaningful discussion. Prof. Pradeep Aglave, HOD Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar Thought, Nagpur and Dr. Kishore Mahabal, Department of Political Science, RTM, Nagpur University, Nagpur gave talks on "The Post Phule and Ambedkar Liberation Movement." This session was moderated by Bishop. Naresh Ambala, the Bishop of CNI Eastern Himalayan Diocese. The two speakers have highlighted the liberation movements after Phule and Ambedkar. The Socialist/ Communist movements were strengthened after Phule and Ambedkar, the Gandhian Movement of Peace and Ahimsa went along, the feminist movements emerged, and finally anti-neo-liberalisation movements continued besides the Dalit and Tribal liberation movements. The speakers expressed the grief of not having the right role models today as that of Phule and Ambedkar. The speakers also called on the younger generations to carry on the legacy of those two pioneers for they strived hard not just for a section of a community but for the holistic development of the society. This session also had a lengthy debate and discussion particularly in calling Gandhian Movement as the one carried along in tune with the Ambedkarite liberation movement. In the post lunch session Dr. Krishna Kamble, Professor in Radiology in Government Medical College, Nagpur and Dr. Suresh Khairnar, Convener, Dharm Nirpeksh Nagrik Munch, Nagpur spoke on "An Appraisal of Present Day Liberation Movement." Both the speakers brought out that today there emerged many liberation movements all around India, though fighting for a common cause, are divided and have become hostile to each other. They reminded that 'unite we stand, divide we fall.' The speakers also appreciated the efforts of various groups who are fighting relentlessly for the cause of liberation, transcending all the barriers of religion and region. Time has come now to be more inclusivistic rather than be exclusive and narrow. Networking among the several liberation movements need to be strengthened. Sharing and caring among the networking groups is required in our common journey. The speakers have given a clarion call to the young student participants to partake in the liberation movements actively, and strive for the liberation all that are oppressed both in-season and off-season. This session also had a healthy debate and discussion. The final session "Directions for the Liberation Movement Today" was facilitated by Dr. John Chelladurai, Director IPC, Nagpur. This session was more participatory and was dialogical. The participants along with resource persons wrestled together to bring out certain directions for the liberation movements today. These were some of the directions that were discussed and brought out.
These are certain directions that were drawn our for today's liberation movements. The seminar concluded with all the participants re-committing themselves to the cause of liberation in their own contexts. During lunchtime, students performed a street theater on today's liberation movement, and it has attracted the participants, for it has folk song and dance along with meaning and message. All the participants gathered as a group with their smiling and cheerful faces for a group photo. On a whole, the seminar was successful and was very meaningful for it has challenged and committed the participants to join in every effort of liberation in India and strive towards the transformation of our societies and communities. Rev. Raj Bharath Patta and Dr. John Chelladurai thanked all the resource persons and the participants for making this seminar more meaningful and graceful. Rev. Raj Bharath Patta, |
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| Commission on Dalits |
Dr. John Chelladurai, Director of IPC has given a formal welcome to all the participants to the seminar. Then Rev. Raj Bharath Patta, Executive Secretary for NCCI- Dalit concerns introduced the importance of the theme of the day. In his talk, he mentioned the importance of the day 11th April 2006, for this day happens to be the 179th janma jayanthi (birth anniversary) of Shri. Mahatma Jothirao Phule, the same day happens to be the Mahaveer Jayanthi (Lord Mahaveer's birth anniversary, founder of Jainism), the same day happens to be Id-E-Milad (the birth anniversary of Prophet Mohammad, the founder of Islam), and the same day happens to be the Holy Tuesday for the Christians, remembering the passion of Lord Jesus Christ. No such day again in history with so many occasions may turn up, so having a seminar on such day, the organizers thought would be a historic one adding grace to all the occasions. Both Phule and Ambedkar are the pioneers of Liberation movements in India, and their contributions to the Indian society have had an indelible impact, and so commemorating the birth anniversaries of both these liberators on 11th April and on 14th April, a one-day seminar has been organized to recollect the contributions of these two men and look forward for further directions to the modern day liberation movements. Both Phule and Ambedkar provide direction and method for our times in our today's liberation journey, besides being the role models.http://www.nccindia.in/commissions/view.htm?no=23
We need to battle the media mindset
ChandraBhan Prasad
How do temple priests treat Dalits? An educated, decently dressed Dalit with some dignified source of income may be acceptable to them. Dalits with similar qualities may even get some acceptability among Varna landlords. But how does the media treat Dalits and the issues which concern them?
Last Sunday, the 18th Annual Convention of BAMCEF kicked off in Delhi. The four-day convention is a gala event which the Dalit intelligentsia awaits each December. Even Dalit NRIs turn up in considerable numbers. This year, over 6,000 BAMCEF delegates from 26 states/276 districts descended on the Ramlila Ground in Delhi. The ground was renamed BAMCEF city with all essential facilities, including a media centre and online internet facility, being made available. There was also a Dalit book fair where some 20 leading Dalit book distributors put up their stalls.
The BAMCEF Annual Convention is considered to be a Dalit intellectual mela, where most ideological streams amongst the Dalits/Bahujans are allowed to take part. Every participant, from a civil servant to a grade four employee, resides in the pavilion of his state, eats his food in the common dining hall and uses the same bedding provided by the organisers to all. The sessions begin at nine every morning and ends at nine at night. During these mammoth sessions, the issues facing the community are discussed threadbare. Late in the evening, children present cultural programmes. Plus, a large presence of women delegates gives new hope to the Dalit movement.
The BAMCEF Convention is the largest and the only genuine all-India platform for educated and socially enlightened Dalits. In the words of novelist Sagarika Ghose, who visited the venue; "... most Dalit delegates I met appeared highly educated, sophisticated in their articulation and most spoke excellent English." As a matter of convention, the BAMCEF chairman, Mr Vaman Meshram, whom I think of as being next only to Kanshi Ram and Mayawatiji, does not leave the venue for the entire four days. But how did the media treat the just concluded event? Barring The Pioneer and Hindi daily Rashtriya Sahara, no other mainstream media outfit wrote a word about the event. Most media organisations were invited to witness and cover the event.
I spoke to the news editor of an important English daily and asked him to send a representative from his organisation. He fumbled, trying to figure out what the BAMCEF was. I wondered how a journalist, holding an important position in a newspaper, was ignorant about an organisation which has produced leaders of the stature of Kanshi Ram and Mayawati and which is the Dalits' most celebrated intellectual forum? Can any journalist show similar ignorance about the existence of the RSS?
I was in Andhra Pradesh over December 19 and 20. I was invited to attend a Land-Liberation Movement in Rajamundhry town of the East Godavari district. In this coastal district of Andhra Pradesh, a "gentleman" politician is believed to hold about 1,500 acres of agricultural land, illegally. Dalits under the banner of the Dalit-Bahujan Forum (DBF) are waging a battle. Some 12,000 Dalit writers, social and cultural activists and student leaders from all over the state had assembled at Rajamundhry. Any Dalit intellectual worth his name in Andhra was there to stage a dharna at the Sub-Collector's office and participate in the grand rally. Even Prakash Ambedkar, grand son of Baba Saheb Ambedkar, graced the occasion.
"Since politicians themselves defy the ceiling legislation, we are targeting them first," said the movement's leader Vinai Kumar. The organisers had invited Hyderabad-based representatives of the national media. I arrived in Delhi on December 21 but didn't see a single report filed by any of the national dailies.
The BAMCEF's Ramlila Convention and DBF's Rajamundhry rally characterise the Varna media perfectly. What if BAMCEF declared that it would convert five Dalits to Islam or 5,000 to Buddhism or suppose, under its aegis, 5,000 Dalit intellectuals staged a march in their kaccha-baniyans with a vow to never wear clothing again. NDTV would probably have arranged for live telecast of the event and several editors of the print media would probably personally station themselves at the site. Or, if DBF decided to line up 10,000 Dalit intellectuals at a tea shop practising "cup reservation" in the Khammam district of the Telengana region, with the Brahmanical practice of sacred-threads hung around their bare torsos, the national media would probably turn it into a "media event." This is how the media treats Dalits and their movements. It finds it extremely hard to reconcile itself to any thing positive and serious within a movement but merrily promotes every thing comical or ridiculous about the same. This is the mind and conscience of the Varna media which looks at Dalit genius and substance in their movements with utter contempt.
http://www.ambedkar.org/chandrabhan/Weneed.htm
Mainstream, Vol XLVII No 11, February 28, 2009
Search For Aborigines, or Sudra Varna, or Caste-Ending Equality?
by Sharad Patil, 2 March 2009
For A Programme of Caste-Ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution And Socialist Transition
'…. He (communist/socialist) will be compelled to take account of caste after (socialist) revolution if he does not take account of it before revolution…You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform unless you kill this monster.'
— Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar
[Writings and Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 47]
After discussing with Vaman Meshram, the President of the BAMCEF, Vilas Kharat, the Director of the Dr Ambedkar Research Centre, Delhi, wrote to me on February 10, 2008 that he wanted my paper on the mula-nivasis (aborigines) for their special issue on mulanivasis which should contain the formula/outline of caste annihilation.
Both factions of the BAMCEF take the mulanivasis as an emancipatory historical reality and conduct anti-brahman enlightenment on it. The central slogan of the Bahujan Samaj Party, from which they broke away, was : 'Brahman-Bania-Thakur chor (Brahman, Bania and Thakur are thieves)'. Recently, the BSP has substituted the term bahujan for sarva-jan. Now there are no more thieves! Reservation now should be given even to brahmanas. The destination now is the prime-ministerial throne of Delhi. Caste annihilation is now consigned to oblivion!
Till now, the Indian Communist Parties accepted only class annihilation. Recently, they have agreed to oppose caste. However, their objective is not to annihilate caste, but to reform the Indian society. Annihilation of caste is to be achieved through reformism and not revolution. After the collapse of socialism in Europe and primitive communism having been proved to be a myth, the surviving communist-ruled countries are openly following capitalism.
Though the neo-imperialism of the G-8 has become sans enemy on a world scale, inflation 'possesses' it and the rest of the world, as predicted by Marx, and the semifeudal caste system has assumed the general crisis of the Indian society.
Ambedkar's Search for the Sudra Varna
I think that Annihilation of Caste (1936) is Dr Ambedkar's highest work. Addressing Indian Communists and Socialists in this book, Ambedkar pointedly said that before the socialist revolution, they will have to annihilate the caste system, and has drawn attention to the unique Indian reality of two proletariats—one, the social proletariat and the other, the economic one. But the difference between Phule, his teacher, and Ambedkar is that while the former considered the caste system to be the feudalism of India, the latter considered it to be worse than slavery and thereby separated it from Indian feudalism. That is why, he declared in the 1940s that caste abolition to be more difficult than to abolish class, which led him to leave its abolition to Parliament instead of a social revolution.
Ambedkar's search was not for the primitive aboriginals but for the slave Sudra varna in the four varna (catur-varnya) system. In 1916, he had presented the paper, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, in a seminar in America. According to him, the pre-caste ancient Indian society, like all other societies, was composed of classes. He further argued that after it became closed it became the caste society—Caste is an enclosed class. (Vol. 1, p. 15)
Were the Africans, on whose slave labour America soared to progress and prosperity, before they were kidnapped from Africa, a class society? the Indian Communist Parties still continue to cling to Ambedkar's general social truth and to explode which I had to spend the major part of my political life. Class system permeated in India only through the British capitalist imperialism. Till then, India was mainly a caste society (the rest of India was inhabited by Adivasi jamats). The jati society came into being during Buddha's time (BC 600). It was preceded by the varna society. That is why I wrote the whole Indian history in three volumes.
Ambedkar wrote: Who Were the Shudras? How they came to be the Fourth Varna in the Indo-Aryan Society, when India was on the threshold of independence. He summarised the book as follows:
- The Shudras were one of the Aryan communities of the solar race.
- There was a time when the Aryan society recognised only three Varnas, namely, Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas.
- The Shudras did not form a separate Varna. They ranked as part of the Kshatriya Varna in the Indo-Aryan society.
- There was a continuous feud between the Shudra kings and the Brahmins in which the Brahmins were subjected to many tyrannies and indignities.
- As a result of the hatred towards the Shudras generated by their tyrannies and oppressions, the Brahmins refused to perform the Upanayana of the Shudras.
- Owing to the denial of Upanayana, the Shudras who are Kshatriyas became socially degraded, fell below the rank of the Vaishyas and thus came to form the fourth Varna. (pp. XIV-XV) Ambedkar has admitted in the very preface of the book that: "If the warning is for the reason that I cannot claim mastery over the Sanskrit language, I admit this deficiency. (p. XIV). Can a person who wrote the history of ancient Greece from English literature on it and without attaining mastery over the Greek language, be accepted by the Greek scholars? That is why, it was rejected by the Indologists, not because they were Brahmanas. What is the evidence to prove that the Shudras were originally 'one of the Aryan (Kshatriya) communities of the solar race'?
I have proved in my Vols. I and III that kingship in India originated in women, that is, in gynocracy. (My three volumes are available both in English and Marathi.) The original term for kingship even in the Vedic(!) language is rashtri and it has no masculine form. Quoting the lawgiver Harita's neglected statement that the Sruti is not one but two: one Vaidiki and the other Tantriki, I have proved that Indian history starts with the latter and not with the former. Tantra, which occurs in the Veda only once, means agriculture, while Veda means knowledge. Knowledge of what? Evidently of agricultural magic, which was founded by the Tantriki Sruti and turned into karma-kanda by the Vaidiki Sruti of the Aryans. Though the Aryans, on the one hand, borrowed heavily from the Tantriki Sruti for their Vedic one, they tried to crush the Tantriki Sruti on the other. Brhad-aranyaka Upanishad (3.3.,7) shows eminent Aryan priests and philosophers going to the matrilinear Madras of Punjab, to the wife and daughter of Kapya (son of Kapi), to learn yajna (sacrifice, agricultural magic). The primal rashtri-devi Nirrti herself declares that she is the first among priests—"cikitushi prathama yajniyanam" (Rgveda 10.125.3; Atharva-veda 4.30.2). I had to wage a year-long debate with Dr M.A. Mehendale to prove the gynocratic identity of Nirrti. All Indologists tried to prove that the Arsha language of the Veda originated in Europe. But nobody raised the question as to how the efficacy of the agricultural magic could last over such a long distance and time and linguistic and geographical differences. The Arsha language was the language of the Tantriki Sruti of the gynocratic Rtis of the Sindhu Valley. The original meaning of the varna was not colour but moiety.
Original varnas were not three but two. They originated from the sexual division of the gynocratic tribe and represented the sexual division of the then universe: Dyava and Prithivi (sky and earth). Because women invented agriculture, they were considered to be Kshetra or Kshatra and because men poured semen or rain in the females or Earth Mother's yoni, they were considered to be Brahman or sky. (Grammar says that brahmana is the offspring of brahman.)
There was no Vaisya varna in the matrilinear states like Kerala. The third varna was introduced by the pastoral and patriarchal Aryans. There could be no persecution of the Brahmana Varna by the Kshatra Varna in the gynocratic tribes based on matriarchal blood kinship. Equality and democracy were generated by the Kshatra Varna. The words 'samata' and 'mitrata' originated in the Arsha language of the Rtis.
For equalitarian and democratic administration Nirrti initially constituted the 'sabha' (tribal council). Apte's 'Sanskrit-English Dictionary' does not give the etymology of sabha. I had to extract it from the 'civar-bhajaka' bhikkhu of the Vinaya-pitaka. He was elected by the samgha to distribute equally the cloths sent by the laity for the civar robes of the bhikkhus. 'Bhajaka' is derived from the root 'bhaj', to apportion equally. Likewise 'bha' in 'sa-bha', the 'Kashtha-sabha', where the tribal land and wealth was apportioned equally. In European and Arab gynocracies, this distribution was made with the help of dice, while in Indian gynocracies (vai-raj) it was made by aksha or salaka or chanda. Nirrti added the dice-board (irina or adhi-devana) to it. This function was called 'devana' and hence Nirrti, who performed it, was called 'devi'. Even after a year-long debate on Nirrti, Mehendale persists in interpreting the word as 'gambling'!
Nirrti felt that it would be inequalitarian to administer the tribe exclusively by the female sabha. In order that the males should support the decisions of the sabha voluntarily, that there should be sexual equality, she constituted the samiti (tribal assembly) which was made up of all initiated adult members of both the sexes. The title 'parishad' is of later, Aryan times. It was not made up of the whole tribe, but only of the twice-born varnas. The ritual 'upanayana' was also of the Aryan, catur-varnya times. In it only the Brahmana priestly varna could perform all rituals, while in the gynocracy all rites were performed by the Kshatra varna. In gynocracy initiation of a tribal member was called 'abhi-sincana'. It consisted of ceremonial bath in the tribal lotus pond (pushkarini). The pushkarini of Mohenjodaro-Harappa is in Pakistan. But Islam condemns all pre-Islamic history as 'jahilia'!
Pururava was the son of Ila, the gynocratic queen of Punjab. He could not be the heir to her gynocratic State. Hence, he came to Urvashi's gynocracy. She made him her tribal brother (vira) by bathing him in the gynocratic pushkarini and then performed sacred marriage (deva-vivaha) with him and thus made him king (raja) by contagious magic. She told him by the X.95.5: "Pururavo'nu te ketam ayam raja me vira tanvas tad asih." The pushkarini in which she initiated him is the 'pushkara' near Ajmer. Before the deva-vivaha, he was an ordinary Brahman. Hence his present-day descendants consider it as the pushkara of god Brahma! Before sacrificing him in the Purusha-medha, she assured him that his sons would succeed him as patrilinear kings: "Praja te devan havisha yajati svarga u tvam api madayase" (X.95.18). Henceforth, patrilinear kingship displaces matrilinear one, ending her gynocracy by rendering her the divine courtesan!
Did Ambedkar aspire to show lofty Aryan solar origin for the Sudras, who were the slave fourth varna in the Aryan catur-varnya system? The Surya (sun) was not a male deity in its origin. In the Rgvedic marriage hymn Suryaa is the bride of the Gods. Indian slavery was not individual, class, like the European one. D.R. Chanana has proved in his unique work 'Slavery in Ancient India' (1960) that it was communal. The female slave of Maha-nama, Buddha's cousin, was called Naga-Munda. It seems that the Sakya oligarchy (samgha-gana) had made the Nagas and Mundas, or a section of them, their yuddha-jita slaves. Mahabharata (II.32.10) shows the Sudras as a sovereign tribe in the Sarasvati valley. The Kashtha-sabha of Lanka was guarded by 600 Pisaca-slaves. They were yuddha-jita slaves of the sovereign Pisaca tribe, whose paisaci language produced the classic 'Ocean of Stories'. The Lankan tribe had only three varnas, the Kshatra varna of Mandodari and other females, the Brahman varna of Ravana and other males and the Dasa varna. The community (jamat) of the Va-naras is shown even in cinema as monkeys. They do not seem to be agriculturists. Like the forest-dwelling Rama, Lakshmana and Sita, they appear to be hunters and food-gatherers. Such pre-tribe (gana) communities fit in the BAMCEF's mula-nivasis. Indian adivasis are termed Scheduled Tribes. Tribe means gana. Not only in India, but all over the world, adivasis are no more in the advanced stage of gana. Adivasis are economically differentiated; but still they are without varnas or jatis. Their jamats cannot be equated with varna or jati or class (varga). The electoral appeal of their leaders is still in the name of homogeneous jamats.
The search for 'Who Were the Shudras?' should have been for the origin of their slavery. Though svatantrya (liberty) and paratantrya (slavery) are polarities, they are also the unity of those poles, opposites. Panini's grammatical rule: 'Sva-tantrah karta' (I.4.54) defines the subject as one who is free to act. Commenting on Panini (BC 500) three centuries later, Patanjali says that the meaning of tantra also being thread, one who owns his means of production, that is, weaving, is free. Panini is not the sole author of Ashta-adyayi. There were several grammarians before him, including women. Udameghi had her school of Audameghyas. The language of the Vaidiki Sruti is not Paninian Sanskrit but Arsha, meaning language of the hymn-singing rshis. Veda does not mean agricultural magic, but simply knowledge, while tantra of the Tantriki Sruti means agriculture. I have shown in Vol. III that Nirrti being the inventor of agriculture (rice), she and the Kula-pas of the Rti tride were the composers of the Tantriki Sruti. The pastoral and patriarchal Aryans settled down to agriculture, adopted the equalitarian varna system by transforming it into the inequalitarian four varnas and transformed the Tantriki Sruti into karma-kanda. They substituted Nirrti by A-diti (not Diti) and their grammarian Gargya clashed with Sakatayana on the etymology of Nirrti. It was a controversy over the relation of the pratipadika (uninflected noun) with the upasarga (preposition). Gargya used grammar to denigrate Nirrti, while Sakatayana defended the prevailing law of the Arsha grammar to sublimate her. In the introduction to Part II of 'Dasa-Sudra Slavery' I have summarised my debate on the etymology of Nirrti with Mehendale, who upheld Gargya's anti-Nirrti view. It is worth noting that Sakatayana was matrilinear—Sakati: grandmother, Saakati: mother and Sakatayana: her son, while Gargya was evidently patrilinear.
