Ambedkar's Objection, Which a Serious Answer Must Face

Four: the remedy is legal, not moral. A right that depends on the goodwill of the person who must respect it is not a right. What is needed is a guarantee, in a constitution, with a court to enforce it, and with penalties attached to its breach. Every protective statute in Modules III and IV of this paper is an application of that proposition.

What Ambedkar's approach produced

This is where an answer earns its marks, because the objection is not merely negative.

Article 17, the abolition of untouchability, forbidding its practice in any form and making the enforcement of any disability arising out of it an offence punishable in accordance with law. It is the only fundamental right that is directed at private persons and the only one the Constitution itself declares to be an offence. It exists because he did not believe the practice would end by persuasion.

Article 15(2), which forbids any restriction on access to shops, public restaurants, hotels, places of public entertainment, wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort. Again directed at private conduct.

Article 35, which gives Parliament the exclusive power to make laws prescribing punishment for acts declared offences under article 17, which produced the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955 and, in due course, the Atrocities Act of 1989.

Articles 330 to 342, the framework of representation and identification of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which is what the Atrocities Act borrows to define whom it protects.

The pattern is consistent. Where the Gandhian approach would put a duty on the dominant, Ambedkar put a right in the dominated and a penalty on the breach.

Distinctions

Worked example

A family is refused water at the village well.

The Gandhian response is a satyagraha at the well: an announced, open, unarmed presence, repeated, with the penalty accepted, addressed to the conscience of the village.

Ambedkar's response is different in kind. The refusal is an offence. Article 17 makes the enforcement of a disability arising out of untouchability an offence punishable in accordance with law; the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955 and section 3 of the Atrocities Act 1989 supply the punishment; and the family's remedy is a first information report, an investigation, a charge sheet and a trial.

And the honest conclusion, which is the one this paper keeps reaching. The second response is right in principle and, on the record in Module IV, frequently produces nothing, because the police station will not register, the witnesses will not hold, and the acquittal rate is what Appa Balu Ingale recorded. Ambedkar's objection to Gandhi is correct. It does not follow that his own remedy has worked, and a first-class answer says both.

What it does NOT mean

It is not an argument for violence. Ambedkar's alternative to conversion is law, not counter-force, and he was consistently opposed to armed methods.

It is not a personal quarrel. The disagreement is about the diagnosis of caste and about the mechanism of change, and reducing it to biography loses the argument.

And it does not make the Gandhian approach worthless. The two coexist in the Indian record: the constitutional guarantees are Ambedkar's, and the mass method that made the constitution possible was largely Gandhi's.

Quick revision

• Four objections: patience is asked of those least able to afford it; the domination is not a mistake, so conversion misses it; the fast is coercion; and the remedy must be legal, not moral.
• The alternative is rights with remedies: article 17, the only fundamental right directed at private persons and the only one the Constitution itself calls an offence; article 15(2), access to wells, tanks, ghats, roads and public places; article 35, Parliament's exclusive power to punish breaches of article 17; articles 330 to 342.
• Article 35 produced the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955 and, in the end, the Atrocities Act 1989.
• The pattern: a right in the dominated and a penalty on the breach, rather than a duty on the dominant.
• Ambedkar's objection is not an argument for violence; his alternative to conversion is law.
• The honest conclusion is that the objection is right and the remedy has, on the record, often failed.

Test yourself

1. State Ambedkar's four objections to the Gandhian approach. That non-violence asks patience of those who have already waited longest, and so favours the existing order; that caste is a system distributing real advantages rather than a mistaken belief, so conversion addresses the wrong problem; that a fast directed at an opponent is coercion, and gives most power to the person with most reputation; and that a right depending on goodwill is not a right, so the remedy must be a constitutional guarantee with an enforceable penalty.

2. Which constitutional provisions embody his alternative, and what is unusual about article 17? Articles 17, 15(2), 35 and 330 to 342. Article 17 is unusual in two ways: it is directed at private persons rather than at the State, and it is the only fundamental right that the Constitution itself declares the breach of to be an offence punishable in accordance with law.

3. What did article 35 make possible? It gave Parliament the exclusive power to prescribe punishment for acts declared offences under article 17, which produced the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955 and later the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989.

4. Why is it wrong to treat Ambedkar's position as an argument for counter-violence? Because his alternative to moral conversion is law, not force. He argued for constitutional guarantees, statutory offences and enforceable remedies, and was consistently opposed to armed methods, on the ground that they replace one arbitrary power with another.