Selective deification and demonisation

Whilst the country faces burning issues that our politicians should be engaging with, the last few days in Parliament have been frittered away in dredging up the past lives of erstwhile leaders, long gone and thus in no position to defend themselves or set things in perspective. 

It started with members of the Union government going after their favourite whipping boy, who is none other than the first Prime Minister of the country, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Considering that they seem to believe that everything is Nehru’s fault and spare no effort to obliterate mention of his many achievements and his statesmanship, it indeed appears odd for them to ask the Gandhi family for letters exchanged between him and Edwina Mountbatten. 

Unlike in the United States, the personal lives of politicians are mostly given short shrift, both by journalists and the public in India. Don’t know whether this is a good thing for gender equality. One can only think of one minister who had to step down during the Me Too Movement. That he belongs to the minority community can lead to the speculation that it was perhaps the killing of two birds with one stone. 

After Nehru, it had to be the turn of Ambedkar. The Union home minister set the cat among the pigeons by making a statement about how an icon like Ambedkar has been deified by the constant repetition of his name. Undoubtedly, Amit Shah, in the language of today’s political discourse, put the matter very crudely, but he had a point. Every political party continues to chant Ambedkar’s name, purely for political gains, while doing precious little for the causes that kept him unhappy for most of his life. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party quickly countered Shah’s gaffe by putting it down to it all being Nehru’s fault that Ambedkar was denied many opportunities in politics. But the party’s memory and knowledge of history are selective about Ambedkar decrying Savarkar and his notions of Pitru Bhoomi and Punya Bhoomi, ideals that the BJP and its progenitor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), believe in and are trying to propagate. 

But the Congress can hardly be permitted a holier-than-thou attitude. Leaving aside Nehru, who had a whole new nation to be built and worry about, what have subsequent Congress governments done about some of Ambedkar’s greatest preoccupations?

Even after so many years, the pernicious practice of manual scavenging is in existence. Needless to say, it is only one community that is hired for this work, and many have been known to have lost their lives from asphyxiation inside those stinking pits. 

Studies have shown that in prisons too, the caste system prevails, with the allocation of tasks to prisoners being done on the basis of their caste. Though members of the community have complained, the cleaning of toilets is always assigned to Dalits, whilst prison officials and the police look askance.

The much-touted Swachh Bharat Mission of the ruling dispensation involved the setting up of toilets in villages. Many of these do not have water connections and thus function almost like dry latrines. No prizes for guessing which community gets the “good fortune” under government schemes for cleaning these toilets.

Ambedkar dreamed of a casteless society, but the BJP’s support of Sanatana Dharma only seems to entrench the caste system, with the division of labour so clearly demarcated. An explosive Tamil documentary called Kakkous is hard-hitting in bringing out the reality of discrimination and exploitation in the area of sanitation. The film carries an interview with a man with a degree who asks for a desk job and is told that if he is replacing his mother after her retirement, he is only entitled to get her job of manual scavenging.

Even today, people belonging to the “upper castes” have no hesitation in blithely announcing their communities and even sub-divisions, whilst Dalits are still resorting to hiding their surnames or other particulars, just so as to avoid being looked down upon. Eye-opening books of this century, like Sujatha Gidlas’s Ants among Elephants and Yashica Dutt’s Coming out as Dalit, might be suggested to politicians indulging in fighting over the legacy of Ambedkar. 

Perhaps it may be time for parties of all persuasions to talk about and help in the eradication of caste-based discrimination if they are indeed serious about creating a viksit Bharat. In a country that still does not think it odd to ask people, “What’s your caste?” will Ambedkar’s hope of a casteless society remain a pipedream?

(The writer is an independent journalist)