Thus, the trail of the Arsha language takes us to Nirrti's vai-raj. It tells us that whosoever owns her/his means of production is really free. In Rtis' vairaj women invented agriculture and that it why the Kshatra varna owned agriculture. But Nirrti strengthened this freedom with equality and democracy. Samiti has been explained in the context of sabha. The explanation of democracy remains. Varuna was the son of Nirrti. Punjabrao Deshmukh has drawn our attention to the fact that Varuna's only weapon is bond (pasha). Vedic literature says that one who was 'possessed' by Varuna was called 'Varuna-grhita'. Before him only Nirrti possessed persons—'Nirrti-grhita'. She gave him the regnal post out of mother's love; but did not bestow the Tantriki Sruti. In order that he should not betray the Vairaj, she conferred on him the shadow Mitra deity. Vasishtha was born of Urvasi from Varuna and hence he was called Maitra-Varuni. The karma-kanda of making kingship patrilinear was prepared by Vasishtha!
Visvamitra bade Rama to kill Tataka, the gynocratic queen of the Maladas and Karushas, by telling him that it was his duty as a Kshatriya prince to spread the four varna system:
Na hi te stri-vadhakrte ghrna karya narottama
Catur-varnya-hitartham hi kartavyam raja-sununa I.25.17
It is not true that Rama's war was exclusively against the 'evil' Rakshasas. In reality, it was against the equalitarian gynocracies for establishing the slave system of caturvarnya. Janaka demolished the A-halya-ruled gynocracy of the Videhas and banished her heir Sita to Ayodhya, wherein A-halya (Earth Mother) and Sita (ploughed field) were not Rakshasas. I have presented this a-brahmani interpretation in my Ramayana-Mahabharatatila Varna-samgharsha (2005). Though Indian society has progressed through this brahmanical bloody campaign, when the final conflict of caste-ending struggle has opened up, it has become urgent to disclose the suppressed a-brahmani history of this epic conflict. Though Indian slavery began not from Sudra slavery but from Dasa slavery, it is now more important to show the transition of Indian gynocracy to Dasa-Sudra slavery. For its detailed exposition my 'Dasa-Sudra Slavery' in two parts should be referred to.
In this context the definition of slavery by Buddha and the grammatical rule: Svatantrah karta should be compared. Buddha says:
…..puriso daso assa anattadhino, paradhino, na yena kamangamo.
So dasabya mucceyya attadhino, aparadhino, bhujisso, yena kamangamo.
(…a man were a slave, not his own master, subject to another, unable to go whither he would; …..he, emancipated from that slavery, becomes his own master, not subject to another, a free man, free to go whither he would.) [Dighanikayapali, Silakhandhavaggo, II.5.72]
If the grammatical rule 'free to act' is connected with 'unfree to act', it will be understood how these polarities are unity of opposites.
Vai-raj/stri-rajya was not one, but several. Upto the 20th century there was only one, that of the Khasis, described by Gurdon. They arose in a peculiar development of mankind. Even a brahma-nical, but semi-tantrika poet, like Bhavabhuti had to take cognisance of its plurality in his drama Uttara-Rama-carita. After the beheading of Sambuka by Rama, he appears before Rama as a divine person. Rama bids him to go not to the brahmanical inequalitarian heaven, but to the equalitarian heaven of gynocracies for permanent residence:
Yatra anandas ca modas ca yatra punyas ca sampadah
Vairaja nama te lokas taijasah santu te dhruvah.
Bhavabhuti speaks of Vai-raj in the plural. The Sudra Sambuka thus revenges upon brahmanical history through a great Brahmana poet. Indian history has destined that it should not remain figurative, but come in practice. The males then obeyed Vairaja's trinity of 'Svantantrya, Samata and Mitrata' under the spell of agricultural magic. Modern socialism will come into being through conscioius inculcation of the new philosophy of Sautratika Marxism, the new methodology of multilinear Historical Materialism and the new aesthetics of Socialist Sautrantikism.
Search for Mula-nivasis
MULA-NIVASI (aborigine) means human groups (jamat) in the pre-tribal (gana-purva) stage. Adivasis are called Scheduled Tribes (STs) in English, which is totally incorrect. The terms tribe and gana were brought into being by gynocracies in the West and East respectively. Though there was sexual inequality as the name stri-rajya shows, it was otherwise an equalitarian society. But with agriculture passing into the hands of the males and kingship becoming patrilinear, it became a three varna (Kshatriya, Brahmana and Dasa) inequalitarian matrilinear varna society and headed towards full scale slavery. The Aryan four varna (Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra) society coalesced with it. Guha, the Adivasi chief, who ferried Rama, Sita and Lakshmana across the Ganga, headed an undifferentiated mulanivasi collective, while his three passengers belonged to the four varna Kosala tribe.
The European tribal society further disintegrated in Plato's time (BC 428/427-347) into merchant democracy and became a class society. Indian tribal slave society, called samgha-gana, went on disintegrating in Buddha's time to become jati society. In AD 700 it became a developed jati feudal society distinguished by all the six characteristics. This dialectics of development should be understood. Development of the jati system means the growth of the a-brahmani opposite of the jati contradiction. With the full development of the six characteristics the growth of the a-brahmani opposite stagnated further, while the growth of brahmani opposite became retrogressive.
I have shown in Vol. III that the Buddha-led social revolution had two heroes—one, an agrestic slave and the other a cultivating householder (kassaka gaha-pati). The agrestic slave Punnaka (one who completes 100) represents agrestic slaves who had revolted violently, while Mendhaka represents the newly arisen cultivating traders with whose land revenue and trade tax the royal treasury over-flowed. The slave oligarchies being in disintegration, the agrestic slave hero was leaving the stage for good, while the caste (jati) feudal monarchies being on the rise the kassaka setthi (cultivating trader) was the new hero. The ganika Amba-pali of Vaisali was the last heir of the rashtri-devis of gynocratic Vaisalas. She is seen donating her sacred grove of Amba-vana to the sangha led by Buddha. We see all the three social orders—the disappeared gynocracy, the departing slave oligarchy and the rising jati feudal monarchy, in the lifetime of Buddha.
With the beginning of the stagnation of the jati system in AD 700 the cultivating trader gahapatis broke up into the castes of traders, money capitalists and mirasdar peasants. The anti-casteism that was evident in Sudraka's drama 'Mrcchakatika' (AD 100) in these two caste groups disappears. The philosophy of the present ruling caste-classes formed of Bania capitalists and Brahmanical intelligentsia is casteist Vedanta and the elites of the dominating peasant castes are the mainstays of the rural caste system.
Buddha consciously initiated the Candala untouchables Sunita and Sopaka as bhikkhus, who were the victims of the caste system. The romance of bhikkhu Ananda and Candali Prakrti has soared to become a European opera. Prakrti's love was sublimated by Buddha turning her into a bhikkhuni. Buddha had distinctly directed the Samgha to wage the next great struggle of ending the jati system. The Mahayana took it up. The epic philosophical struggle that the Diganaga school waged against the brahmanical camp constitutes the prologue of today's Enlightenment of the caste-ending social revolution. Siddhas of both sexes and all castes and Macchindra-natha's Nath sect were fired by this prologue. Shivaji and his son Sambhaji followed Saint Tukoba and the Sakta sect, finally embracing martyrdom for caste-ending equality. Hence, not the blank Mula-nivasis, but the women and men, who wrote the history of caste-ending equality with their blood, should be followed.
The Hegemony of Indian Social Revolution
THE present society is a semifeudal caste-class society. But the Preamble of the Constitution declares that it is secular, democratic and socialist. Ambedkar had warned in Annihilation of Caste (1936), addressing Indian Socialists and Commu-nists, that socialism cannot be achieved without abolishing the caste system. Caste abolition means accomplishing the caste-ending bourgeois democratic revolution. How can India become democratic without abolishing the caste system? Ambedkar should have realised this before drafting the Constitution as the Law Minister. Even after more than half-a-century, the ex-untouch-ables are not prepared to realise this due to their Ambedkar-worship.
How can a country be called secular when the Central Government and the Left Front Govern-ment of West Bengal persecute the writer, Taslima Nasreen, who risked her life in Bangladesh and India for courageously exposing in her literature the oppression of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh by the Muslim fundamentalists and was compelled to leave India by these governments?
How can India be called socialist when, in spite of Ambedkar's abovementioned warning, it has not yet abolished the caste system?
L.H. Morgan, from whose Ancient Society (1877) F. Engels took the idea of primitive communism and wrote his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), had surveyed tribal (gana) and adivasi societies and abstracted from them the ideal society of primitive communism. Morgan's quotations show that he had come across a gynocratic tribe. An ideal society has to be copied and cannot serve as a model for modern socialism. Hence, Lenin and Stalin assumed (after the bour-geois democratic revolution) that socialism would appear automatically after the socialisation (nationalisation) of the means of production. That is why Stalin imposed socialism on the new Russian bourgeois revolution in 1917. Marx had opined that the socialist transformation of human mind would take more than hundred years. But his non-dual understanding of the human mind, which deleted the subconscious, made that conjecture questionable. Communists and Marxists still consider that reflectionist enlightenment will change the human mind. Only Enlightenment that can penetrate up to the subconscious can change the human mind socialistically within a limited period. But for that the new philosophy of Sautran-tika Marxism, the new multilinear historical materialistic methodology and the new socialistic sautrantika aesthetics will have to be employed.
S. Ambirajan, a Dalit economist of Chennai, says in his paper 'Ambedkar's Contributions to Indian Economics' (Economic and Political Weekly, November 20, 1999) that in the 1940s Ambedkar tried to build caste economics. But after accepting the offer of becoming the Law Minister, he abandoned this effort and did not take it up again. Hence, he could not solder the social caste system and the economic order of semi-feudal land-ownership. He assigned the end of the semifeudal landownership to land reform Acts and caste abolition to Parliament and the Neo-Buddhist religion, while the caste system can be abolished not by Parliament or the Neo-Buddhist religion but by the social revolution. He should have realised beforehand that the caste-class ruling Cabinet, which appointed him Law Minister, would turn the trinity of liberty, equality and democracy into a handmaiden. The English, French and American Constitutions, from which he drafted the Indian Constitution, were born out of the revolutions made by the English, French and American peoples, while Ambedkar manufactured the Indian Constitution without making the Indian caste-ending bourgeois democratic revolution. No Constitution ushers in revolution, but it is the social revolution that makes its desired Constitution.
The undivided Indian Communist Party broke up in 1964 into the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM). The CPI and the CPM adopted policies under the names National Democratic Revolution and People's Democratic Revolution respectively borrowed from the West. The second division took place in 1979-80; out of that split arose the Naxalite party based on the Chinese New Democratic Revolution. The philosophy of all the three parties is traditional Marxism and no Communist Party has as yet studied India's unique social structure, history, philosophy and culture. After making this comparative study, Sharad Patil resigned from the CPM along with his colleagues and established in 1978 the Satyashodhak Communist Party based on the policy of caste-ending bourgeois democratic revolution. His Vol. III entitled 'Caste-ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and its Socialist Consummation' was published in 2006; this expounds the new philosophy of Sautrantika Marxism which is the synthesis of Dignagean Sautrantika Vijnanavada with Marxism, the new methodology of multilinear Historical Materialism and the new aesthetics of Socialist Sautrantikism. His recent paper (2008) 'Search for Aborigines (Mula-nivasis), or the Sudra Varna, or (Caste-ending Equality?' clinches Vol. III on the programmatic plane.
After more than 2500 years of the Buddha-led slavery-ending revolution, India stands on the threshold of caste-ending bourgeois democratic revolution. Being unable to solve the riddle posed by the unity of opposites of the social order of the caste system and the economic order of semi-feudal landownership, the Left, Centrist and Ati-sudra parties have lost the very objective of social revolution.
For caste-ending revolution, the social proletariat (ex-untouchables) needs to collaborate with the peasant caste-class. But though the peasant caste-classes support land reform, they oppose caste abolition. The peasantry in the bourgeois democratic revolutions of the class societies of the West and East were anti-feudal and hence such a situation was never faced by their revolutions. Unless the peasant castes are made caste-annihilationists, Indian bourgeois democratic revolution cannot succeed. If the Marxist proverb 'force is the midwife of revolution' is followed literally in India, it will antagonise the common mass of the peasantry. The pre-revolutionary Enlightenment should be such that it should turn the majority of the common mass of the peasantry into anti-caste and neutralise most of the rest. That is why this Enlightenment is unprecendented and hence it should be based on a new philosophy, new methodology and new aesthetics. Dalit writers are committing a blunder by alleging that Mahayana is anti-Buddha. Though Buddha accomplished the Great Enlightenment and revolution of varna slavery, he impressed upon his monastic order that though the nascent jati system would develop for hundreds of years, it would also have to be dealt a mortal blow like the varna slave system. Using the word jati in the sense of the scientific term 'species', he tells the brahmanas, Vasettha and Bharadvaja that though there are jatis in the animal and plant worlds there are no jatis in the human world:
Jati-vibhangam pananam annamanna hi jatiyo
Evam natthi manussesu lingam jatimayam puthu.
In the philosophical systems period (from AD 200 onwards) the brahmani philosophical camp launched attack on the Buddhist philosophical camp under the philosophical tenet: 'Jati is permanent.' Mahayana had to accept this Enlightenmental challenge. The philosopher poet Asvaghosha countered the attack by his Tathata-vadin philosophy and literature. Great struggle raged in all fields of knowledge. In education it was fought between the brahmani guru-kulas and the a-brahmani maha-viharas. In the great monasteries like Nalanda the educational course started by memorising the Ashta-adhyayi of the grammarian Panini. The text-book for it was the 'Kasika' of the bhikshus Vamana and Jayaditya (AD 650-660). Public debates then started taking place in Sanskrit. Sanskrit had deteriorated by the time of Patanjali (BC 200). It was necessary for the Buddhists to purify and make it meaningful in complexity. Kasika lasted up to the time it was displaced by Bhattoji Dikshit's Siddhanta-kaumudi (AD 1700), which shows its irreplaceability.
But if it is forgotten that the Mahayana had consummated the early half of the Enlightenment of the caste-annihilatory revolution, it is impossible to carry this revolution to success today. In the seventh century when the caste system had started becoming increasingly rigid, Dharmakirti, the last sun of the Dignaga school, blasted the brahmanical systems by saying in his great work on logic Pramanavartika that: 'to accept the authority of Veda, to assume the creator of this world, to suppose that merit accrues from holy dip, to be proud of the caste system and to presume that torturing one's own body decreases sin are five signs of stupidity'—
'Veda-pramanyam, kasyacit kartr-vadah, snane dharmeccha, jativada—avalepah,
Santaparambhah papa-hanaya ceti dhvasta-prajnane panca-lingani jadye.
Communists assert that all branches of knowledge Marxism can change, but its philosophy, especially materialism, can never change. Bhikshu Dignaga has changed even materialism. He says that every phenomena is unique (sva-lakshana), it is not like any other phenomenon. It makes Marxism's unlinearist classism inapplicable. Every phenomenon —jati, varna, gana, jamat etc.—has to be studied separately. Mind being composed of consciousness (sa-vikalpaka) and subconscioius (vi-kalpaka), the logic of the former is formal (akarika) while that of the latter is dialectical. Dharmakirti and his Chinese disciples tried to build it; but the efforts have remained incomplete. The Soviet scholars tried to define it; but their, and Marxism's, concep-tion of the mind being homogeneous, their efforts could not transcend formal logic. Freud (1856-1930), in his treatment of mental diseases, discovered the subconscious. In the course of erecting modern socialism, the inequalitarian mind will have to be changed. During the process of this metamorphosis dialectical logic will take place. I have shown in my Vol. III how the Samkhya yoginis discovered the duality of the mind. Vasubandhu (early 400) formulated it in his 'Abhidharma-kosa' and his disciple Dignaga incorporated it as the epistemology of his Sautrantika Vijnanavad in philosophy.
The real reason that actuated the Indian Communist Parties to reject the caste-ending revolution is not only Marxism's unilinearism or classism. Basically it is philosophical. I have dealt with it in my still unpublished paper 'Lenin, Mao and Basavapunnaiah: On Antagonistic and Non-antagonistic Contradiction' (1983). In Marx's death centenary issue of September 1983 of the CPI-M's theoretical organ Social Scientist, M. Basavapunnaiah wrote a paper attacking Mao's On Contradiction (1936). Basavapunnaiah's charge was that though, according to Marx and Lenin, the two types of contradiction, antagonistic and non-antagonistic, were mutually exclusive and that only class contradiction being antagonistic, it can be solved by revolution, Mao says that the two types being transformable into each other, non-antagonistic contradiction can turn into antagonistic contra-diction in certain circumstances and it can be solved by revolution; this is betrayal of Marxism. This paper implied that as jati contradiction being non-class and hence non-antagonistic, it would amount to betrayal of Marxism to solve it by revolution. I sent the abovementioined article to Social Scientist. It should be noted that Ambedkar had stated jati contradiction to be more antagonistic than class. Had Mao not made this contribution to Marxist dialectics, he would not have been able to direct the Chinese revolution successfully. This shows how strategic is the role of philosophy in the revolutionary movement.
The population of five districts of Nepal is overwhelmingly untouchable and the untouchables are a significant minority in the rest of the Nepal. Indian history shows that backward Adivasi jamats became untoucables. The reason why the Maoist Party waged the armed struggle successfully is that the core of its army is formed by untouchables. Nepal is a Hindu state and hence its feudalism is constituted by the caste system. Nepali people's armed struggle has succeeded in abolishing monarchy: but if it adheres to the Chinese New Democratic Revolution, it will not be able to achieve its Caste-ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution.
The mass bases of Indian Naxalites are among Adivasis. My whole life after 1956 has been spent in conducting the movement of the Adivasis. They are, according to the Dharma-sastra, Ati-sudras like the untouchables; but their hunger is for land and not for caste emancipation. The colleagues of Irom Sharmila Chanu, the 'iron lady' of Manipur, say: "We are not concerned with caste." Adivasis in India stand on the border of the caste system. Dharmasastra does not consider them untouchables. Though Anand Teltumbade's book is named Anti-imperialism and Annihilation of Caste, Naxalites do not name their revolution 'Caste-annihilatory Bourgeois Democratic Revolution'; they insist on calling it New Democratic Revolution which does not spell out caste annihilation in their programme. Their philosophy is traditional Marxism and methodology unilinear historical materialism.
The factions of Achuthanandan and Vijayan are working as parallel parties in the Kerala CPI-M. The CPM's sympathisers brand the party as bourgeois. The massacre at Nandigram shows that the Left Front in West Bengal is trailing behind big business. The panchayat elections in West Bengal reveal grim portends for the LF in the coming general elections.
It has become clear that the Left's efforts to build an anti-BJP secular class parliamentary third front have failed and the third class front has no future. The Dalit movement has stopped at reservation and does not want to advance towards caste abolition. The Congress is no more a national force and faction fights within it culminate into murderous attacks. The BJP is becoming a national force. The Indian electorate is left with no other alternative except choosing between the secretly casteist Congress and the openly casteist BJP!
I asked D. Bandyopadhyay, the former Revenue Secretary to the LF Ministry in West Bengal, in the eighties: "How much surplus agricultural land is there in India?" He replied: "More than 49 lakh acres." Nitish Kumar, the present CM of Bihar, has appointed him the honorary Revenue Commissioner of Bihar. Devastating accounts of his official tours of the hapless State are appearing in The Statesman and Mainstream. He points out that the Abolition of Statutory Landlordism, 1951, and The Ceiling Act, 1961, have not been implemented in this State at all. The Hathua Maharaja declared that he had donated his one lakh acres of land in Bhudan and thus saved it from confiscation. This situation prevails all over Bihar. Bhangar Singh, who murdered more than 100 persons and was declared 'absconder', has surrendered to the police recently. Such dons are said to be 13 and they with their private armies are but the myrmidons of the semifeudal caste-class of landlords and each has usurped thousands of acres of river-valley lands. These Bahu-balis, as they are popularly called, when imprisoned even for life, use the Jail Superintendent's phone for extortion. Don MLA Arun Gawali, when threatened by rival dons, took refuge in jail. Deprived of employment, the rural unemployed are daily flocking in thousands to metropolitan cities to swell their slums and provide fodder for criminal gangs. Sarkar, the CPM's MLA in Bihar, had shown the way to national salvation to the Bihar Government by redistributing surplus lands to the poor peasants and landless labourers in his constituency. The don Pappu Yadav shot him down in broad daylight, for which Pappu has been sentenced to life imprisonment. With Suraj Bhan, the third MP of Laloo Prasad Yadav has been sent to life imprisonment. The country is virtually in the hands of political and professional gangsters. What the Bodhisattva Pada-kusala Manava told the assembled people in the Pada-kusala Manava Jataka (432) is being witnessed in present-day India:
Sunantu me jana-pada, negama ca samagata!
Yata udakam tada adittam, yata khemam tata bhayam.
Raja vilumpate rattham, Brahmano ca puriohito.
Attagutta viharatha, jatam saranato bhayam.
[Hear me, O assembled of the countryside and negamas! Where should be water there is fire, where security there is fear. The Raja loots the nation, so also the brahmana Purohita. Walk with caution; sanctuary is fraught with fear!]
