Skip to main content

Bhakti in Indian Politics


On 25 Nov 1949, the day before the Constituent Assembly wound up its proceedings, Dr B R Ambedkar made a speech summing up the work of the Assembly and thanking all the people associated with it.  He ended his speech with three warnings.

The second warning was about the dangers of unthinking submission to charismatic authority.  Quoting John Stuart Mill, Ambedkar cautioned Indians not “to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions.”

“In India,” went on Ambedkar, “Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world.  Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of a soul.  But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

Today the two major rival political parties in India are laying siege to Ambedkar’s legacy.  An international centre costing Rs 192 crore and a monument costing Rs 99 crore are on the anvil.  Things that don’t cost much to the exchequer like a postage stamp in Ambedkar’s honour, street plays to bring him close to the masses, speeches and rallies are also being planned. 

On the other hand, organisations like Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle at IIT Madras which questioned the same Bhakti movement that Ambedkar warned against are being banned.  A Dalit whose mobile phone played an Ambedkar song was beaten to death supposedly by the people who are practising the same Bhakti that Ambedkar cautioned against.

Certain decisions like whose pictures can be carried in advertisements and whose picture should be displayed in government offices and other public places point to the possibility of the government machinery nurturing the Bhakti movement in the country.

Is Ambedkar being honoured or is he being made use of for nefarious political purposes?

Is what Ambedkar said about the Congress a few years after Independence valid for today’s leading political party?  He accused the Congress of degenerating into a dharamsala, a gathering without any unity of purpose or principles, and “open to all, fools and knaves, friends and foes, communalists and secularists, reformers and orthodox and capitalists and anti-capitalists.”

All his life Ambedkar fought vehemently against “narrow-mindedness and communalism.”  It is ironical that today his legacy is being is resuscitated by people who are staunch advocates of what Ambedkar fought fervently against.



A book review: Dr Ambedkar

Comments

  1. Apt message for the times, which are rapidly making a mockery of the notion of democracy. Not just India, but the world - increasing intolerance everywhere

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Intolerance is a global problem. But the kind of hero-worship we see in India is quite rare.

      Delete
  2. whatever Ambedkar preached has been conveniently being tweeked and used for few peoples cause

    ReplyDelete
  3. And sometimes I feel that there are so many problems that all of us must die to solve it. :/ :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The present system is one which will ensure the death of selected groups of people.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

The Blindness of Superficiality

An Essay on Anees Salim’s novel The Blind Lady’s Descendants Superficiality is a deadly human vice though most people seldom realise it. It is easy to live on the surface of everything from one’s profession to religion. Anees Salim’s novel, The Blind Lady’s Descendants , tells us a story of superficiality as lived by quite many people. Amar, the protagonist of the novel, is 26 when he thinks that life is not worth living. He became an atheist at the age of 13. He had become a half-Muslim at the age of 5 when his little penis was circumcised partly since he ran away in pain during the process. Amar’s atheism, however, is as superficial as most believers’ religion is. What initiated little Amar to atheism is “Dr Ibrahim’s farting fit.” Islamic prayer has to follow many a rule. “If you break wind during namaaz, you break a big rule, and you are to discontinue the prayer then and there, with no second thoughts.” Little Amar was unable to control his giggles as Dr Ibrahim struggled to