The leader of every European bourgeois democratic revolution in the West was its bour-geoisie. Up to the Russian October Revolution (1917), its working class had gained socialist consciousness like the European working class. The unsuccessful February (1917) bourgeois democratic revolution put fear in the Russian bourgeoisie's heart and it became vacillating. Hence, Lenin gave the slogan of joint dictatorship of the October Revolution to the proletariat and the (tenant) peasantry. After the October 1917 Revolution, Stalin, with Lenin's consent, imposed the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat on the bourgeois revolution. Though after the fall of socialism in Europe the Communist Parties substituted dictatorship with hegemony, Marx himself had chosen the path of communism instead of socialism with conscious acceptance of the French legacy of Gracchus Babeuf's (1760-1797) 'Conspiracy of Equals'. A conspiracy has no place for democracy. While defining bourgeois class struggle and proletarian class struggle, Lenin differentiated the latter from the former by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Both Marx and Lenin considered bourgeois democracy as formal, in practice sham. Even after the fall of European socialism, the Communist Parties' acceptance of democracy has remained formal, unhistorical, and it will remain so up to the time they do not transcend Marxism philosophically.
Today, a lot of discussion is going on, for and against, on globalisation. But all parties support Special Economic Zones, which is a product of globalisation. Their snares are spread all over the States of the country. Though they are advertised under the name of economic reforms, their production is not for building the home market but for export. The home market is built by land reforms, redistribution of surplus lands to the land-hungry SCs, STs and OBCs; but these agricultural surplus lands being owned by the elites of the dominating peasant castes, genuine land reform can be carried out only by abolition of the caste system. The crux of globalisation is that the G-8 intend to perpetuate the pre-capitalist status of the Third World countries for their neo-imperialist exploitation and oppression. S.R. Sankaran, ex-Secretary of the Rural Development Ministry, remarks in his report on the Tenth Five Year Plan that while China redistributed 43 per cent of its agricultural land, India has reidstributed 1.5 per cent of its agricultural land.
Buddha had given the Panca-dhamma (five points) programme of slavery-abolishing revolution to his Samgha of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis. Following is the nine point programme of the jati-abolishing bourgeois democratic revolution and its socialist transition.
Nine-point Programme of Jati-ending Revolution
- India should get out of the Commonwealth.
- After unleashing the Great Enlightenment of caste-ending equality, abolish the caste system by punishable law and redistribute all surplus agricultural land to SC, ST and OBC landless labourers and poor peasants.
- Confiscate the capital of unpatriotic comprador big capitalists and industrialise India with the help of patriotic capitalists who wish to create a developing home market in the above-mentioned way.
- Quash all Special Economic Zones as in Goa and return all acquired lands to their peasant owners.
- Quash 'The Armed Forces Powers Act, 1958', prohibiting redressal from courts against the armed forces' atrocities. Terminate Irom Sharmila Chanu's epic fast with due honour. The present term 'Scheduled Tribes' (STs) should be changed to 'Scheduled Jamats' (SJ)'. The adivasi States of the Himalayan North-East have to decide how they are going to ascend to the modern socialist stage with the help of the historical Khasi and Rti gynocracies, which they can treat as a model. Their present political alternatives of the Congress or BJP, both being casteist and not Western capitalist, will land them in disaster. The adivasi jamats in the rest of India should form autonomous States where they live in contiguous areas and are in the majority.
- Protect matrilinear laws and culture and develop them towards genuine sexual equality. Pass a law that ends feudal patriarchay and capitalist sexual discrimination.
- Rehabilitate Taslima Nasreen, who was forced to leave Bangladesh for writing in defence of the Hindu minority and who has been expelled from India under pressure from Muslim funda-mentalists, with due honour and security. Erect legal and religious guarantee of true secularism which will end religious fanaticism and per-secution.
- Deforestation has reduced rainfall to half in India. Perennial rivers go dry after the rainy season. The whole world faces ecological disaster. Protection of the remaining tree cover and forestation can be undertaken only with the help of adivasis. When I started this movement in the late sixties, I impressed upon the government that forestation should be handed over to the adivasi encroachers by written agreements.
- Solve today's general crisis of philosophy, literature, arts and culture with the help of Sautrantic Marxism, multilinear Historical Materialist methodology and the Socialist Sautrantic Aesthetics. This crisis can be solved by the a-brahmani current if it can sublate the brahmanical current in the positive manner.
[Out of the six characteristics of the caste system the one of marriage within caste reproduces the caste system. The rest of the five characteristics—heredity of caste, occupation hereditary, food within caste, castewise residence (mainly between the boycotted and non-boycotted) and caste panchayats—have changed to some extent during the transition to semi-feudalism. It will be possible to abolish them in course of the caste-ending bourgeois democratic revolutionary transformation. The punishable section of the Act will be needed to ban marriage within caste. The programme of ending the six characteristics of the caste system will have to be chalked out and implemented by the front which will be formed to accomplish this revolution.]
Buddha started building the revolutionary party of fulltimer bhikkhus and bhikkunis that would accomplish the slavery-abolishing revolution right from Bodhi. Ten years after that, at the age of fortysix, he gave the Panca-dhamma five-point programme to the Samgha. To the new feudal jati society, he gave the values of karuna (compassion) and metta (brotherhood). Metta no more meant democracy. For he had entered into the great renunciation after cognising the twilight of the tribal non-monarchical states. He visualised the Samgha as family and not kula (clan). The value-twain started being increasingly crushed after the seventh century and in the present caste-class society's senility greater and greater crops of sadistic values succeed each other. For inspiring this society to socialist-oriented caste-ending equality, a qualitatively new and higher trinity of svatantrya, samata and mitrata will have to be imbibed.
The author is the General Secretary, Satyashodhak Communist Party, Dhule (Maharashtra).
Sections
In the same section
- The Slumdog Phenomenon
- Lawyers, Judges and Justice Jujitsu
- Forging National Unity for Security and Ending Recession
- When scars grow tongues
- Raj Kapoor: Man of the Masses
- South Asia: Peace and Conflict in the Context of the War on Terror
- Bangladesh: 'People Voted Freely Against Terror, Religious Bigotry'
- Tragic Finale to a Courageous Nationalist
- Mumbai Aftermath: India's Disciplined Response Helped Avert Major Threat to World Peace
- 26/11: Is China Important….?
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Articles
India can't survive without eradicating Brahminism
V.T. RAJSHEKAR
I have gone through the subjects allotted to different speakers for your 14-day course. But I find that I have been given the most difficult subject. I don't know if other experts declined to talk on this subject or if the organisers did not find any one equipped to tackle the subject.
Any way, I gladly accepted the subject though I was very severely punished for writing and speaking on this subject.
JAILED IN CHANDIGARH
I was arrested four times, once imprisoned after being hand-cuffed and thrown into the Chandigarh jail but released within 15 days with an apology from Govt. of India itself. Later they impounded my passport for 20 long years from 1986 to 2005. Earlier, there were two attacks on my life. As the continuous arrests, jail sentence and other punishments for writings and speeches made me only more and more famous, increased the circulation of my paper, my books started selling like hot cakes, the Brahminical enemy thought it was counter-productive to arrest me.
KILLING OF GANDHI
Brahminism has prescribed four types of deadly punishments reserved for those revolting against it: It is called sam, dan, bedh and dand. The first three have been already tried but failed. The last one, dand is reserved — killing.
Brahminical people also know that I am not afraid of dying. That is why they are a bit worried.
Remember, Brahmins killed even the famous Gujarati Bania, M.K. Gandhi, like a street dog, even after he ate mountains of Brahminical shit. (V.T. Rajshekar: Why Godse Killed Gandhi?, DSA-1997)
My point is none in this country is spared. Even Dr. Ambedkar was killed by the very same forces.
Such a difficult and risky subject is given to me. Fine. I will do my best.
I am the author of about 100 books. Of this two are exclusively devoted to this subject. The first is Brahminism (DSA-2002). This book is also sold out. The second is Weapons to Fight Counter-Revolution (DSA-2004), which deals with the remedy to tackle the disease.
JESUIT INTEREST
That means the subject given to me is so vast and complicated that even two big books were not sufficient to do justice to the subject.
Remember, a subject like this is never taken up for public discussion. Nobody is interested in such things. Because this is a Jesuit institution involved in educational field and those attending are young Jesuits, this subject is taken up.
Dharmaram College fathers in Bangalore recently invited me for a talk on this subject and you may be shocked to hear most of the priests I found there were great admirers of Brahmins and their philosophy.
Why Brahminism is criticised by everybody? This is because Brahminism is the principal contradiction (enemy) facing India. I want to make it clear that Brahminism is a thought, a poisonous thought. The advocate of such a thought need not necessarily be a Brahmin.
M.K. Gandhi was not a Brahmin. Rather he was the most passionate advocate of Brahminism — though finally he became a victim of a Brahmin killer only.
CALL THE DOG MAD & SHOOT
So too Swami Vivekananda. He was a Bengali shudra. Gandhi was a Vaishya, our present Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a Sikh. Dalai Lama is a Tibetan Budhist. All these are great advocates of Brahminism. Christianity has produced many Brahminical admirers and thinkers. I found lot of Syrian Christians supporting Brahminism. It pays high dividends if you support Brahminism. If you oppose Brahminism you will be thrown out, despised, blacked out of the mass media. Unpopular. You will be called a "controversial" person and you face a living death.
Call the dog mad and shoot it. The best example is myself.
In other words, Brahminism is a poisonous thought which upholds anything and everything that goes against the constitution of India.
Though Brahminism is a thought, there can be no Brahminism without the Brahmin.
India produced two most famous historical personalities: 1. Dr. Babasaheb B.R. Ambedkar and (2) Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy of Tamil Nadu. Their names have gone into history because they stood for the underdog, fought for them and died for them.
HINDU PYRAMID
I will not be able to give you a correct picture of the Brahmin and his Brahminical thought unless I give a picture of the Indian social setup. India's so-called Hindu society resembles a pyramid with the Brahmin standing at the top. The society can be divided into three sectors:
(A). (1) SC - 20%, (2) ST - 10%, (3) BC - 35% — (Total 65%).
(B). (1) Brahmin, (2) Kshatriya & (3) Vaishya -5%, (4) Shudra 10% — (Total 15%).
(C). (1) Muslim-15%, (2) Christian- 2.5%, (3) Sikhs 2.5%, — Total (20%).
This is the picture of the Hindu caste system.
CHRISTIANS DID NOT COME FROM ROME
The 20% of the Muslim, Christian and Sikhs did not come from outside India. They were all part of the first section, the original inhabitants of India.
Because of the upper caste oppression, belonging to the category A, people went over to Islam, Christianity and Sikhism. That means most of the followers of the three egalitarian religions are also original inhabitants of India.
They quit the so-called Hinduism because of the Brahminical oppression, which inflicted the worst form of racism unknown even in apartheid South Africa.
You young Jesuits sitting here did not come from Rome or America. Your ancestors were Indians. Why did they go over to Christianity?
Was it because the Muslims troubled you? Or SC/ST/BCs? No. You were victims of Brahminism. It is the Brahminical oppression that drove you into Christianity which helped you to get fresh air. Christianity liberated you.
As the subject is too big and too complicated and I have no time to elaborate, I request you to study my books which are kept outside.
We Dalits are the worst victims of Brahminism which is a unique kind of racism.
BRAHMINISATION OF CHURCH
Brahminism is not the monopoly of only Brahmins. You go to Dharmaram College. At the NBCLC, both in Bangalore, you will find a church resembling a Brahmin temple and a priest dressed in kavi. When I questioned about this the Catholic priest defended it saying that it is "Indianisation" of the church.
No. It is not Indianisation. It is Brahminisation of the church.
The Roman Catholic church, I am sorry to say, has become the worst victim of Brahminism.
In Kerala, Syrian Christians are made to believe the myth that the original converts to Christianity made by St. Thomas were Namboodiri Brahmins. Nonsense. At the Orthodox Christian church headquarters at Kottayam, I found a painting outside its library of bare- bodied Brahmins with cross-thread on their chest.
GOD KRISHNA ADVOCATES VIOLENCE
I was told they were the very first converts to Christianity. Such downright falsehood is preached in the church itself. In other words, the church itself is a prisoner in the hands of Brahminism.
The so-called "sacred scriptures" of Brahmins propagated the quintessence of Brahmins.
The Gita openly preaches violence. Here the god Krishna himself tells Arjuna in the battlefield to kill his close relatives.
That is how Brahminism is the world's only religious philosophy which produced two gods —Rama and Krishna, both merciless killers.
Dr. Ambedkar has written a book itself on the subject called Riddles in Hinduism. Brahminical priestly order is one of the most corrupt in the world.
All other religions teach collective salvation. But it is only Hinduism, which is the modern word for Brahminism, that propagates individual salvation.
BRAHMINISM INSPIRED HITLER
You will be shocked to hear that Hitler's nazism in Germany was inspired only by Brahminism. (Leon Poliakov, Aryan Myth, New American Library, USA).
The Nazis attacked the Jews inspired by the Aryan theory propounded by the Brahmins. The very same Brahmins having used the Germans to kill Jews and cause the so-called Holocaust later joined hands with Jews saying that they are the "Jews of India".
Our research has revealed that Jews and Brahmins belong to the same ethnic identity. Brahmins have also admitted that they are also Jews. Hitler's swastika is borrowed from Brahmins.
We have produced lot of research material on this subject. International authors and scholars have upheld our findings.
The greatest and the most important cardinal principles of Brahminism are:
(a) Man is superior to woman.
(b) White is superior to Black.
(c) Merit comes out of birth.
(d) Might is right.
If you want to see Brahminism in all its nakedness, you have to go to Kerala. EMS, hailed as the greatest marxist, was a 150% double-distilled Brahmin.
If today India is poverty-stricken, intellectually enfeebled, friendless in the world even after 61 years, it is because of Brahminism.
I have placed before you the characteristic features of Brahminism and its disastrous effects on India.
Now, I will place before you the different weapons which I have perfected after a long experiment of 50 years, to fight Brahminism.
(1) Media: The first and foremost weapon is that we must have our own media to propagate all these ideas. The entire existing media is in the hands of Brahmins. I have worked in it for 25 years.
As Brahminism is a cultural weapon, it can be fought only culturally. It can't be physically tackled because Brahminism is not a physical object. Cultural deprivation is more serious than poverty.
(2) Mastery over law of contradictions: Hate what the enemy loves and love what the enemy hates.
(3) Beef-eating : Beef is the most expensive meat the world-over. But in India it is not only the cheapest but the most hated. Look, even Indian Social Institute, a Christian organisation, is not serving beef.
(4) Reject Gandhi and gandhism. Unity with Muslims and Christians.
(5) Danger of "Socialist Brahmins": EMS Namboodiripad is the best example. Defend "Sacred Brahmins".
(6) Language problem: China had a revolution because it had one language. India is having hundred and one languages. We have to launch a drive for English education right from class-I.
(7) Strengthening ethnic identity: Kerala is a very good example. Ezhavas form 30% of the population, single largest, and yet they could not become rulers because they lost their ethnic identity.
My book on the subject, Caste — A Nation Within the Nation, got me international award. It advocates strengthening of every caste.
(8) Religious conversion: Brahminical people hate conversion. That is why we must resort to vigorous conversion.
(9) Stop worshipping Aryan gods.
[Speech delivered at Indian Social Institute (ISI), Bangalore, on April 21, 2008. Subject: "Brahminism: Characteristic features, effects & our response".]
COMMUNICATION
DV must support BAMCEF to strengthen Ambedkarism & fight Brahminism
GURNAM SINGH MUKTSAR, 2 - BHAGAT SINGH NAGAR, B/H BUS STAND MUKTSAR - 152 026
On Dec.27, 2008, we as a team were in a huge crowd of delegates from all over India to attend the Rajat-Jayanti, a BAMCEF session organised by Vaman Meshram at Cuttack, Orissa.
Since 1908 I worked in BAMCEF under Kanshi Ram till his death. BAMCEF split in 1985 but I stood with Kanshi Ram. For over 26 years I worked with him to strengthen DS4, BSP and BAMCEF too. After the death of Kanshi Ram I came back to BAMCEF. I developed close relationship with V.T. Rajshekar and Dalit Voice. I tried to organise a "100 top intellectuals of DV family" under the leadership of the Editor but failed. Ultimately I joined BAMCEF at Patna after 21 years of separation.
The Cuttack conference had 25,000 delegates. One session was organised by women activists and another by Muslims. Vaman Meshram addressed the concluding session on Dec.28.
During all these days I often thought Dalit Voice and its importance. I too thought of the intellectual leadership of our Editor.
I have learnt great many things from Dalit Voice and V.T. Rajshekar much more than Kanshi Ram. DV has maintained its national and international character.
As an Ambedkarite, I can say DV and DSA literature are in full conformity with the philosophy of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and Budha.
Again and again, I thought of cooperation and collaboration of BAMCEF and Dalit Voice. If DV becomes the voice of BAMCEF it will be a big boost for social revolution.
V.T. Rajshekar, Vaman Meshram and Kanshi Ram and myself had the same dream. We have everything in common to fight our rights robbed by varna system of hate and fate — a curse on Dalit-Bahujans. Our unity can expedite the revolution to begin during our life time.
DALIT SIKH
I am a Dalit first and then a Sikh. It is much better to be a Dalit than a Sikh, Muslim, Christian or Budhist as we Bahujans are all converted people but could gain nothing except separate gods, rituals, worship, holy books. None could kill Brahminism from within the heart and mind.
I was a born Sikh. I have the best true knowledge of the Guru Granth but I am a follower of great Babasaheb, our only saviour. I have studied Quran, Brahmin granths and now I am deeply studying Budha's philosophy.
The Sikh society too is like a Hindu society based on casteism. About 80% Sikhs are upper caste Hindu.
At the BAMCEF convention, a Muslim scholar openly declared that we were originally Dalit-Backwards and then became Muslims. He also said over 85% Muslims belonged to Dalit-Bahujan sections — Mulnivasis. The Shekhs, Khans, Pathans and Sayiads are alien Muslims.
We made conversions over conversions but we could not get rid of Brahminism.
That is the ultimate truth. All religions have been totally captured by Brahmins. No religion could kill this Hindu hate. We want to kill this hate theory of vaidik Aryans. To kill this hate and adopt human love and equality is the only revolution suggested by our great revolutionaries. Our grandfathers became Sikh with this dream of love and brotherhood but could not gain equality.
Now as Dalit-Backward Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and Budhists we are becoming Ambedkarites to fulfil the dream of love, equality, brotherhood and freedom in this so-called independent India captured by Brahmins and other upper caste hate-mongers.
If BAMCEF and Dalit Voice can come close it will strengthen this hope. DV family members must think over this cause. DV can then become a powerful media movement.
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DV is ready
Brother Gurnam Singh has made a good suggestion which we accept whole-heartedly. DV is pledged to the Ambedkarite revolution. So too BAMCEF led by Brother Waman Meshram who too is our good old friend and an Ambedkarite. We were with Kanshi Ram also but refused to join his political party. As long as BAMCEF remains a socio-cultural movement we will be with it. Tell us what we should do to support BAMCEF. Dalits are too divided and thereby helping the enemy. But DV has one aim and anybody having that aim is our brother. Woman Meshram is no exception — EDITOR.
DV ignoring plight of Bengali Dalits ?
ASHUTOSH THAKUR, 3/32 - F.D. ROAD, SERAMPUR, PO MALLICKPARA, HOOGHLY DT. 712 203
Since you are not ventilating the gruesome condition of the Namasudras and other Dalits displaced from erstwhile East Pakistan and rehabilitated in different provinces of India without having their caste certificate, right to property and citizenship recognition etc. I don't want to be a subscriber of Dalit Voice. Please stop sending it.
***************
We appreciate your anger. But you must also appreciate our difficulties. All the upper caste toilet papers confine to the problems faced by their 15% jatwalas. But DV is India's only paper to fight for the cause of the rest of the 85% have-nots. How can we do justice to this enormous deprived population in 28 pages of DV that comes once a fortnight? Besides, did anybody send us literature on the plight of the displaced Bengali Dalits? We will be too glad to publish your problem. Our heart is with you — EDITOR.
Brahmin brain & its working : Russian expert's prediction
SHER SINGH, IAS (RETD.), 1897 - URBAN ESTATE, PH-II, PATIALA - 147 002
"Brahmins never forget an injury but wait for an opportunity to strike", says Cheiro, the world famous palmist.
Count Louis Hamon (1866-1936 AD) popularly known as Cheiro all over the world, who predicted 14 years in advance that Czar of Russia would be beheaded (his prediction slip is still preserved at the Moscow Museum), has given the salient features of the hands of India's Brahmins:-
They have philosophic hands — generally long and angular, with bony fingers, developed joints and long nails. As far as success in the form of wealth is concerned, it is not a favourable type to have; it gleans wisdom, rarely, if ever, gold. They are, as a rule, students but of peculiar subjects. They study mankind; they know every chord and tone in the harp of life, they plan upon it, and are gratified with its responsive melody more than with the clink of coin. In this way, they have a different type of ambition. They like to be distinct from other people and they will go through all kinds of privations to attain this end but as knowledge gives power so does the knowledge of mankind gives power over man.
Such people love mystery in all things. If they preach, they preach over the heads of the people; if they paint, they are mystic; if they are poets they discard the dramatic clash and colour of life for the visionary similes and vapourish drapings of the spirit. Theirs is the peace of the aesthetic, theirs the domain beyond the matter; theirs the cloud land of thought where the dreaded grubworm of materialism dare not follow. The Brahmans, yogis and other mystics possess them in great number.
In character, they are silent and secretive, they are deep thinkers, careful over little matters, even in the use of little words, they are proud with the pride of being different from others, they rarely forget an injury, but they are patient with the patience of power. They wait for opportunities and so opportunities serve them. They are generally egotistical; more or less fanatical in religion or mysticism (Cheiro's book of Palmistry, Numerology and Astrology, page 53-55).
Note: This must supplement and not reject the understanding of the Brahmin brain and its working by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
COMMUNICATION
Brahminical people sabotaging Budhism
UJJWAL RABIDAS, PhD SCHOLAR IN LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, JNU, NEW DELHI - 110 067
A vigorous Dalit movement dissociated with Budhism is unlikely. Budhism is the key to the socio-cultural revolution and emancipation of the Dalits. But my experience with two Budhist intellectual exercises have bothered me to raise some of my concerns on the inter-relationship between Budhism and Dalit movement.
In Oct. 2008, a Budhist Zen Master spoke at a New Delhi meeting to spread awareness on Budhist practices. The Vietnamese monk, Thick Nhat Hanh, gave barely five minutes to Dr. Ambedkar and rest of the time spoke on peace, psychological relief and joyous life. Dalit movement is still crippling to ensure the basic amenities, fundamental human rights and a minimal condition to flourish human personality. But the monk never bothered about the crippling conditions here.
The monk was invited by two Delhi-based NGOs — National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR) and Ahimsa Trust — who are more concerned with material gain.
In March 2009, a two-day international seminar on Budhism was organised by the Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literatures. The seminar sent dim impression of Budhism because Brahminical Budhists were trying to distort Budhist discourse.
Ms. Seema Kohli presented Hindu goddesses in a Budhist tradition and tried to hinduise Budha himself. Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, reaching the height of Brahminical tradition, hailed Ms. Kohli's paper as fantastic. Budhist monks and scholars of different countries present tacitly endorsed the observations. Brahminical forces are trying hard to weaken Budhism.
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Monks doing business in Budhism
When the "educated" elite Dalits, the products of Dr. Ambedkar's liberation movement, have already joined Brahminical forces and successfully sabotaged Budhism where is the hope in Budhism? We were in Nagpur — heartland of Budhism — in the middle of March for our DV silver jubilee and found even Dalit monks doing business in Budhism. Dalit political leaders have forgotten Babasaheb. Brahminical terrorist organisation RSS has set up a wing to corrupt and co-opt all those engaged in Budhism. We too are under tremendous pressure to compromise — EDITOR.
Nagpur DV meeting
V.T. RAJSHEKAR
The Nagpur DV silver jubilee celebration on March 15 was a fairly good success compared to the failure we faced at the March 1 Madras DV function. The brain behind the Nagpur function was Brother Vinod Anavrat, a revolutionary Budhist who is deeply worried that Budhism revived by Dr. Ambedkar is being swallowed by Brahminism with the active connivance of the educated Dalits.
DV family members came even from Bombay, Raipur, Jodhpur and a fairly high contingent from Gadchiroli, a maoist-infested remote district of Maharashtra. Those who spoke expressed concern over the fall of Budhism and the Dalit movement itself.
"Know the Hindu Mind" book released: On March 14, Brother Nagesh Chaudhary, editor of the Bahujan Sangharsh, arranged a meeting of his readers and supporters where our recent bok, Know the Hindu Mind (DSA-2008, Rs. 100), was released. Veteran Marathi scholar Ma Ma Deshmukh was the principal speaker who hailed the Editor as a "life-long fighter against Brahminism". Dr. (Mrs.) Seema Sakhare released the book at the packed hall of the Panjabrao Deshmukh Hall.
All the DSA books that we took to Nagpur were sold out at the two meetings.
Bodh Gaya liberation: On March 15 evening, we attended the first conference of the Dhamma Sena organsied by the revolutionary Budhist monk, Ven. Surei Sasai, at the Yashwant Stadium. Sasai announced that the newly formed Sena would march on Bodh Gaya to liberate it from the existing Brahmin control.
In the night, we had a dinner meeting with Muslims.
Why Dalits must capture temples ?
KULDIP KUMAR, 1269, URBAN ESTATE-II, HISAR - 125 005
In the March 1, 2008 (p.24) DV, I wrote on the need to capture temples. I am glad that my point was taken seriously by the DV family and a noted scholar like Dr. Jamanadas wrote on the subject. I was not aware that somebody else too was having similar desires.
The basic difference is of motive
I could not make out what promoted Bal Thackeray to talk of capturing the temples. But I am sure he did not wish to capture temples for the sake of Dalits. My idea that the Dalits should capture priesthood in temples does not have the same motives of that of Thackeray or somebody else. I often ponder the ways and means of regaining our lost power. To some, the supreme truth of our Indus kingdom being occupied by Brahmins may appear to be a cock and bull story but to me it is reality. For me taking over priesthood of temples is one of the ways to regain our Indus kingdom. And this motive is behind calling upon Dalits to become priests.
MARTIAL ART
Babasaheb differentiated between violence and nonviolence. To kill a living being with a desire to kill is violence, but where there is need to kill it is not violence. When Budha taught martial art to his bhikhus, he had a need to kill the plunderers who came in the way of reform. Similarly, I have no desire to capture temples but it is our need.
Why do we have a need to get share in priesthood?
This is the foremost question. For its answer, we will have to have a panoramic view of the Dalit history vis-a-vis the Brahminic history. None in the whole world can refute Babasaheb's premise that history of India is nothing but an account of conflicts between sharamanic and Brahminic cultures. In the last conflict, the Brahmins triumphed. They turned us into slaves: shudra, achoot, whatever be name.
Through a slavery of centuries, the Dalits today have been rendered brainless slaves. We are worshipping the exploiters, murderers, rapists. We are chanting raam-naam day and night. We hang om, Vivekananda and Dayanand photos beside Babasaheb, Guru Ravidas photos. These are signs of our mental slavery. As our Editor VTR repeatedly says, we slaves are enjoying our slavery.
CONFLICT NOT OVER
But all are not enjoying slavery. A big number of our people are ready to fight and finish the slavery. Though the Brahmins won the last battle, the conflict is not over. I presume the time has come when we can reverse the position. For this we need to capture the priesthood as a first step. Why and how?
Let us know our history:
Proceeding further one very important submission: We must admit that we do not find any faithful account of ancient history of India. Babasaheb said two things about the Indian history:
(1) That he did not accept the theory that people of a race called Arya came from outside of India. He propounded the premise that Arya is name of a culture.
(2) That previously only three varnas existed: Brahman, Kshatirya and Vaish. Brahmins and Kshatriyas fought for supremacy in which Kshatriyas lost. Hence they were turned into fourth varna: shudra.
Besides it is also a fact that the cities of our Indus kingdom were destroyed. The Aryan Rig Veda contains stories of destruction of 99 such cities by their god Indra. So naturally two questions arise:
1. If Aryans (let us for a moment presume it to be a race) did not invade India and destroy the cities of Indus Kingdom, then who destroyed them? If the said 99 cities described as destroyed by Indra were not of Indus kingdom, then which were those cities?
2. If Brahmins, Kshatriya and Vaish were of a same race and had common ancestor, why did Brahmins slaughter most of Kshatriya and crushed the rest as shudras? Why is it that the Brahmins fought against Kshatriyas and plundered the Vaish? And why is it that a Brahmin never fought against another Brahmin?
Only Brahmins invaded India, that is Indus kingdom:
DESCENDANTS OF ABRAHAM
Mudrarakshas in his book, Dharam Granthon Ka Punarpath (re-examination of scriptures) gives the answer. I request every Dalit to read it. Quoting extensively from Brahmin scriptures, he says that only Brahmins came from outside and invaded India.
The Brahmins were descendants of Abraham (a Jew) who is described in Greek/Roman mythology as saviour of all living creatures at the time of doomsday. The Brahmins were descendants of Abraham who expelled them out of his regime for their bad qualities. They started from Egypt and after passing through many cultural areas, reached India.
He also says that as only a group of male members came to India, there is no mention of any female accompanying these Brahmins. Thus the Brahmins needed women from local inhabitants to keep their generation running.
When Brahmins entered India and established their settlements, indigenous people did not resist. Only when Brahmins snatched their cattle for yag and women for reproduction, the local inhabitants resisted. The Rig Veda cites fierce battles in which "god kings" of Aryas murdered and plundered the Indus cities.
BRAHMIN - KSHATRIYA WARS
Indus kingdom had two classes: soldiers and artisans.
The Indus kingdom had two groups of people: soldiers and artisan-traders. Brahmins named them Kshatriya and Vaish. Only the soldiers (Kshatriyas) fought the Brahmins. Hence the enmity between the two. From Brahminic scriptures it appears there was large-scale war between the invader Brahmins and the Kshatriyas. The Brahmins out-powered the Kshatriyas but their resistance continued. Some states like Ram's ancestors committed treachery and joined hands with the invaders. But kings like Ravana, Harinyakashipu fought till the last drop of their blood.
Those who surrendered agreed that the Brahmin would act as priests/chief prime minister and his advice would be binding on the king. There are numerous instances where the Brahmin reigned supreme over the king.
Those who fought and lost, as per Babasaheb, were turned into fourth varna: shudra. It is also worth noting that in the country of origin of Brahmins each elite kept 100 slaves. So they started the same practice here.
Saam, daan, bhed, dand: 4-way strategy of Brahmins. In order to overpower their opponents, the Brahmin strategy was: saam, daan, bhed, dand.
BRAHMINS GAVE DAUGHTERS
In my over three-decade study of Brahmin scriptures and their history, I found that though Brahmins used all sorts of ways to finish their enemy, they used dand to crush the defenseless people like shudras/Dalits. The Indus people too were virtually defenseless. So the Brahmins used dand against them. They used daan against the mightier enemy to win over the English and Mughals, they offered them every price i.e. daan including their daughters.
Saam, the deadliest and the surest strategy, was used to destroy our history and culture.
Saam is the deadliest of the four. It has been the most effective and a never fail way to finish the strongest enemy whom they cannot crush by dand nor buy through daan.
HOW BUDHISM WAS DESTROYED
During the Maurya era, Budha Dhamma was the mightiest enemy of Brahmins. It had almost wiped out Brahminism. At that time our Indus kingdom was in full bloom. The excavation of the Indus cities prove that every city contained a stupa. Seals of dhamma-chakra are found in plenty. In one of the cities even a headless statue of Budha was also found. Seals depicting worship of Bodhi Pipal tree have also been found. The whole Indus kingdom had turned into Budhist state.
At that time Brahmins under Pushyamitra committed regicide of Emperor Varihdarth and genocide of Budhists. But the Brahmins did not succeed in fishing the Budha Dhamma by dand. Therefore, they adopted the sure strategy of sam. Under this strategy, the Brahmins took their first step by declaring the Budha as one of our gods. As a next step the cunning Brahmins joined Budhism as bhikkhus.
A Brahmin like Kumarila Bhat, Nagarjun in the garb of bhikhus injected Brahminic venom into the veins of Dhamma. Tales of Jatak were distorted, simple Dhamma was infected with complex rituals. Brahmins led the Dhamma to Tantarikism. In the garb of bhikhu, they committed heinous sins. The end result: Dhamma vanished from its birth place.
The saam is persisting even today.
RADHAKRISHNAN'S MISCHIEF
The Brahmins took centuries to complete their job. The most dangerous part is that even today they are using this strategy.
Mischievous "scholars" like Dr. S. Radhakrishnan feel no shame in declaring that the Budha was born a Hindu and died a Hindu.
The Brahminist (Kayasth) Vivekananda feels no shame in depicting Budha's moral values as that of Brahminism.
RSS fellows shout that Babasaheb is their leader, Budha is their god. Brahmins have no hesitation to join an exclusive Dalit party like BSP under this saam niti. They even go to the extent of claiming that the constitution too describes Budhism under Hinduism.
WHAT IS THE WAY-OUT?
Thus by adopting these methods, the Brahminic media has been able to prove before the world that the atrocities committed on Dalits are not due to racial difference and that exploitation of Dalits do not fall under apartheid.
The question is how can we check this trend? Babasaheb said that only Dalits can stop this trend. Nobody else will come to liberate us. To gain entry into priesthood we need to start a campaign. Just as we struggled to get reservation in govt. services and legislature, so will we have to struggle for priesthood. I call upon all Dalit brethren to ponder over the issue. We can more effectively cleanse the venom of Brahminism from the brains of our people through this platform.
True. Some Dalit entrants may prove to be stooges. But the day we become a priest, the whole Brahminic system will be turn upside down. We can do the same thing to Brahminism as Brahmins did to Budha Dhamma.
IF DALITS ARE HINDU WE CAN BE ALSO PRIEST
I want to make it clear that I do not want to capture temples to reform Brahminism, nor do I wish to crave their donations. These temples are constructed by our people on our land. These are our property but enjoyed by our enemies. If we take over them it is not immoral and not illegal. As the enemy calls us Hindu, the Dalits too have the natural right to control and manage the Hindu temples.
Democracy says the majority must rule and we are the majority. Kanshi Ram also said: jiski jitni sankhya bhari, yitni uski hisedari. Every community must get a share as per its numbers. The Hindus among Dalits must be given priesthood in proportion to their population. Our people blindly believe only saints and priests. Naturally we can make use of this platform of priesthood to air our views. Even if a few among us become bhikkhus, we can shake the very foundation of Brahminism. I offer to be the first priest.Dalit intellectuals please ponder over this suggestion. Sooner we act better it will be. (jaikuldip@rediffmail.com)
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Dr. Ambedkar had said "the Untouchables are not Hindu and were never Hindu". When they are not Hindu there is no point in talking about Hindu temples. Brother Kuldip Kumar is an Ambedkarite and we believe he is an honest intellectual. Perhaps he thinks Dalits are fully hinduised and yet denied the right to priesthood. Why not Dalits capture the temples? Fine. If this is http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/april_a2009/articles.htmhis reasoning, he must now take the next step: how to capture the temples? Let us have a Debate — EDITOR.
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/april_a2009/articles.htm
"Educated" Dalits not following clear-cut guidance of Dr. Ambedkar
GURNAM SINGH MUKTSAR, 2 - BHAGAT SINGH NAGAR, B/H BUS STAND, MUKTSAR - 152 026
Without a strong organisation, I feel dead. I tried to create a good organisation of DV. But from the very beginning it was deliberately sabotaged. None from India and abroad took it as a duty. None liked it except a few. I don't want to waste my life without an organisation. So after the death of Kanshi Ram, I joined BAMCEF and I am doing all my promised job.
You have repeatedly said that the Dalit world is devoid of hope. Mayawati's political movement will kill the ideological movement launched by Kanshi Ram. If you stop DV it will be a great help to the Hindu terrorists. Your work should never come to a stop. Any mind without an ideology is like an animal. Dead wood. You have done a lot. You continue your work. You have created history. It is in the right direction.
I know you are a sad man today but burning like a candle in total darkness. I am sorting out all your DV articles. It will take one year. In 2009, we plan to meet you. I will be happy if my book of 100 articles is published before Dec.2009 to be released at a national function of BAMCEF. I am learning much more about Budha from the DV Debate.
DV has produced hundreds of intellectuals among Dalit/Backwards in India and abroad. But they are not getting Agitated to get Organised. They could not even produce a number of youths to take over. DV has over 100 writers who really are Educated and Agitated. They have in turn educated thousands of people. But there are not even 100 among the 90-crore Dalit-Backwards who could create an organistaion.
Our people read Dr. Ambedkar, pose as great Ambedkarites and Budhists. But each person has a different way of thinking and action. They then eat and sleep well. That is the end. None gets Agitated. How can we defeat Brahminism? We are jealous of each other. We are more interested in fighting and finishing our own brothers than fighting the enemy.
DV has given clear-cut guidance. But we did not follow. Brother Musafir of Himachal is really an Educated and Agitated person. He is very faithful to the mission. Yet he is unable to find 100 "Agitated" people to be Organised into a fighting army.
I have worked with Kanshi Ram for over 25 years till his death. Since 1980-81 I have been faithful to DV and have loved VTR for his great works. I am a sad man now but very Agitated. I could not get 100 DV readers/writers/intellectuals to fulfil my desire. I have started searching for 100 best articles of DV to be reproduced in a book.
Dr. Kuldip Rai of Garh Shankar of Punjab is managing all issues of DV for me in yearly volumes. I have discussed this with Brother Vaman Meshram, national president of BAMCEF. I hope to use the zeal of Brother Musafir in this venture of great importance. It will highlight VTR's Ambedkarite movement in India and abroad. Let us not waste our precious life.
VTR has given a big ideological push to Ambedkarite movement. He has become a man of history. Will Brother Musafir help me out?
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Why blame Brahmins when "educated" Dalits failed on all fronts?
V.T. RAJSHEKAR
Brother Gurnam Singh is a person of considerable experience in Dalit movement being with Kanshi Ram for a long time, then with Dalit Voice and BAMCEF. He thinks that a considerable number of "educated" Dalits are fairly well versed in the thoughts of Babasaheb Ambedkar. Referring to the "Three Commandments" of Babasaheb: Educate, Agitate, Organise, (please read DSA booklet: When Dalits Disobeyed Final words of Their Father: Three Commandments of Dr. Ambedkar, DSA-2005, Rs. 20), he says Dalits are fairly well Educated on the thoughts of Babasaheb. why then are they not getting "Agitated", which automatically should lead them to get "Organised"? Fine. His worry is understandable. We are much more worried. We have expressed our agony in our different writings and speeches.
The most important point to be understood by Brother Gurnam is when the Dalit movement itself is dead in the country as a whole, who cares for Babasaheb's "Three Commandments"?
ONLY HOPE OF INDIA
When the Dalits are not "Educated" in the very first thought of Babasaheb in the absence of a burning, militant movement, how can they jump from the ground floor to the first floor (Agitate)? When you have not reached the first floor, how can you reach the 2nd floor?
We have missed the bus.
We have said this hundreds of time (Crisis in Dalit Movement, V.T. Rajshekar, DSA-2008, pp.12, Rs. 5). In the very state of Babasaheb (Maharashtra), the Dalit movement is dead.
The toxic Brahmins have killed it. And we have allowed them to kill it. The fault lies with us. The enemy naturally wants to kill us. How can you find fault with the enemy? The enemy is doing its duty. It is we who failed to do our duty.
CONFRONTATION WITH ISLAM
When we failed in the very first stage of getting "Educated" in the burning thoughts of our Father, everything else gets derailed.
The only hope of India was its Dalit movement. Toxic Brahmins managed to kill it.
Which revolutionary movement they have not killed?
Did they not kill Budhism, the very first and the most revolutionary movement to fight Brahminism?
WHAT HAPPENED TO SIKHISM?
Right now they are in confrontation with Islam. The latest "War on Bombay", as it is called, is a part of this. Brahminism is trying to swallow Islam but it is not succeeding. The enemy is trying its best to push Muslims into vote politics but they are resisting. Because the enemy knows once you accept vote politics, that signals your surrender.
One exceptional quality among Muslims is they are guided not by their political leaders but their ulema (religious heads). Efforts are being made to corrupt and co-opt the ulema. But they are not succeeding because Islam is a powerful international religion which is confronting a much bigger enemy (zionism) in Middle East and fighting it.
ENEMY MADE A MONKEY
Zionism has not succeeded in defeating Islam. Rather zionism itself has suffered in its fight.
In the latest "War on Bombay", the Brahminical enemy is made a monkey. A handful of Islamic terrorists (just 10 of them) made the grass-eating Brahminists to piss in their pants.
LIBERATION THROUGH CONVERSION
But Muslim form only about 15% to 20% of Indian population. Quite a large chunk of Muslim are converts from our (Dalit) people. That is how they got liberated.
Babasaheb wanted to liberate us through Budhism, which the Brahmins swallowed centuries back. But did we follow Babasaheb in embracing even the diluted Budhism? No.
DALITS DEMOLISHED BABRI MASJID
Did we follow his Three Commandments? No.
Did we at least join the BSP, the only political party of Dalits that gave stomach-ache to Brahmins? No.
Did the "educated" Dalits, the beneficiaries of Babasaheb's reservation policy, remain faithful to their Father? No.
Did we accept our Father's concept of Bahujan Samaj? He said all the Mool Nivasis comprising SC/ST/BCs (65%) and religious minorities 20% — total 85% are pre-Aryan (with minor exceptions) and hence all of us are blood brothers? Did we accept his verdict? No.
It is the Dalits who led the group to demolish the Babri Masjid.
It is again the Dalits who took the lead in killing Muslims in the "Gujarat Genocide".
In the latest Orissa anti-Christian carnage, it is the Tribals who killed the Dalits.
EDUCATED DALITS' FAILURE
No doubt, in all these mass murders it is the toxic Brahmins who instigated our people to commit the mass murders. But how could they instigate us if our people are Educated in the burning thoughts of our Father?
Why our "Educated" Dalits failed to educate their poor, illiterate brothers on the thoughts of Babasaheb?
In other words, at every step we have failed.
BRAHMINS DOING THEIR DUTY
Why should we blame the Brahmins for our failure?
They will do their duty. But have we done our duty? We are sorry to note we have not done our duty.
DV has been saying this for the past about 30 years. Did our English-educated Dalit brothers support us?
Sorry. No.
FAILURE ON CONVERSION FRONT
There are hundreds of "educated" Dalits in govt. services in the capital city of Delhi. Our total circulation in Delhi is not even 1,000. What a shame?
The "educated" Dalits are more interested in meditation, going to Vaishnodevi, marrying Brahmin girls. They are not ready even to announce they are Dalit.
Brahmins have hinduised the Dalits which means they have prepared a powerful army to fight the Muslim, Christians and Sikhs.
Did we succeed in at least in embracing Budhism and following our father? No. The total Dalit Budhist population in India is not even a fraction.
Everywhere and in all the fronts we have failed.
D.V. DID NOT FAIL
It is not the failure of DV. We have done our job in the field of "Educating" our people in the thoughts of Babasaheb and uniting the Bahujan Samaj. DV is almost 30 years old.
Our achievements have been acknowledged by our DV family world-wide.
Did the DV family take our request seriously to set up a "media center" in Delhi?
Brother Gurnam is sad. But we are sadder. Much more.
The failure of Dalit movement has had its direct impact on the country's health which itself is sinking.
EXHIBITION OF HATE
A vibrant Dalit movement would have created a growing, healthy India.
Brahminical leadership is guided by hate. They always walk behind HATE.
As this is written their display of HATE is exhibited on every page of the daily newspapers that you read and the TV that you see.
They have the newspapers to write and the TV to speak. That is all they can do.
They are a destructive force. History has said it.
They are doing their duty. But are we doing our duty?
Syrian Christian leader calls for Hinduisation of church
COMRADE AYYANKALI
Nobody is denying that the church needs reform but some Syrian Christians are out to Brahminise and hinduise the Indian church in agreement with RSS and make it worse than what it is. As if doing this will solve all the church's problems.
Kerala church defies CBCI: Look at this shocking development. When the Hindu terrorists physically attacked Christians and their church for converting (meaning liberating) the Dalits oppressed by the Brahminical rulers, Kerala's Catholic church supported the Hindu terrorists and said it was opposed to religious conversion. This stand goes against the official policy of the Catholic church. Yet it defied the CBCI and the church because the Kerala Catholic leadership is almost 100% Syrian Christians, claiming Brahmin descent — a total false claim. When even the Shankaracharyas are themselves involved in several sex scandals and when the Devadasi temple prostitution still continues, some Christians are out to "Indianise", "Hinduise" and "Brahminise" the church.
Meet Joseph Pulikunnel, who is out to do this under the guise of "Indianising the church". Even Tehelka has quoted him in the nunnery sex scam. With such kind of Brahminsation, where is the need for RSS and Hindu terrorists. The late pro-RSS and pro-Brahmin Cardinal Joseph Parekaattil, who originally mooted "Indianisation" of the church, was involved in a scandal trafficking nuns to Rome.
This was reported in the Illustrated Weekly of India long ago. Such are the guys who run the church. Read the story in pro-RSS website, Haindavakeralam and decide for yourself. Many of the issues raised in the article may be true but Brahminising the church is surely a remedy worse than the disease. However, brahminisation and hinduisation process is briskly going on.
Bible quotes Manusmriti: St. Paul Publications had the audacity to print Bibles with quotations from the Manusmriti itself. Perhaps Joseph Pulikunnel wants Manusmriti-like treatment (like Kanchi Shankaracharya's sex scandal and related murder) to be meted out to the nuns instead of European theological feudalism.
It means Brahminical Manusmriti-style male-domination within the church will only grow and more nuns will be victimised in sex scandals and suicides.
Joseph Pulikunnel's call for the church to surrender to Brahminical rulers will be published later.
Dravidian kiss for Prof. Geelani
DR. M.S. JAYAPRAKASH, GURU VIHAR, PUNNATHALA (NORTH), KOLLAM - 691 012
The event that took place at a Trivandrum conference on Nov.29, 2008 under the Jamat Council of Kerala has created history. Prof. S.A.R. Geelani was the chief guest for the conference on "Conspiracy against Muslims and the human rights violations". As a historian, Ezhava leader and human rights activist (and DV family member since 1984), I told the conference:
We all know that Hindu terrorist forces including the ABVP and RSS have spat on the face of our beloved brother Prof. Geelani. As a protest against this nasty action on their part, I wish to kiss Prof. Geelani.
Then I kissed his forehead in the presence of the audience at the Press Club of Trivandrum. I said:
"Dear Brother Geelani, we have no Aryan blood, we have the pure Dravidian blood — the blood of the original inhabitants of India. This kiss is a token of our solidarity to the entire Muslim community as well as the Dalit-Bahujans who are being persecuted and crushed under the weight of the Hindu terrorists".
My speech was loudly cheered by the audience.
DEBATE
Vipassana not for everybody — but only for monks
DR. VINOD ANAVRAT, 113-A, NAIKNAGAR, NAGPUR - 440 027
After DV renewed its Debate on Budhism and Vipassana, glad to note some new people have joined it. But it is still revolving round all old points— discussing its merits and demerits. But the very crux of the matter is being left out.
For whom the Vipassana meditation was originally intended? That is the real question.
The Debate cannot be conclusive unless discussed from the Budha's viewpoint. What we are trying to do is discussing it from the Budhists and non-Budhists' viewpoint. Such a Debate helps Goenkavadis, inviting unnecessary explanations. In this process the core issue is sidetracked and discussion on the subsidiary points gets highlighted. Such a debate is no use in our (Ambedkarite Budhists) interest.
VIPASSANA STANDS FOR COUNTER -REVOLUTION
What is the riddle of Vipassana? For the common people, rational interpretations of religious teachings have little significance. For them, the rituals based on religious dictates and preaching by religious teachers are important. And Budhism (though in conventional term not a religion) also cannot be an exception to it, though in principle it doesn't approve blind beliefs. (The point raised by Dr. Kancha Ilaiah on dhamma and religion would be answered separately.)
This is where the role of Budhist monks and intellectuals acquire prominence. Babasaheb had personally observed the laities going Vipassana way in Burma. However, instead of directly blaming the Burmese for mixing the Dhamma and Abhidhamma, he preferred to caution the Budhists in India. He feared that such a move would make them fatalistic.
Hence he warned that propagating Budhism based on meditation among Indians would be fatal to 'our cause'. What was that 'our cause' to which he referred? This point is seldom discussed by the Goenkawadis.
GOENKA IS NOT BUDHIST
Taking cue from Babasaheb's statement, the Brahminical forces decided to utilize the warning to their advantage. At an opportune time S.N. Goenka also came to their rescue and the Vipassana fans helped convert it into a cult.
A non-Budhist Goenka going the Budhist (?) way was neither seen with suspicion nor questioned by our Budhist intellectuals. By the time they started suspecting his motives it was too late.
Some of our highly paid Budhist officers were already in the pocket of Goenka. They accepted Goenka as their religious teacher and started projecting him as the ambassador of Budhism.
REAL FACE OF GOENKA
However, anybody attempting to probe the matter from Burmese Budhists would be shocked to know the real face of Goenka and his Vipassana Academy. It would be better if the curious readers verify the facts themselves and unravel the startling truth. My concern is to spell out our responsibility from the point of Brahminical invasion of Budhism.
The riddle of propagating Vipassana initially as an essence of Budhism and gradually converting it into a separate sect could be very easily understood if we try to give a cursory glance into the Ashokan era. It was only after the Mauryan empire and Pushyamitra Sunga ascending the throne that the systematic efforts to counter the effects of Budhist revolution were made. The Ramayana and Mahabharata are the two important texts conceived by counter-revolutionary Brahmins to distort Budhism. Similarly, most of the Mahayana literature in the Budhist garb is strikingly anti-Budhist. The reason is obvious. The Mahayanists were the ones who had earlier infiltrated into the Bhikkhu Sangha with the ulterior motives of tormenting Budhism from within.
BRAHMINICAL COUNTER -REVOLUTION IN BURMA
This realization convinced Ashoka to undertake the drive of cleansing Bhikkhu Sangha to weed out the fake monks. But these rogues driven out of Sangha did not accept their defeat easily. Reaffirming their resolve to adulterate Budhism, they formed another Sangha and yet claimed to be the superior followers of Dhamma. This is how, the term Mahayana (greater wheel) was conceived and propagated. In turn they branded with contempt the Theravadi monks, representing the genuine Budhism as Hinayani (belonging to inferior wheel).
After the counter-revolution, the same Mahayanists further continued their infiltration in the Bhikkhu Sangha. In Burma, the monk Shin Arhan reported this matter to Anavrat (Anawrahta), the Budhist king in Burma. He took serious cognizance and launched the same campaign as the Ashoka did in India. In the Sangha cleansing drive, the fake monks were identified and disrobed as per Anavrat's order .They were given white cloth to lead the life of a common man. Some of them were asked to join military force and those refusing to obey the order were publicly hanged.
BRAHMINS UNDER BUDHIST GARB
The Mahayanis' sinister designs became dormant but at an opportune time it surfaced with renewed vigor. After Anavrat, the Mahayanis counter-revolution continued for about 100 years in Burma; sometimes openly and sometimes stealthily. However, in 1948 when Burma got independence, U Nu became its first prime minister, who was under the influence of Mahayanists. It was due to him that, the Vipassana meditation, till then restricted only to monks, was made open to all. Of course, this process might have begun even much earlier but was yet to become a tradition. Hence, after acquiring power till it passed into the hands of military (1962), his Mahayani advisors started popularizing Vipassana among the Budhist laities. Now it is being followed in Burma as a part of Budhist tradition and has already infected the Budhists in India too.
The Mahayanist literature is mostly in Sanskrit and the same was translated to Chinese, Japanese and other foreign languages. The same literature became a source of understanding Budha and Budhism abroad (except Sri Lanka). Unaware of adulteration in original Budhism, they formed their opinions gradually believing it to be the true message of Budha. 'If the counterfeit coin is in circulation; the good one automatically goes out of circulation' proved true in this case too and Mahayanists succeeded in popularizing the Brahminised Budhism among masses. Thus, be it a KhadgadhariBudha or Avalokiteshwara or Manjushree or Amitabha Budha or the Nya Mu Myo Ho Reng Ge Quo mantra in the Lotus Sutra, all these Brahminical versions got recognition and reverence outside India.
The Mahayanists (Brahmins) while corrupting and distorting the original Budhism, took care not to meddle with its basic tenets like five precepts and eight-fold path but tactfully fiddled with Trisarana. Yet, they paraded themselves to be the genuine ambassadors of Budhism.
It is no wonder that when the Japanese Budhist monks land in Delhi, they make it a point to pay respects to M.K. Gandhi's tomb at Rajghat. Gandhi, who was the greatest upholder of Brahminism, is being honored by the Japanese Budhists as the apostle of peace. Strange it may seem, but is a hard reality.
DASARA FESTIVAL IS ANTI-BUDHA
Hence the Lankavatara Sutra text is held in high esteem by the Mahayanists abroad. It is in fact a book meant to systematically distort the original Budhism and present the fake one in some other names. It is a testimony of the sinister designs of Indian Brahmins to corrupt Budhism and popularize it in the name of Mahayana. It is a very important text from the point of understanding the Brahminical machinations and their theft in the creation of Ramayana. The details of which have already been revealed in my Marathi book, Vijayadashmi (Dashraha) is a festival of Budha's condemnation, (2007, Sugava Publishers, Pune). The aim of the creators of the Ramayana and the writers of Lankavatara Sutra were the same people — wearing the two different garbs (like our Congress and BJP).
Even the Mahabharata is depicts hatred of Aryans towards the Naga rulers and subsequently the Naga (Budhist) kings. Jarasangha, a Budhist king, was treacherously killed by the Aryans projecting him as evil and later "killed" by Bhima in the Mahabharata.
Alas, our Bahujans are under the grip of the opium of the Mahabharata and Ramayana even as the Budhists abroad are under the grip of Lankavatara Sutra and similar Mahayani texts.
VIPASSANA IS NOT FOR EVERYBODY
Removing the ignorance at both the levels is an uphill task. Moreover, the moment such a kind of work is initiated, the Brahminical forces would devise some other tactics to see that the status quo is not altered. But one day or the other, this work has to be undertaken by the people interested in Saddhama.
Unless the Brahminical filth is removed from the minds of Bahujans and the Budhists abroad are apprised of the Brahminical corruptions in Budhism, the process of Saddhama cannot be accelerated.
Vipassana sect was one of those strategies of Brahminical forces to counter the effects of the 1956 revolution initiated by Dr. Ambedkar.
Though Vipassana as such is a part of Budhism but it is not meant for all. Yet, due to our ignorance, some have described it as Hindu poison, some branded it as useless, some described it as anti-Budhist practice whereas some described it as a practice experienced and disowned by the Budha himself. All these opinions, however, are superfluous and totally wrong. We must remember that, Budhism contains everything for everybody. But it does not mean that, everything is for everybody.The Budha did not prescribe the same path to the monks as well as householders. He was adept in convincing different people differently based on their level of understanding. But, believing that, whatever Budha preached applied to all, has led to serious misunderstandings. Some Goenkavadis quote the Buddha and His Dhamma wherein Babasaheb said:
Merely because the sermons were addressed to the gathering of the Bhikkhus, it must not be supposed that, what was preached was intended to apply to them only. What was preached applied to both'.
ABHIDHAMMA NOT FOR COMMON PEOPLE
However, it was in the context of giving reply to the critics who would say that, the Budha's Dhamma is only for the monks. But ignoring this context some Goenkavadis have been misquoting it to suit their interest. To prove that the Budha's Dhamma is not only for the monks but for the lay followers as well, Babasaheb gave a detailed reply.This point has been discussed at length in the forthcoming Hindi book, Budha Dhamma Evem Vipassana (to be published in Feb-March 2009 by Dr.Sadhu Ramteke, 3/2-Vishwakarmanagar, in front of Super Specialty Hospital, Nagpur-440 027). It also thoroughly examines the quotation in the book, Buddha & His Dhamma ,often cited by Goenkavadis to prove them right branding Dhamma to be same for all.
This is how we start reaching the hidden truth in the Vipassana meditation. In Budhism there are two words: Dhamma and Abhidhamma.
Vipassana in reality forms the part of Abhidhamma (beyond Dhamma). If this point is understood, then it would become clear that till today the propagation of Vipassana in the name of Dhamma was solely intended to misguide the Budhists.
Dr. AMBEDKAR ON ABHIDHAMMA & VIPASSANA
I raised the basic question on the relevance of Vipassana for the followers of Dhamma. Although Abhidhamma cannot be separated from Dhamma, yet both are distinct at the experiential level. Dhamma is for all whereas Abhidhamma is reserved for a few. Why? It may appear intriguing but it is very logical and pragmatic.
If some are curious to experience the nature of truth related to human misery revealed by the Budha himself, one can certainly experience it. But the Budha did not make such experiencing necessary as a common practice for all. For the curious and eligible yogis knowing the higher aspects of life, Vipassana is definitely a very good technique. That is why it is a part of Abhidhamma.
In Burma too, Budhist monks as well as laities knew that Vipassana meditation was exclusively meant for the monks.
However, the subsequent distortion to make it a general practice was done by some over-enthusiastic Budhists in Burma at the instance of Brahminical infiltrators. Since this mistake was committed in Burma, S.N.Goenka also got an opportunity to propagate it as an essence of Budhism sometimes calling it of Budhist origin and sometimes deriving its origin to Vedas.
Babasaheb at Burma had observed that the Abhidhamma was being mixed with the Dhamma and a cocktail was served to masses. If a similar thing was done in India, it would harm Budhism in its fight against Brahminism. He warned that while propagating Budhism in India, care must be taken not to base it on Abhidhamma. That doesn't mean he was against Vipassana. The statement that Babasaheb was for or against Vipassana is absurd. So also saying that Budha was for or against Vipassana. There is no question of anybody supporting or opposing Vipassana. It is right at its own place; but the basic truth about it has to be known.
WHY GOENKAWADIS GET ANGRY
Insulin injection may be good for the diabetic but to a healthy individual it may prove fatal. Similar is the effect of Vipassana. If it is practiced by the Budhist monks, it helps them understand the higher planes or understanding of Budhism. But if is practiced by a laity, who is not mature enough to understand the basics of Budhism, it would be counter-productive.
To be specific; the householder is not at all eligible to learn and practice Vipassana.
What would happen if the ineligible person starts learning Vipassana? Hence, all those Budhists, especially the educated, clamoring for Vipassana have become bigots. This is not unnatural. It was bound to happen. Dr. Francis Story (later Sugatananda) was in Burma for eight years and had studied the effects of Vipassana meditation on the Burmese Budhists. That is how Goenkavadis get angry when anybody speaks against Goenka and Vipassana.
The Vipassana academy has succeeded in converting Babasaheb's lieutenants into bigots and dogs defending their Brahminical masters and biting anybody touching them.
RS. 1 LAKH CASH PRIZE
To make Budhists understand the Vipassana, on Oct. 14, 2005, I distributed 1,000 folders at the Deeksha Bhoomi, Nagpur, announcing a cash prize of Rs.1 lakh to a person showing me only one reference in Tripitaka wherein the Budha advises a householder or a group of householders to practice Vipassana. The Budha never did it, not even once in his lifetime. I have enough evidences to prove it.
Goenkavadis must prove me wrong. After the announcement of the cash prize, the Goenkawadis instead of producing a single reference in support of their claim started giving unnecessary explanations. Goenkavadis can prove me wrong by seeking the help of Goenka himself or the Burmese monks or the Indian Vipassana-charyas or anybody world over.
One GBB (Goenka brand Budhist) from Bombay enraged by the challenge wrote me 4-5 letters with lot of explanations of verses from Dhammapada and Tripitaka to prove him and his Goenka right. Before publishing the book on Vipassana in Marathi (2001), I already had discussions with Goenkawadis. The problem is they get angry when asked to justify the relevance of laities going Vipassana way from the Babasaheb's standpoint. But instead of giving straight answer to the straight question, they would resort to unnecessary discussions and explanations.
LOSS OF MENTAL BALANCE
Due to the overdose of Vipassana, their vacha (speech) has also become asamayak (unrightful). Hence I avoid any discussion with them. Let them go on barking in defence of their Brahminical masters. If I am wrong and or deviate from my commitment of awarding Rs. 1 lakh, I shall stand exposed. If the Goenkavadis don't accept the challenge, they would stand exposed. Hence I don't care for the silly abuses being hurled by the some barking dogs produced by the Vipassana kennel club.
However, one Goenkavadi from Itarsi (MP) after reading my announcement sent the reference of Digghanakh Sutta claiming the cash prize. I clarified the Sutta and told him not to jump into conclusion but read the announcement thoroughly and then try searching reference in the Pali Tripitaka. I have not set a time limit for sending the reference. They can send it to me and claim the prize till I am alive. It is an open challenge. As he wrote sensibly unlike other Vipassanapanthis, I gave him a reply as a moral obligation. But after realizing the futility of his reference this Goankawadi felt defeated. Yet he sent another reference of Chullavedk Sutta. But that again boomeranged as expected.
NEW TACTICS TO STRENGTHEN VIPASSANA
Now the discussion on Vipassana should melt down only to one point: "Why the Budha did not advice Vipassana, hence Abhidhamma for the laity?" As the Brahminical forces have superior strategies (and they also have the media as their loud speaker) they have already resorted to newer techniques to counter the arguments being raised against Vipassana. With the growing realization of the counterproductive effects of Vipassana, many Budhists have preferred to keep away. If such a realization gets stronger, it would be a big defeat for Brahminical forces on an important front.
Please note the Brahminical forces never give up so easily. So they devised new tactics of financing some Burmese monks, stationing them in the Budhist viharas in India. This has already started at Nagpur. Instead of Goenka, Brahminvadis have brought the Burmese to enslave the Budhists through Vipassana. These Burmese stooges are made to say that Goenka is teaching pseudo-Vipassana but we (the Burmese monks) teach genuine Vipassana. Nonsense. These Budhist monks have been infiltrated by Brahmins to fulfill the mission that Goenka started in India in connivance with Brahmins.
NEED OF THE HOUR
That is how Brahmins as the staunch enemies of Budhism make us dance to their tunes. Hence the need to create a pan-India movement to counter the Brahminical forces distorting Budhism. Without such a movement to inculcate the cultural consciousness, the enemy cannot be countered. This is an era of counter-revolution must be also remembered. Though Budhism is a set of righteous ideology, we always ignore that to root out the evils in the society, we must create a conducive climate for the growth of Dhamma is Saddhama. Hence, what is important now is not merely practicing Dhamma but ignite the flame of Saddhama through our sincere efforts and commitment.
Budhism and Brahminism (Hinduism) cannot live side by side. One has to create space for the other. In this struggle any one has to perish. This is the lesson of history. If we ignore this, we are bound to create a greater space for Brahminism instead of fighting against it. "If Budhism has to flourish Brahminism has to die". Such a spirit has to be inculcated among the Budhists. Babasaheb said:
"If the Hindu Social Order is to fall to the ground, it can happen only under two conditions. Firstly, the social order must be subjected to constant fire. Secondly, they can't subject it to constant fire unless they are independent in thought and action".
Babasaheb wanted the educated Budhists to be independent in thought and action. Without which we can't understand the hard reality that following Budhism and fighting Brahminism goes side by side. One is not independent of another. Doing so would be a sheer folly. Through Vipassana the enemy wants us to remain indifferent to the Brahminical overtures and many of our Vipassanacharyas have fallen prey to it. Hence they have taken cudgel of Brahminvadis of preaching insensitivity to the Budhists.
This is a dangerous signal as the Vipassana sect is bent upon strengthening the status quo; thereby making the Budhists in India dependent upon their erstwhile oppressors. The Vipassana sect slowly but steadily and stealthily performs the same task of turning Budhists intelligentsia and laities into a useless stuff. Since this process is not being understood by the Budhists, they are taking pride in being the supporters of Vipassana sect. Babasaheb wanted the Budhists to break those shackles of slavish mentality hence exposing such distortions become significant. If we don't do it, that would mean we are allowing the Budhists to toe the line of Gandhians through Vipassana. And remember, Gandhism is another name of Brahmanism. Hence, don't take it casually.
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We can't fight Brahminism when we have no media
Brahminism being the creed of a minority of less than 15%, its votaries know full well they can never succeed. Brahmana Jati Party (BJP) itself got defeated in the last election because of this reason. Brahminists know this better than its victims. That is why they give the least importance to vote politics. Their most powerful weapon is cultural counter-revolution. The best of Brahmin brains are enslisted to lead their cultural brigade led by the RSS, the principal Brahminical terrorist party.
Youth attracted to politics: Brother Vinod Anavrat has revealed the devastating power of the Brahminical cultural weapon — Vipassana. To counter this is no joke. Our educated Dalits, products of reservation, have been already hinduised (enslaved). It is this very hinduised Dalits that fall prey to Vipassana and become the barking and biting dogs to guard Brahminism. Here lies the greatness of the Brahminical cultural weapon.
Brother Vinod wants us to start a movement to counter the Vipassana menace. How to do it? The "educated" Dalits and those retired officials are not willing. The Dalit youth heart is in vote politics. Nor have we the media to propagate our mission. Money is impossible to get for such a cause.
BAMCEF units, which cater to the reservationwalas, are not interested. BSP and RPI political parties will not take up revolutionary issues.
Nagpur under counter-revolution: Budhism itself has been hinduised. Innumerable counter-revolutionaries are manufactured to sabotage Babasaheb Dhamma.
Nagpur, from where Babasaheb proclaimed Dhamma, is in the grip of counter-revolutionaries.
We are failing not only on the cultural front but also on the political front. When Babasaheb, our Father, is forgotten where is the hope?
That doesn't mean Brahminical counter-revolution is winning. No. They are also divided. The recent "Sacred Brahmin" bid to kill two "Socialist Brahmins" of the RSS is part of this contradictions within Brahminism.
India is in the grip of many counter-revolutions. This is the cause of its slow death — EDITOR.
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/jan2009/articles.htm
THE PROBLEM OF THE RUPEE:
ITS ORIGIN AND ITS SOLUTION
(HISTORY OF INDIAN CURRENCY & BANKING)
________________________________________________________________________________________
B. R. AMBEDKAR
Sometime Professor of Political Economy at the Sydenham
College of Commerce and Economics, Bombay.
LONDON P. S. KING & SON, LTD. ORCHARD HOUSE, 2 & 4 GREAT SMITH STREET WESTMINSTER 1923
MY
FATHER AND MOTHER
AS A TOKEN OF MY ABIDING GRATITUDE FOR THE
SACRIFICES THEY MADE AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT
THEY SHOWED IN THE MATTER OF MY EDUCATION.
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
Contents
Preface To The Second Impression
Foreword By Professor Edwin Cannan
Chapter I - From A Double Standard To A Sliver Standard
Chapter II- The Silver Standard And The Dislocation Of Its Parity
Chapter III- The Silver Standard And The Evils Of Its Instability
Chapter IV -Towards A Gold Standard
Chapter V - From A Gold Standard To A Gold Exchange Standard
Chapter VI - Stability Of The Exchange Standard
Chapter VII- A Return To The Gold Standard
PREFACE TO THE SECOND IMPRESSION
THE PROBLEM OF THE RUPEE was first published in 1923. Ever since its publication it has had a great demand : so great that within a year or two the book went out of print. The demand for the book has continued, but unfortunately I could not bring out a second edition of the book for the reason that my change-over from economics to law and politics left me no time to undertake such a task. I have, therefore, devised another plan : it is to bring out an up-to-date edition of the History of Indian Currency and Banking in two volumes, of which The Problem of the Rupee forms volume one. Volume two will contain the History of Indian Currency and Banking from 1923 onwards. What is therefore issued to the public now is a mere reprint of The Problem of the Rupee under a different name. I am glad to say that some of my friends who are engaged in the field of teaching economics have assured me that nothing has been said or written since 1923 in the field of Indian Currency which calls for any alteration in the text of The Problem of the Rupee as it stood in 1923. I hope this reprint will satisfy the public partially if not wholly. I can give them an assurance that they will not have to wait long for volume two. I am determined to bring it out with the least possible delay.
Bombay,
7-5-1947.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
In the following pages I have attempted an exposition of the events leading to the establishment of the exchange standard and an examination of its theoretical basis.
In endeavouring to treat the historical side of the matter, I have carefully avoided repeating what has already been said by others. For instance, in treating of the actual working of the exchange standard, I have contented myself with a general treatment just sufficiently detailed to enable the reader to follow the criticism I have offered. If more details are desired they are given in all their amplitude in other treatises. To have reproduced them would have been a work of supererogation; besides it would have only obscured the general trend of my argument. But in other respects, I have been obliged to take a wider historical sweep than has been done by other writers. The existing treatises on Indian currency do not give any idea, at least an adequate idea, of the circumstances which led to the reforms of 1893. I think that a treatment of the early history is quite essential to furnish the reader with a perspective in order to enable him to judge for himself the issues involved in the currency crisis and also of the solutions offered. In view of this, I have gone into that most neglected period of Indian currency extending from 1800 to 1893. Not only have other writers begun abruptly the story of the exchange standard, but they have popularised the notion that the exchange standard is the standard originally contemplated by the Government of India. I find that this is a gross error. Indeed, the most interesting point about Indian currency is the way in which the gold standard came to be transformed into a gold exchange standard. Some old, but by now forgotten, facts had therefore, to be recounted to expose this error.
On the theoretical side, there is no book but that of Professor Keynes which makes any attempt to examine its scientific basis.
When I come to the remedy, I again find myself in conflict with the majority of those who like myself are opposed to the exchange standard. It is said that the best way to stabilise the rupee is to provide for effective convertibility into gold. I do not deny that this is one way of doing it. But, I think, a far better way would be to have an inconvertible rupee with a fixed limit of issue. Indeed, if I had any say in the matter, I would propose that the Government of India should melt the rupees, sell them as bullion and use the proceeds for revenue purposes and fill the void by an inconvertible paper. But that may be too radical a proposal, and I do not therefore press for it, although I regard it as essentially sound. in any case, the vita! point is to close the Mints, not merely to the public, as they have been, but to the Government as well. Once that is done, I venture to say that the Indian currency, based on gold as legal tender with a rupee currency fixed in issue, will conform to the principles embodied in the English currency system.
It will be noticed that I do not propose to go back to the recommendations of the Fowler Committee. All those, who have regretted the transformation of the Indian currency from a gold standard to a gold exchange standard, have held that everything would have been all right if the Government had carried out in toto the recommendations of that Committee. I do not share that view. On the other hand, I find that the Indian currency underwent that transformation because the Government carried out those recommendations. While some people regard that Report as classical for its wisdom, I regard it as classical for its nonsense. For I find that it was this Committee which, while recommending a gold standard, also recommended and thereby perpetuated the folly of the Herschell Committee, that Government should coin rupees on its own account according to that most naive of currency principles, the requirements of the public, without realising that the latter recommendation was destructive of the former. Indeed, as I argue, the principles of the Fowler Committee must be given up, if we are to place the Indian currency on a stable basis.
I am conscious of the somewhat lengthy discussions on currency principles into which I have entered in treating the subject. My justification of this procedure is two-fold. First of all, as I have differed so widely from other writers on Indian currency, I have deemed it necessary to substantiate my view-point, even at the cost of being charged with over-elaboration. But it is my second justification, which affords me a greater excuse. It consists in the fact that I have written primarily for the benefit of the Indian public, and as their grasp of currency principles does not seem to be as good as one would wish it to be, an over-statement, it will be agreed, is better than an understatement of the argument on which I have based my conclusions.
Up to 1913, the Gold Exchange Standard was not the avowed goal of the Government of India in the matter of Indian Currency, and although the Chamberlain Commission appointed in that year had reported in favour of its continuance, the Government of India had promised not to carry its recommendations into practice till the war was over and an opportunity had been given to the public to criticize them. When, however, the Exchange Standard was shaken to its foundations during the late war, the Government of India went back on its word and restricted, notwithstanding repeated protests, the terms of reference to the Smith Committee to recommending such measures as were calculated to ensure the stability of the Exchange Standard, as though that standard had been accepted as the last word in the matter of Indian Currency. Now that the measures of the Smith Committee have not ensured the stability of the Exchange Standard, it is given to understand that the Government, as well as the public, desire to place the Indian Currency System on a sounder footing. My object in publishing this study at this juncture is to suggest a basis for the consummation of this purpose.
I cannot conclude this preface without acknowledging my deep sense of gratitude to my teacher, Prof. Edwin Cannan, of the University of London (School of Economics). His sympathy towards me and his keen interest in my undertaking have placed me under obligations which I can never repay. I feel happy to be able to say that this work has undergone close supervision at his hands, and although he is in no way responsible for the views I have expressed. I can say that his severe examination of my theoretic discussions has saved me from many an error. To Professor Wadia, of Wilson College, I am thankful for cheerfully undertaking the dry task of correcting the proofs.
FOREWORD
BY PROFESSOR EDWIN CANNAN
I am glad that Mr. Ambedkar has given me the opportunity of saying a few words about his book.
As he is aware, I disagree with a good deal of his criticism. In 1893, I was one of the few economists, who believed that the rupee could be kept at a fixed ratio with gold by the method then proposed, and I did not fall away from the faith when some years elapsed without the desired fruit appearing (see Economic Review, July 1898, pp. 400—403). I do not share Mr. Ambedkar's hostility to the system, nor accept most of his arguments against it and its advocates. But he hits some nails very squarely on the head, and even when I have thought him quite wrong, I have found a stimulating freshness in his views and reasons. An old teacher like myself learns to tolerate the vagaries of originality, even when they resist "severe examination " such as that of which Mr. Ambedkar speaks.
In his practical conclusion, I am inclined to think, he is right. The single advantage, offered to a country by the adoption of the gold-exchange system instead of the simple gold standard, is that it is cheaper, in the sense of requiring a little less value in the shape of metallic currency than the gold standard. But all that can be saved in this way is a trifling amount, almost infinitesimal, beside the advantage of having a currency more difficult for administrators and legislators to tamper with. The recent experience both of belligerents and neutrals certainly shows that the simple gold standard, as we understood it before the war, is not fool-proof, but it is far nearer being fool-proof and knave-proof than the gold-exchange standard. The percentage of administrators and legislators who understand the gold standard is painfully small, but it is and is likely to remain ten or twenty times as great as the percentage which understands the gold-exchange system. The possibility of a gold-exchange system being perverted to suit some corrupt purpose is very considerably greater than the possibility of the simple gold standard being so perverted.
The plan for the adoption of which Mr. Ambedkar pleads, namely that all further enlargement of the rupee issue should be permanently prohibited, and that the mints should be open at a fixed price to importers or other sellers of gold, so that in course of time India would have, in addition to the fixed stock of rupees, a currency of meltable and exportable gold coins, follows European precedents. In eighteenth-century England the gold standard introduced itself because the legislature allowed the ratio to remain unfavourable to the coinage of silver: in nineteenth-century France and other countries it came in because the legislatures definitely closed the mints to silver, when the ratio was favourable to the coinage of silver. The continuance of a mass of full legal tender silver coins beside the gold would be nothing novel in principle, as the same thing, though on a somewhat smaller scale, took place in France, Germany, and the United States.
It is alleged sometimes that India does not want gold coins. I feel considerable difficulty in believing that gold coins of suitable size would not be convenient in a country with the climate and other circumstances of India. The allegation is suspiciously like the old allegation that the " Englishman prefers gold coins to paper," which had no other foundation than the fact that the law prohibited the issue of notes for less than £ 5 in England and Wales, while in Scotland, Ireland, and almost all other English-speaking countries, notes for £ 1 or Less were allowed and circulated freely. It seems much more likely that silver owes its position in India to the decision, which the Company made before the system of standard gold and token silver was accidentally evolved in 1816 in England, and long before it was understood, and that the position has been maintained, not because Indians dislike gold, but because Europeans like it so well that they cannot bear to part with any of it.
This reluctance to allow gold to go to the East is not only despicable from an ethical point of view. It is also contrary to the economic interest not only of the world at large, but even of the countries, which had a gold standard before the war and have it still or expect soon to restore it. In the immediate future, gold is not a commodity, the use of which it is desirable for these countries either to restrict or to economize. From the closing years of last century it has been produced in quantities much too large to enable it to retain its purchasing power and thus be a stable standard of value, unless it can constantly be finding existing holders willing to hold larger stocks, or fresh holders to hold new stocks of it. Before the war, the accumulation of hoards by various central banks in Europe took off a large part of the new supplies and prevented the actual rise of general prices being anything like what it would otherwise have been, though it was serious enough. Since the war, the Federal Reserve Board, supported by all Americans who do not wish to see a rise of prices, has taken on the new " White Man's Burden " of absorbing the products of the gold mines, but just as the United States failed to keep up the value of silver by purchasing it, so she will eventually fail to keep up the value of gold. in spite of the opinion of some high authorities, it is not at all likely that a renewed demand for gold reserves by the central banks of Europe will come to her assistance. Experience must gradually be teaching even the densest of financiers that the value of paper currencies is not kept up by stories of " cover " or " backing " locked up in cellars, but by due limitation of the supply of the paper. With proper limitation, enforced by absolute convertibility into gold coin which may be freely melted or exported, it has been proved by theory and experience that small holdings of gold are perfectly sufficient to meet all internal and international demands. There is really more chance of a great demand from individuals than from the banks. It is conceivable that the people of some of the countries, which have reduced their paper currency to a laughing stock, may refuse all paper and insist on having gold coins. But it seems more probable that they will be pleased enough to get better paper than they have recently been accustomed to, and will not ask for hard coin with sufficient insistence to get it. On the whole, it seems fairly certain that the demand of Europe and European-colonised lands for gold will be less rather than greater than before the war, and that it will increase very slowly or not at all.
Thus, on the whole, there is reason to fear a fall in the value of gold and a rise of general prices rather than the contrary.
One obvious remedy would be to restrict the production of gold by international agreement, thus conserving the world's resources in mineral for future generations. Another is to set up an international commission to issue an international paper currency so regulated in amount as to preserve an approximately stable value. Excellent suggestions for the professor's classroom, but not, at present at any rate nor probably for some considerable period of time, practical politics.
A much more practical way out of the difficulty is to be found in the introduction of gold currency into the East. If the East will take a large part of the production of gold in the coming years it will tide us over the period which must elapse before the most prolific of the existing sources are worked out. After that we may be able to carry on without change or we may have reached the possibility of some better arrangement.
This argument will not appeal to those who can think of nothing but the extra profits which can be acquired during a rise of prices, but I hope it will to those who have some feeling for the great majority of the population, who suffer from these extra and wholly unearned profits being extracted from them. Stability is best in the long run for the community.
EDWIN CANNAN.
&nb sp;
http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/28A.%20Problem%20of%20Rupee_Preface.htm
The Problem of the Rupee
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SMALL HOLDINGS IN INDIA AND THEIR REMEDIES _______________________________________________________________ Published : Journal of the Indian Economic Society Vol. I.1918 ________________________________________________________________ Contents IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE A study of the economic ways of getting a living will ever remain important These ways generally take the form of industries or services. Confining ourselves to industries, they may be divided into primary and secondary. The primary industries are concerned with extracting useful material from the earth, the soil or water and take the form of hunting, fishing, stock raising, lumbering and mining. These primary or extractive industries are fundamental in two ways: (1) They extract from the physical world useful materials which become the original sources of man's subsistence. (2) They provide raw materials for the secondary or manufacturing industries, for, manufactures, in the language of Dr. Franklin, are simply, "substance metamorphosed". From a national point of view as well, the importance of primary industries is beyond question. But important as are the primary industries, fanning is by far the most important of them all. It is most ancient and abiding of all industries, primary or secondary : while the fact that it is concerned with 'the production of food is enough to make its problems demand our most serious thought. But when a country, like India, depends almost wholly upon farming its importance cannot be exaggerated. The problems of agricultural economy dealing directly with agricultural production are what to produce, the proper proportion of the factors of production, the size of holdings, the tenures of land etc. In this paper it is attempted to deal only with the problem of the size of holdings as it affects the productivity of agriculture. SMALL HOLDINGS IN INDIA It may be said that some countries are predominantly countries of small holdings while in others it is the large holdings that prevail. According to Adam Smith it is the adoption of the law of primogeniture chiefly due to the exigencies of a military life that leads to the creation and preservation of large holdings. While it is the adoption of the law of equal sub-division necessitated by the comparatively peaceful career of a nation that gives rise to small holdings. He says :— " When land like moveables is considered as the means only of subsistence and enjoyment, the natural law of succession divides it like them among all the children of the family; of all of whom the subsistence and enjoyment may be supposed equally dear to the father, [thus tending to have small holdings. But when land was considered as the means, not of subsistence merely, but of power and protection it was thought better that it should descend undivided to one. In those disorderly times.......to divide it was to ruin it, and to expose every part of it to be opposed and swallowed up by its neighbors. The law of primogeniture, therefore came to take place in the succession of landed estates [thus tending to preserve large holdings] 1[f1] England is, therefore, a country of large holdings. Post-Revolutionary France is a country of small holdings. So are Holland and Denmark. Turning to India, we find holdings of the following size held separate and direct for the years 1896-97 and 1900-01: Average area of holdings in acres
Data, more recent, more exact, though from more restricted area, is available from the Baroda State. [f.2] Statistics of land holdings in the State are summarized in bighas in the following table : [f.3]
(8 bighas == 5 acres) Another investigation conducted by Dr. H. S. Mann and his colleagues indicates more specifically the fact of small holdings in the village of Pimpala Saudagar near Poona. The size of holdings in that village is indicated by the table below [f.4]:
In this table the modal holding is between 1 and 2 acres. A mode is a statistical average indicating the point of largest frequency in an array of instances. From these tables it can be easily seen that the average size of holdings varies from 25.9 acres in the Bombay Presidency to an acre or two in Pimpala Saudagar. This diminutive size of holdings is said to be greatly harmful to Indian Agriculture. The evils of small holdings no doubt, are many. But it would have been no slight mitigation of them if the small holdings were compact holdings. Unfortunately they are not. A holding of a farmer though compact for purposes of revenue is for purposes of tillage composed of various small strips of land scattered all over the village and interspersed by those belonging to others. How the fields are scattered can only be shown graphically by a map. Herein we shall have to remain content, since we cannot give a map, with knowing how many separate plots are contained in aholding. The number of separate plots in each holding will show how greatly fragmented it is. We have no figures at all for the whole of India bearing on this aspect of the question. But the Hon'ble Mr. G. F. Keatinge in his note5 [f.5] submitted to Government in 1916 has collected figures of typical cases from all the districts of the Bombay Presidency. The following table is constructed to present his data in an intelligible form :
(A-==acre g==guntha V==village taluka D==district) These small and scattered holdings have given a real cause for anxiety regarding our great national industry. Comparative Statistics go to swell this feeling by laying bare two very noteworthy but equally sad facts regarding economic life in India ; (1) that it is largely an agricultural country ;* and (2) that its agricultural productivity is the lowest :— (1) Occupational Statistics Percentage of Agricultural Population. England and Wales 15.3 Australia 44.7 Belgium 60.9 Bulgaria 20.7 Denmark 82.6 Denmark 48.2 France 42.7 Germany 35.2 Holland 30.7 Hungary 69.7 Italy 59.4 Russia 58.3 Russia 30.9 India 71.5 USA 33.3 (2) Produce in Lbs. per acre
Both these truths are painful enough to have startled many people into inquiring the causes of this low productivity. As a result, attention has now been concentrated on the excessive sub-division and fragmentation of agricultural holdings. Enlarge and consolidate the holdings, it is confidently argued, and the increase in agricultural productivity will follow in its wake !! CONSOLIDATION Consolidation of holdings is a practical problem while the enlargement of them is a theoretical one, demanding a discussion of the principle which can be said to govern their size. Postponing the consideration of the theoretical question of enlargement, we find that the problem of consolidation raises the following two issues:—(1) how to unite such small and scattered holdings as the existing ones, and (2) once consolidated how to perpetuate them at that size. Let us consider them each in turn. Sub-division of land need not involve what is called the fragmentation of land. But unfortunately it does, for, every heir desires to secure a share from each of the survey numbers composing the entire lands of the deceased instead of so arranging the distribution that each may get as many whole numbers as possible, i.e. the heirs instead of sharing the lands by survey numbers, claim to share in each survey number, thus causing fragmentation. Though fragmentation does subserve the ends of distributive justice it renders farming in India considerably inefficient as it once did in Europe. It involves waste of labour and cattle power, waste in hedges and boundary marks, and waste of manure. It renders impracticable the watching of crops, sinking of wells and the use of labour saving implements. It makes difficult changes in cultivation, the making of roads, water channels, etc., and it increases the cost of production. These disadvantages of fragmentation arc I to be recounted only to lend their support to the process of restripping or \ consolidation. The methods of "restripping" are many, though all are not equally efficacious. Voluntary exchanges can hardly be relied upon for much. But a restricted sale of the right of occupancy may be expected to go a good deal. For, under it, when survey numbers are put to auction on account of their being relinquished by the holders or taken in attachment for arrears of assessments, only those may be allowed lo bid in the auction for the sale of the right of occupancy whose lands are contiguous to the land hammered out. Again as further helping the process of reunion, the right of pre-emption may be given to farmers whose neighbour wishes to sell his land. These methods, it must be admitted, can achieve the desired result in a very small measure. The evils of fragmentation are very great and must be met by a comprehensive scheme of consolidation. It is, therefore, advocated[f.6] that if two-thirds of the Khatedars, dealing more than half of the village lands, apply, Government, should undertake compulsorily to restrip the scattered fields of the village. This compulsory restripping is to be executed on two principles, (1) of "Economic Unit" and (2) of "Original Ownership". Regarding the merits of these two principles the Baroda Committee observes. [f.7] " In the first the value of each holding is ascertained, then the original boundaries are removed, roads are marked out, lands required for public purposes are set apart, and the rest of the land is parcelled out into new plots. Each of these new plots must be of such a size as, having regard to the local conditions of soil, tillage etc. to form an economic field, i.e., a parcel of land necessary to keep fully engaged and support one family. These new plots may be sold by auction among the old occupants, restriction being placed on purchase so as to prevent a large number of cultivators from being ousted. The purchase money may then be divided in a certain proportion among the original owners of pieces, a portion being reserved for expenses, in which Government would also contribute a share. Another mode would be to acquire all the land of the village then to sell it in newly constituted plots by auction as is done by City Improvement Trusts or by Government when laying out new roads in Cities or when extending a town. But we do not recommend its adoption in the improvement of agricultural land. It may result in land speculation and the small holders may be ousted in such numbers as to cause a real hardship. "According to the second method when the restripping has been decided, a list of Khatedars and their holdings is made and the latter are valued at their market price by Panchas. Then the land is redistributed and each Khatedar is given new land in proportion to his original holding and as far as possible of the same value, difference to be adjusted by cash payment. In this method no Khatedar is deprived of his land. Each is accommodated and in the place of his original small and scattered fields gets one plot of almost their aggregate size. It is only a few people whose holding may be very small and whom it would not be expedient to keep on as farmers, that may have to lose their small pieces. But they too would benefit as they would get their full value in money." The Baroda Committee prefers the second method because: "It takes as its starting principle, that nobody (except perhaps a few, holding plots of insignificant sizes) is going to be driven off the land. It will give even the smallest man, chance to better his condition. Each land holder receives a new compact piece of land proportionate to the value of his old small and scattered field. In this way the previous sub-divisions together with their attendant evils totally disappear." [f.8] Regarding consolidation Prof. H. S. Jevons says: "The principles which should guide the choice of a method of carrying out the re-organization of villages on the lines above described are the following. In the first place compulsion should be avoided as far as possible and the principle adopted that no charge should be imposed upon any area unless the owners of more than one-half of that area desire the change. Should this condition be satisfied for an area......... it would seem expedient that legal power should be taken to compel the minority to accept the redistribution of holdings under the supervision of Government. In the second place............the expense of the operation should be kept as low as possible.........In the third place considerable elasticity should be permitted in the methods of carrying through the re-organization in the different places during the first few years, as the whole undertaking would be in an experimental stage so that different methods might be tried, and the best be ultimately selected for a permanent set of regulations. Fourthly, the possible necessity for a considerable change of the existing tenancy law in the re-organised villages must be faced............ For the sake of completeness I may add as a fifth principle the obvious condition that redistribution of land must be made upon the most equitable basis possible, and that liberal compensation should be given to those, if any, who may be excluded from a former cultivating ownership." [f.9] As for procedure in the compulsory consolidation of holdings both Prof. Jevons and the Baroda Committee propose the appointment of Commissioners to hear applications for consolidation and to carry it out, leaving to any objector the right to petition the Court to stay the proceedings in. case he felt that an injustice was being done to him. The problem of perpetuating such a consolidated holding will next demand the care of the legislator. It is accepted without question by many that the law of inheritance that prevails among the Hindus and the Mohomedans is responsible for the sub-division of land. On the death of a Hindu or a Mahomedan his heirs are entitled without let or hindrance to equal shares in the property of the deceased. Now a consolidated holding subject to the operation of such a law of inheritance will certainly not endure for long. It will be the task of Sisyphus over again if, after consolidation, the law of inheritance were to remain unaltered. But how is the existing law of inheritance to be changed? If it is not to be the law of equal sub-division shall we have the law of primogeniture. The Baroda Committee thanks that,— " It is not necessary that it should be introduced. All that it wanted is, that there should not be sub-divisions of land beyond a certain limit, which may be fixed for the sake of good agriculture. There is no objection to a holding being sub-divided, so long as by so doing each of the parts does not become less than the limit fixed for the sub-division of land. But when a holding reaches a stage to render further sub-division uneconomic, the other members of the family may not be allowed to force further sub-division of the holding. Instead of being sub-divided, it may be either cultivated in common or be given to one of the members of the family as a whole, and that member made to pay amounts equal to the value of their shares as compensation to the other members." [f.10] The principle of not dividing immovable property among the heirs, when division would result in inconveniently small shares, but of giving to the highest bidder among the sharers or in case none of them is willing to have it, to outside bidders, and dividing the money realized in proportion to the recognized shares, has been accepted in the Indian Partition Act, No. 4 of 1893, section 2 of which runs thus: "Whenever in any suit for partition, in which, if instituted prior to the commencement of this Act, a decree for partition might have been made, it appears to the Court that, by reason of the nature of the property to which the suit relates, or of the number of the shareholders therein or of any other special circumstance, a division of the property cannot reasonably or conveniently be made and that a sale of the property and distribution of proceeds would be more beneficial for all the share-holders, the Court may, if it thinks fit, on the request of any such share-holder interested individually or collectively to the extent of one moiety or upwards direct a sale of the property and a distribution of the proceeds." Granting the advisability of thus changing the law of inheritance it only requires to amend the Civil Procedure Code so as to make it obligatory on the Courts to refuse partition whenever it would reduce a field beyond the economic limit fixed in advance. Another method of dealing with the problem is advocated by the Hon. Mr. G. F. Keatinge, Director of Agriculture, Bombay Presidency. In the Statement of Objects and Reasons appended to his draft bill he says: "4.................. The object of this bill is to enable such landowners as may wish to do so to check: the further sub-division of their lands and to enable them, when it is otherwise possible, to effect a permanent consolidation of their holdings; and also to enable the executive government to secure the same results in respect of unoccupied land. The legislation proposed is purely enabling, and it will be operative in the case of any holding only upon the expressed wish of any person possessing an interest in that holding. "5. The scheme embodied in this bill for securing these objects is briefly as follows. In order to be constituted an economic holding a plot of land must be entered as such in a register prescribed by rules. If the land is occupied, it will rest with some person having an interest in the land to make an application to the Collector to have the land registered as an economic holding............ Unless the Collector considers that there are sufficient grounds for rejecting the application, he holds a careful enquiry in which he follows a procedure similar to that prescribed in the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. If the proceedings show that all persons interested agree, the land is registered. Land vesting absolutely in Government may be registered without inquiry. The holding must in any case be registered in one name only, and the act of registration annuls all the interest of all other persons, except the registered owner, in the holding. Thereafter the owner cannot divide the plot but must so long as he owns it, keep it entire. He may sell, mortgage or otherwise dispose of it as an entire unit, but not dispose of part of it or do anything that might result in splitting up the holding. On the death of the holder, if he has not disposed of the land by will it will devolve upon a single heir. If the provisions of the bill are contravened (for instance if the holder mortgages a part of his Holding and the mortgagee obtains a decree for possession), the Collector is empowered to send a certificate to the Court, and the Court will set aside its decree or order. The Collector may also evict a person in wrongful possession. When a plot has been once constituted an economic holding, the registration cannot be cancelled except with the consent of the Collector ; the grounds on which cancellation will be allowed, will be laid down by rule and it is proposed that it shall be permitted chiefly in cases where economic considerations indicate that it is expedient." Summing up this discussion of the two issues of consolidation, it must be said that the problem has not been viewed as a whole by all its advocates. The Baroda Committee alone endeavours to consolidate as well as to preserve the consolidated holding. Prof. Jevons makes no provision to conserve the results of consolidation. Mr. Keatinge does not deal with consolidation at all. He is concerned only with the prevention of further fragmentation. But fragmentation, there will be in a holding even after it is entered as an economic holding. By his measure he will only succeed in preserving the holdings, as they will be found at the time of registration, i.e., he will not allow them to be reduced in size. But they will be small and scattered all the same. Mr. Keatinge, notwithstanding his legislation, leaves the situation more or less as it exists. Real consolidation is, however, aimed at by Prof. Jevons and the Baroda Committee. The principles they advocate for the purpose are almost the same ; and so are their procedures for carrying it out. As for the preservation of consolidated holdings Mr. Keatinge as well as the Baroda Committee establish the one-man rule of succession. The Baroda Committee would adopt this rule only when division of land would result in uneconomic holdings and then too would compel the successor to buy off the claims of the other dispossessed heirs. Mr. Keatinge would let the dispossessed heirs off without compensation. A more serious criticism against these projects of consolidation consists in the fact they have failed to recognize that a consolidated holding must be an enlarged holding as well. If it is said that Indian agiculture suffers from small and scattered holdings we must not only consolidate, but also enlarge them. It must be borne in mind that consolidation may obviate the evils of scattered holdings, but it will not obviate the evils of small holdings unless the consolidated holding is an economic, i.e. an enlarged holding. The Committee as well as Mr. Keatinge have entirely lost sight of this aspect of the question. Prof. Jevons, alone of the advocates, keeps it constantly before his mind that consolidation must bring about in its train the enlargement of holdings. ENLARGEMENT Granted that enlargement of holdings is as important as their consolidation we will now turn to the discussion of regulating their size. It is desired by all interested in our agriculture that our holdings should be economic holdings. We would have been more thankful to the inventors of this new, precise and scientific terminology had they given us a precise and scientific definition of an economic holding. On the other hand, it is believed that a large holding is somehow an economic holding. It may be said that even Prof. Jevons has fallen a victim to this notion. For when discussing what the size of a holding should be he dogmatically states that in the consolidated village the mode should be between 29 and 30 acres. [f.11]But why should the mode be at this point and not at 100 or say 200 ? We might imagine Pro. Jevons to reply that his model point is placed at that particular acreage because it would produce enough for a farmer to sustain a higher standard of living. Raising the general standard of living in India is the one string on which Prof. Jevons harps even to weariness throughout his pamphlet. [f.12]. The error underlying this doctrine we shall consider later on. It is enough to say that he does not give any sound economic reason for his model farm. The case with the Baroda Committee is much worse, Prof. Jevons at least sticks to one definition of an ideal economic holding ; but the Report of the Baroda Committee suffers from a plurality of definitions. While cementing on the size of an average holding in the state as is summarized in the above table, it should be noted that the Committee, though it desired consolidation, was perfectly satisfied with the existing size of the holding as is clear, from the following: " If the average holding of a Khatedar was a compact field of those figures, the situation would be an ideal one and would not leave much to be desired." [f.13] But absent-minded as it were, the Committee, without any searching analysis of the question it was appointed to investigate and report upon, lays down that : " An ideal economic holding would consist of 30 to 50 bighas of fair land in one block with at least one good irrigation well and a house situated in the holding." [f.14] If the size of existing holdings is an ideal size why should they be enlarged ? To this, the Committee gives no answer. But this is not all. The Committee does not even adhere to the quantitative limit it has already set down to its ideal economic holding. When it comes to discuss the project of re-arrangement of the scattered fields of the village on the principle of " Economic unit " it presents a third ideal of an economic holding. To realize this ideal it says : "Each of these new plots must be of such a size, as having regard to the local conditions of soil, tillage, etc., to form an Economic field, i.e., a parcel of land necessary to keep fully engaged and support one family." [f.15] Thus with perfect equanimiy (1) the Baroda Committee holds, not too fast, to three notions of an ideal economic holding. No wonder then that the Report of the Committee is a model of confused reasoning though it is a valuable repository of facts bearing on the subject. According to the Hon. Mr. Keatinge an economic holding is:— " a holding which allows a man chance of producing sufficient to support himself and his family in reasonable comfort, after paying his necessary expenses." [f.16] His definition of an economic holding will be accepted, we may expect, by the Baroda Committee; for, it does not differ from its own, given above as third in order. Assuming they agree, we may now proceed to see how far tenable this definition is It is plain that these definitions including that of Professor Jevons view an economic holding from the standpoint of consumption rather than of production. In this lies their error; for consumption is not the correct standard by which to judge the economic character of a holding. It would be perverse accounting to condemn a farm as not paying because its total output does not support the family of the farmer though as a pro-rata return for each of his investments it is the highest. The family of a farmer can only be looked upon in the light of so much labour corps at his disposal. It may well be that some portion of this labour corps is superfluous, though it has to be supported merely in obedience to social custom as is the case in India. But if our social custom compels a farmer to support some of his family members even when he cannot effectively make any use of them on his farm we must be careful not to find fault with the produce of the farm because it does not suffice to provide for the workers as well as the dependants that may happen to compose the family. The adoption of such an accounting system will declare many enterprises as failures when they will be the most successful. There can be no true economic relation between the family of the entrepreneur and the total out-turn of his farm or industry. True economic relation can subsist only between the total out-turn and the investments. If the total out-turn pays for all the investments no producer in his senses will ever contemplate closing his industry because the total out-turn does not support his family. This is evident ; for though production is for the purpose of consumption it is for the consumption only of those who help to produce. It follows, then, that if the relation between out-turn and investments is a true economic relation, we can only speak of a farm as economic, i.e., paying in the sense of production and not in the sense of consumption. Any definition, therefore, that leans on consumption mistakes the nature of an economic holding which is essentially an enterprise in production. Before going further, we must clear the ground by a few preliminary remarks to facilitate the understanding of an economic holding from the standpoint of production. It must be premised at the outset that in a competitive society the daily transactions of its members, as consumers or producers, are controlled by a price regime. It is production, then, in a price regime that we have to analyse here for our purpose. In the main the modern process of production is captained by the entrepreneur, is guided and supervised by him and is worked out through him. All employers of labour or hirers of instrumental goods are entrepreneurs. His computations run, as they must, in a pecuniary society, in terms of price-outlay as over against price-product, no matter whether the prospective product is offered for sale or not. The entrepreneur, in producing for gain, apportions his outlays in varieties of investments, These investments, the same as factors of production or costs to the entrepreneur, have by tradition been confined to wages (labour) profits, rent (land) and interest (capital). Industrial facts do not support this classification. There are many other factors, it is contended, which as they share in the distributive process must have functioned in the productive process, in some way immediate or remote. But it is immaterial how many factors there are and whether they differ in kind or degree. What is important for the purpose of production is the process of combining them. This combination of necessary factors of production is governed by a law called the law of proportion. It lays down that disadvantage is bound to attend upon a wrong proportion among the various factors of production employed in a concern. Enlarged, the principle means that as a certain volume of one factor has the capacity to work only with a certain volume of another to give maximum efficiency to both, an excess or defect in the volume of one in comparison with those of the others will tell on the total output by curtailing the efficiency of all. Having regard then to this interdependence of factors, an economically efficient combination of them compels the producer if he were to vary the one to vary the rest correspondingly. Neither can it be otherwise. For, the chief object of an efficient production consists in making every factor in the concern contribute its highest ; and it can do that only when it can co-operate with its fellow of the required capacity. Thus, there is an ideal of proportions that ought to subsist among the various factors combined, though the ideal will vary with the changes in the proportions. [f.17] These proportions it must be acknowledged are affected by the principle of substitution chiefly brought into play owing to variations in the prices of the factors. But this principle of substitution is too limited in its application to invalidate the law of proportion which is the law governing all economic production and which no producer can hope to ignore with impunity. [f.18] Bringing to bear the above remarks regarding production on the definition of an economic holding, we can postulate that if agriculture is to be treated as an economic enterprise, then, by itself, there could be no such thing as a large or a small holding. To a farmer a holding is too small or too large for the other factors of production at his disposal necessary for carrying on the cultivation of his holding as an economic enterprise. Mere size of land is empty of all economic connotation. Consequently, it cannot possibly be the language of economic science to say that a large holding is economic while a smallholding is uneconomic. It is the right or wrong proportion of other factors of production to a unit of land that renders the latter economic or uneconomic. Thus a small farm may be economic as well as a large farm; for, economic or uneconomic does not depend upon the size of land but upon the due proportion among all the factors including land. An economic holding, therefore, if it. is not to be a hollow concept, consists in a combination of land, capital and labour, etc., in a proportion such that the pro rata contribution of each in conjunction with the rest is the highest. In other words to create an economic holding it will not do for a farmer solely to manipulate his piece of land. He must also have the other instruments of production required for the efficient cultivation of his holding and must maintain a due proportion of all the factors for, without it, there can be no efficient production. If his equipment shrinks, his holding must also shrink. If his equipment augments, his holding must also augment. The point is that his equipment and his holding must not be out of proportion to each other. They must be in proportion and must vary, if need be, in proportion. The line of argument followed above is not without support from actual practice. It is happy from an economist's point of view, to find it recognized and adopted in India itself by the fathers of the Survey and Settlement System in the Bombay Presidency. The famous Joint Report (1840) contains an illuminating discussion of the problem. The question before the officers deputed to introduce the Survey System in the Deccan was how to levy the assessment. Was it to be a field assessment or an assessment to be placed on the whole lands of the village or on the entire holdings of individuals or co-parceners, whether proprietors or occupants. That after much deliberation the system of field assessment was finally adopted is known to many. But as the reasons that led to its adoption are known only to a few the following explanatory parts from the Joint report will be found to be both interesting and instructive: "Para 6. That one manifest advantage of breaking up the assessment of a village into portions so minute [as indicated by a survey number] is the facility it affords to the cultivators of contracting or enlarging his farm from year to year, according to the fluctuating amount of agricultural capital at their disposal which is of incalculable importance to farmers possessed of so limited resources as those of the cultivating classes throughout India. "Para 7. The loss of a few bullocks by disease or other causes may quite incapacitate a ryot from cultivating profitably the extent of land he had previously in village and, without the privilege of contracting his farm, and consequent liabilities on occasion of such loss, his ruin would be very shortly consummated." [f.19] Judging in the light of this conclusion the proposal to regulate the size of holdings appears ill considered and futile. For as Prof. Richard T. Ely observes [f.20]: " Obviously no simple answer can be given to the question [as to what should be the size of a farm]. The value of land or the rent it will bring is perhaps the most important factor........................In addition to the factor of rent the amount of capital that he can command, the kind of farming in which he is most skilled, the character of the labour he can secure, the proximity of markets, and the adequacy of transportation facilities, all must be taken into account by the farmer in determining how large a farm he will attempt to manage and how intensively he will farm it. " This question is primarily one of private profit which the individual must decide far himself, but the legislator and the scientific student can be of some assistance in helping to develop that most difficult branch of commercial science—farm accounting—and in keeping the farmer alive to those charges in prices, wages, and transportation charges to which the farm organization must adjust itself." To those who have the temerity to fix the size of a holding Prof. Ely's well-considered opinion will bring home that in spite of good intentions their vicarious mission will end in disaster ; for none but the cultivator can decide what should be the size of his holding. They would do well to remember that the size of his holdings will vary in time. Consequent to the changes in his equipment with which he has to adjust the size of his farm, at one point in time he will decide in favour of a small, as at another he will decide in favour of a large holding. He would therefore be a poor economist who would legally fix the size of the holding which in the interest of economic production must be left to vary when variation is demanded. By fixing the size of a holding he can only make it a large holding but not an economic holding. For an economic holding is not a matter of the size of land alone but is a matter of the adjustment of a piece of land to the necessary equipment for its efficient cultivation. CRITIQUE OF THE REMEDIES The proposal to enlarge the existing holdings which is brought forward as a cure to the ills of our agriculture can be entertained only if it is shown that farms have diminished in size while the agricultural stock has increased in amount. Facts regarding the size of farms have already been recorded. It only remains to see if the agricultural stock has increased. Mr. K. L. Datta in his exhaustive survey says[f.21] : "178. Most of the Indian witnesses, whom we examined, appeared to be under the belief that there has been a decrease in the supply of agricultural products, owing to the inefficient tillage of land. It was said that land is not now cultivated as carefully and efficiently as before, owing to the scarcity and dearness of plough, cattle and labour. In order to effect, a saving in the cost of cultivation, cultivators do not also plough their lands as often as they did before, and manuring and weeding, as also the amount of irrigating where wells are used for the purpose, have all been reduced." " 179. As regards the scarcity of plough cattle. .. (the) figures bear testimony to the deplorable effects of famine, the inevitable result of which has always been to reduce the number of cattle, though the deficiency is generally made good in a few years if otherwise favourable. The number of plough cattle in the latest year (1908-09) included in the statement was lower than in the commencement (1893-94), in some of the circles namely Assam, Bundelkhund, Agra Provinces—North and West, Gujarat, Deccan, Berar, Madras-North and Madras-West. Although great reliance cannot be placed on these statistics, they can be accepted as showing that in some areas at any rate there has been a dearth of plough cattle." Regarding the existence of capital Mr. Elliot James says: "The ryots have a keen eye to the results of a good system of farming as exhibited on model farms, but they cannot derive much good from the knowledge though they may take it in and thoroughly understand that superior tillage and proper manuring mean a greater outturn in crops. Their great want is capital" [f.22] The farmer knows, says the same author, that his agricultural equipment is inefficient and antiquated but he cannot substitute better ones in its place for: "A superior class of cattle and superior farm implements mean to him so much outlay of what he has not—Money." Similar facts for the Baroda State have been collected in another connection by Mr. M. B. Nanavati, Director of Commerce and Indus. But unfortunately he did not bring his knowledge of such facts to bear upon the conclusions of the Committee for the consolidation of holdings in the State of which he was also a member, apparently thinking that the size of a holding bore no relation to the instruments of production. He bemoans that: "The farmers are not fully equipped with draught-cattle. They have today (1913) 8,34,901 bullocks, etc., for use on farms, that is one pair for 36 bighas of land. On an average a pair of good bullocks can cultivate 25 bighas of land. But the present breed has much deteriorated and one pair is supposed to cultivate 20 bighas at the most, while the present actual averages comes to about 36 bighas. Under the circumstances it is not likely that ploughing can be deep. It must be like scratching the surface. The small cultivators do not possess any draught-cattle or at the most a single one and cultivate land in co-operation with their friends similarly situated. As for farm implements there are 1,54,364 ploughs in the State, i.e., one for two Khatedars. It must be understood here that the number of cultivators and tenants is much more than three lakhs- Every one of them needs full equipment. Therefore actually the average must be much smaller than shown above." [f.23] In fact the equipment for agricultural production in the State has considerably deteriorated since 1898 as shown by the table below : Year Plough Carts Plough Cattle Other Domestics 1898 1,75,989 --- 4,15,089 5,70,517 1910 1,51,664 68,946 3,34,801 5,09,416 Given, this state of affairs can we not say with more propriety that not only the existing equipment is inadequate for the enlarged holdings but that the existing holdings, small as they are, are too big for the available instruments of production other than land ? Facts such as these interpreted in the light of our theory force upon us the conclusion that the existing holdings are uneconomic, not, however, in the sense that they are too small but that they are too large. Shall we therefore argue that the existing holdings should be further reduced in size with a view to render them economic in the sense in which we have used the term ? Unwary readers might suppose that this is the -only logical and inevitable conclusion— a conclusion that is in strange contrast with the main trend of opinion in) this country. Contrary, no doubt, the conclusion is ; but it is by no means inevitable. For, from our premises we can with perfect logic and even with more cogency argue for increase in agricultural stock and implements which in turn will necessitate enlarged holdings which will be economic holdings as well. Consequently the remedy for the ills of agriculture in India does not lie primarily in the matter of enlarging holdings but in the matter of increasing capital and capital goods. That capital arises from saving and that saving is possible where there is surplus is a commonplace of political economy. Does our agriculture—the main stay of our population—-give us any surplus ? We agree with the answer which is unanimously in the negative. We also approve of the remedies that are advocated for turning the deficit economy into a surplus economy, namely by enlarging and consolidating the holdings. What we demur to is the method of realizing this object. For we most strongly hold that the evil of small holdings in India is not fundamental but is derived from the parent evil of the mal-adjustment in her social economy. Consequently if we wish to effect a permanent cure we must go to the parent malady. But before doing that we will show how we suffer by a bad social economy. It has become a tried statement that India is largely an agricultural country. But what is scarcely known is that notwithstanding the vastness of land under tillage, so little land is cultivated in proportion to her population. Mulhall's figures for the year 1895 clearly demonstrate the point. Acres per inhabitant in 1895
That since 1895 the situation, however, has gone from bad to worse figures eloquently bear out :
Now, what does this extraordinary phenomenon mean ? A large agricultural population with the lowest proportion of land in actual cultivation means that a large part of the agricultural population is superfluous and idle. How much idle labour there is on, Indian farms it is not possible to know accurately. Sir James Caird who was the first to notice the existence of this idle labour estimated in 1884 that, "A square mile of land in England cultivated highly gives employment to 50 persons, in the proportion 25 men, young and old, and 25 women and boys. If four times that number, or 200, were allowed for each square mile of cultivated land in India, it would take up only one-third of the population." [f.24] Out of the total population of 254 millions in 1881 nearly two-thirds were returned as agricultural. Allowing, as per estimate, one-third to be taken up, we can safely say that a population of equal magnitude was lying idle instead of performing any sort of productive labour. With the increasing ruralization of India and a continually decreasing proportion of land under cultivation, the volume of idle labour must have increased to an enormous extent. The economic effects of this idle labour are two-fold. Firstly, it adds to the tremendous amount of pressure that our agricultural population exerts on land. A quantitative statement will serve to bring home to our mind how high the pressure is: Mean density per square mile in 1911
Such high pressure of population on land is probably unknown in any other part of the world. The effect of it is, of course, obvious. Notwithstanding what others have said, this enormous pressure is the chief cause of the subdivision of land. It is the failure to grasp the working of this pressure on land that makes the law of inheritance such a great grievance. To say that the law of inheritance causes sub-division of land is to give a false view by inverting the real situation. The mere existence of the law cannot be complained of as a grievance. The grievance consists in the fact that it is invoked. But why is it invoked even when it is injurious ? Simply because it is profitable. There is nothing strange in this. When farming is the only occupation, to get a small piece of land is better than to have none. Thus the grievance lies in the circumstances which put a premium on these small pieces of land. The premium, is no doubt, due to the large population depending solely on agriculture to eke out its living. Naturally a population that has little else lo prefer to agriculture will try lo invoke every possible cause to get a piece of land however small. It is not therefore the law of inheritance that is the evil, but it is the high pressure on land which brings it into operation. People cultivate the small piece not because their standard of living is low as Prof. Jevons seems to think [f.25] but because it is the only profitable thing for them to do at present. If they had something more profitable to do they would never prefer the small piece. It is therefore easy to understand how the universal prevalence of the small farms or petit culture is due to this enormous pressure on land. In spite of the vehement struggle that our agricultural population maintains in trying to engage itself productively as cultivators of a farm however small, it is true that judged by the standard of Sir James Caird a large portion of it is bound to remain idle. Idle labour and idle capital differ in a very important particular. Capital exists, but labour lives. That is to say capital when idle does not earn, but does not also consume much to keep itself. But labour, earning or not consumes in order to live. Idle labour is, therefore, a calamity; for if it cannot live by production as it should, it will live by predation as it must. This idle labour has been the canker of India gnawing at its vitals. Instead of contributing to our national dividend it is eating up what little there is of it. Thus the depression of our national dividend is another important effect of this idle labour. The income of a society as of an individual proceeds (1) from the efforts made, and (2) from possessions used. It may be safely asserted that the aggregate income of any individual or society must be derived either from the proceeds of the current labour or from productive possession already acquired. All that society can have today it must acquire today or must take out of its past product. Judging by this criterion a large portion of our society makes very little current effort ; nor does it have any very extensive possessions from which to derive its sustenance. No doubt then that our economic organization is conspicuous by want of capital. Capital is but crystallized surplus; and surplus depends upon the proceeds of effort. But where there is no effort there is no earning, no surplus, and no capital. We have thus shown how our bad social economy is responsible for the ills of our agriculture. We have also proved how our entire dependence on agriculture leads to small and scattered farms. How a large portion of our population which our agriculture cannot productively employ is obliged to remain idle has been made clear. We have also shown how the existence of this idle labour makes ours a country without capital. This being our analysis of the problem, it will be easy to see why the remedies for consolidation and enlargement under the existing social economy arc bound to fail. Those who look on small holdings as the fundamental evil naturally advocate their enlargement. This, however, is a faulty political economy and as Thomas Arnold once said "a faulty political economy is the fruitful parent of crime". Apart from the fact that merely to enlarge the holding is not to make it economic, this project of artificial enlargement is fraught with many social ills. The future in the shape of an army of landless and dispossessed men that it is bound to give rise to is neither cheerful from the individual, nor agreeable from the national, point of view. But even if we enlarged the existing holdings and procured enough capital and capital goods to make them economic, we will not only be not advocating the proper remedy but will end in aggravating the evils by adding to our stock of idle labour ; for capitalistic agriculture will not need as many hands as are now required by our present day methods of cultivation. But if enlargement is not possible, can we not have consolidation? It can be shown that under the existing social economy even consolidation is not possible. The remedy for preventing sub-division and fragmentation of consolidated holdings cannot be expected to bring real relief. Instead it will only serve to be a legal eyewash. This becomes easy of comprehension if we realize at the start what the one man rule of succession means in actual practice. For this we shall have to note the changes it will introduce in the survey records. At present according to the Bombay Land Revenue Code Chapter I, Section 3, clause (6). "Survey Number" means a portion of land of which the area and other particulars are separately entered, under an indicative number in the survey records of the village, town or city in which it is situated, and includes a recognized share of a survey number. Again by clause (7). " Recognized share of a survey number " means a sub-division of a survey number separately assessed and registered. After the adoption of the one man rule of succession a survey number will be made to cover a piece of land which will be of the size fixed for an ideal economic holding. Secondly, it will be necessary to refuse separate registration to any sub-division of such a survey number; i.e., in order that a piece of land should be registered with a separate and a distinct survey number it must not be below the economic limit. Then too this survey number covering a piece of land large enough to be styled economic will be registered in the name of one person. This is precisely what will happen if we put into practice the project of the Baroda Committee. Mr. Keatinge instead of having one survey number covering a large and compact holding will have in the name of one person many survey numbers covering a unit of land composed of small and scattered fields. Abandoning Mr. Keatinge's scheme as serving no practical purpose the one man rule of succession lo a consolidated holding means in practice refusal to recognize legally a piece of land if it were below a certain size. Now this refusal to recognize smaller pieces of land, it is claimed, will prevent the sub-division of a consolidated holding: Sub-division of land may be due to many causes the operation of which is rendered economic or uneconomic by the nature of the occasion which evokes it. Not to allow sub-division on any ground, as does Mr. Keatinge, is to cause a serious depreciation of the value of land. But if sub-division is needed as when the stock has depleted, not to grant it is to create an uneconomic situation—a result just opposite of what is intended to be achieved, apart from this to prevent sub-division legally is not to prevent it actually, if necessitated by the weight of economic circumstances. Granting the pressure of population on land and the scanty agricultural equipment—evils to which the authors of consolidation and enlargement have paid no attention—we must look forward to the sub-division of holdings. If we legislate in the face of this inevitable tendency and refuse to record on our survey roll holdings below a certain limit required for a separate survey number we will not only fail to cure what we must know we cannot, at least by this means, but will help to create a register that will be false to the true situation. This being our criticism of the means for preventing sub-division and fragmentation it will not take us long to state our view as regards the project of consolidation. Consolidation and its conservation are so intimately connected that the one cannot be thought of without the other. Now if we cannot conserve a consolidated holding, is it worth our while to consolidate, however feasible the project may be? This work of Sysiphus will not fail to fall to our lot unless we make effective changes in our social economy. As the evils of this surplus and idle labour which will be added on to by the consolidation and enlargement of holdings are likely to outweigh their advantages, the proposals do not find much favour at the hands of Prof. Gilbert Slater. [f.26] As against Prof. Slater we hold that the evils are avoidable and it is because we are anxious to avoid them that we wish to advocate different remedies for bringing about the enlargement of holdings. Consequently, we maintain that our efforts should be primarily directed towards this idle labour. [f.27] If we succeed in sponging off this labour in non-agricultural channels of production we will at one stroke lessen the pressure and destroy the premium that at present weighs heavily on land in India. Besides, this labour when productively employed will cease to live by predation as it does to-day, and will not only earn its keep but will give us surplus: and more surplus is more capital. In short, strange though it may seem, industrialization of India is the soundest remedy for the agricultural problems of India. The cumulative effects of industralization, namely, a lessening pressure and an increasing amount of capital and capital goods will forcibly create the economic necessity of enlarging the holding. Not only this, but industralization by destroying the premium on land will give rise to few occasions for its sub-division and fragmentation. Industrialization is a natural and powerful remedy and is to be preferred to such ill-conceived projects as we have considered above. By legislation we will get a sham economic holding at the cost of many social ills. But by industrialization a large economic holding will force itself upon us as a pure gain. Our remedy for the enlargement as for the consolidation of holdings as well as the preservation of consolidated holdings reduces itself to this: We prefer to cure agriculture by the reflex effects of industrialization. Lest this might be deemed visionary we proceed to give evidence in support of our view. How agriculture improves by the reflex effects of industrialization has been studied in the United States in the year 1883. We shall quote in extenso the summary given by the London Times: "The statistician of the Agricultural Department of the United States has shown in a recent report that the value of farm lands decreases in exact proportion as the ratio of agriculture to other industries increases. That is, where all the labour is devoted to agriculture, the land is worth less than where only half of the people are farm labourers; and where only a quarter of them are so engaged the farms and their product are still more valuable. It is, in fact, proved by statistics that diversified industries are of the greatest value to a State, and that the presence of a manufactory near a farm increases the value of the farm and its crops. It is further established that, dividing the United States into four sections or classes, with reference to the ratio of agricultural workers to the whole population, and putting those States having less than 30 per cent, of agriculture and of agricultural labourers in the first class, all having over 30 and less than 50 in the second, those between 50 and 70 in the third, and those having 70 or more in the fourth, the value of farms is in inverse ratio to the agricultural population, and that where as in the purely agricultural section, the fourth class, the value of farms per acre is only $ 5.28, in the next class it is $ 13.03, in the third $ 22.21, and in manufacturing districts $ 40.91. This shows an enormous advantage for a mixed district. Yet not only is the land more valuable the production per acre is greater, and the wages paid to farm hands larger. Manufactures and varied industries thus not only benefit the manufacturers, but are of equal benefit and advantage to the fanners as well." This will show that ours is a proven remedy. It can be laid down without fear of challenge that industrialization will foster the enlargement of holdings and that it will be the most effective barrier against sub-division and fragmentation. Agreeing in this, it may be observed that industrialization will not be a sufficient remedy for consolidation. That it will require direct remedies may be true. But it is also true that industrialization, though it may not bring about consolidation, will facilitate consolidation. It is an incontrovertible truth that so long as there is the premium on land consolidation will not be easy, no matter on how equitable principles it is proposed to be carried out. Is it a small service if industrialization lessens the premium as it inevitably must ? Certainly not. Consideration of another aspect of consolidation as well points to the same conclusion: That industrialization must precede consolidation. It should never be forgotten that unless we have constructed an effective barrier against the future sub-division and fragmentation of a consolidated holding it is idle to lay out plans for consolidation. Such a barrier can only be found in industrialization ; for it alone can reduce the extreme pressure which, as we have shown, causes sub-division of land. Thus. if small and scattered holdings are the ills from which our agriculture is suffering to cure it of them is undeniably to industrialize. But just where does India stand as an industrial country ?:
(The figures for the various countries do not correspond with the years. The range of variation is 3 years). Sir Robert Giffen after a survey of the economic tendencies of various countries concludes that. " The wants of men increasing with their resources the proportion of people engaged in agriculture and mining and analogous pursuits, in every country is destined to decline, and that of people engaged in miscellaneous industry—in. other words in manufactures using the latter phrase in a wide sense to increase." [f.28] Figures for India, however, run counter to this dictum illustrating a universal tendency observed by an expert. While other countries like the U.S.A. starting as agricultural are progressively becoming industrial, India has been gradually undergoing the woeful process of de-urbanization and swelling the volume of her rural population beyond all needs. The earlier we stem this ominous tide, the better. For notwithstanding what interested persons might say [f.29] no truer and more wholesome words of caution were ever uttered regarding our national economy than those by Sir Henry Cotton when he said " There is danger of too much agriculture in India. " [f1]Wealth of Nations. BK. III Ch. 11. [f.2]Report of the Committee appointed to make proposals on the Consolidation of Small and Scattered holdings in the Baroda State, 1917. This will be throughout referred to as R.B.C. [f.3]ibid., p. 3 [f.4]Land and Labour in a Deccan Village 1927, p. 48. [f.5]The author is thankful to him for a copy of this valuable note. [f.6]RBC, p. 35. [f.7]R. B.C., p. 38 [f.8].. The Consolidation of Agricultural Holdings in the United Provinces, 1918, pp. 45-46. The author is grateful to Prof. Jevons for a copy. [f.9]Besides these two systems of inheritance there is a third which allows a father liberty to do as he likes with a part of his estate provided he leaves sufficient for his heir to constitute what is called pars legitima. Under it the Germans have enacted a permissive law of Anerbenrecht designed to obviate the effects of the law of inheritance in causing unnecessary sub-division of land. In some aspects it anticipates the proposals of the Baroda Committee; in others those of the Hon. Mr. Keatings. For a description of it see Prof. N. G. Pierson's Principles of Economics, Vol. II, pp. 286-90. [f.10]R.B.C., p. 26. [f.11]Opt. Cit. chart on p. 38. [f.12]Opt. Cit. Introduction. [f.13]Ibid., p. 4. [f.14]R.B.C., p. 31. [f.15]Ibid, p. 53. [f.16]Rural Economy in the Bombay Deccan, p. 51. [f.17]This description of the process of production is pieced together from the remarks of Prof. H. J. Davenport in his masterly treatise "The Economics of Enterprize" New York. Macmillan, 1913, In this connection see also the able paper by Prof. Henry C. Taylor on "Two Dimensions of Productivity" read before the 29th Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association held in December 1916 and the remarks on the same by Prof. A. A. Young. Both these will be found in the American Economic Review for March 1917. [f.18]Some economists who hold that it is the law of Diminishing Returns that governs agricultural production will demur to the universal applicability that is claimed for the Law of Proportion. Briefly stated the Law of Diminishing Returns asserts that additional 'doses' of capital and labour administered to a given piece of land will be responded to by a less and less yield. This means that if only the non-land expense of production is doubled there results less than a doubled product. But if this is the fact that is intended to be generalli-scd by the Law of Diminishing Returns then there is nothing in it that is peculiar to agricultural production. It the expense to the land be doubled but the land not doubled it is certain that the extra return will fall short of the increased expense.This is simply another way of saying that if the returns are to grow all the factors must be increased in proportion. But so stated is not the Law of Diminishing Returns a confused version of the Law of Proportion? [f.19]Survey Settlement Manual Bombay Presidency, 1882. p. 3. [f.20]Outlines of Economics, pp. 531-32 (Italics ours). [f.21]Report on the Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in India, 1914, Vol. I, pp. 66-67, (Italics ours). [f.22]Indian Industries, p. 6. [f.23]Report on Agricultural Indebtedness in the Baroda State, 1913, para. 35. [f.24]India, the Land and the People, p. 225. [f.25]Opt. cit. Introduction. The Impression that Prof. Jevons leaves on his readers is that agriculture suffers in India because of the low standard of living. That a higher standard of life once established will necessitate a large holding because people with a high standard of life will prefer to migrate rather than accept a small holding. As his argument that holdings and standard of life are related is likely to mislead his less thoughtful readers, a word of comment is necessary. A standard of living is merely a level of consumption fixed in habit. But what determines the depth of a particular level of consumption? Undoubtedly the level of production. We may grant the truth of the statement that a rise in the standard of living works as a stimulus to higher production but it is foolish to expect mere wish to be father to the deed. It is actual production alone that can support rise in the standard and not wish, generated though it be either by "travel or education". If Prof. Jevons means that an opportunity for increased production, leading to a higher standard of life, will disfavour small holdings we are one with him. But he can make himself more intelligible by dropping standard of living and only arguing for increased production; that increased production leads to a rise in standard will be granted by all; but the reverse cannot be maintained Prof. Jevons seems to do, for it may lead to production or predation. To speak of raising the standard of life without speaking of increased production is to give expression to a pious wish, if it does not lead to mischief. [f.26]"The village in the Melting Pot" Journal of the Indian Economic Society. Vol. 1. No. I, p. 10. [f.27]Prof. Jevons does speak of removing the surplus agricultural population to towns. The author is happy to note that Prof. Jevons had recognised that there is the evil of surplus population. What he has failed to recognize is that this evil is the faithful parent of all other evils that affect our agriculture. When it is recalled that industrialization of India is the one theme against which Prof. Jevons never fails to argue with all the aid of his knowledge and influence, his remedy of removing the surplus population to towns sounds starnge; for migration to towns is simply euphemism for the industrialization of India. On the other hand Prof. Jevons has forgotten that there are few towns in India. If we believe, as does Prof. Jevons, that there is the evil of surplus population the only logical and inevitable conclusion, however unplatable it be, is the creations of more towns i.e. industrialization. [f.28]" Essays in Finance" 2nd Series, p. 240. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Next | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/11.%20Small%20Holdings%20in%20India%20and%20their%20Remedies.htm
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