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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The new untouchability-Harish Trivedi

The new untouchability-Harish Trivedi

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published Published on May 29, 2012   modified Modified on May 29, 2012

As the dust begins to settle on the Ambedkar cartoon controversy, it may be useful to reflect on what it was all about. Contrary to some rhetorical grandstanding, it was not really about freedom of expression. Nor was it about how (not) to produce livelier school textbooks. Nor indeed about our sense of humour or lack thereof, or the special privileges of comic exaggeration or caricature that cartoonists have enjoyed in all liberal societies.

No, it must be acknowledged that the whole controversy was simply and plainly about B R Ambedkar. Had Nehru himself been riding that snail, the cartoon would have caused no offence. Had Rajendra Prasad, who as chairman of the Constituent Assembly was probably the person technically responsible for any delay, been shown as sitting atop that hapless creature, the cartoon may not have seemed even funny. It is not about what was done, it is about who was supposed to have done it.

But why blame Ambedkar? The Constitution of India did take a long time to frame, but was Ambedkar responsible for that either solely or chiefly? What precisely was his role in framing the Constitution? Was he its 'author', as some simple-minded people believe, or even its 'Principal Architect', in that hallowed phrase trotted out again and again even in responsible discussion? If so, is that the reason why he is depicted in that cartoon by Shankar rather as an errant schoolboy who is struggling hard to submit his assignment on time but not succeeding?

But that seems patently unfair. For Ambedkar was decidedly not the 'author' of our Constitution - for the good reason that a Constitution is not an epic poem or a novel which just one individual may dream up all by himself! A Constitution is a collaborative document, of which each member of a Constituent Assembly could equally be called an author. It is also an accumulative document, in that each new Constitution benefits from the historical legacy of all the constitutions that have already been drafted and adopted before it. In fact, the less original a Constitution the better! To evoke a literary comparison again, a Constitution is at best a kind of an anthology, which is translated into the political language and local idiom of the new territory where it is to be adapted and adopted.

So, in all fairness, no single person should be called the author of our Constitution, even if that person happens to be Ambedkar. Nor, for that matter, was Ambedkar even its 'Principal Architect'. He was not the draughtsman, or even the drafts-man, for there was already a full draft available for him to work on.

As the official records of the debates of the Constituent Assembly show (freely available on the Lok Sabha website, http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates, and in selected extracts on www.ambedkar.org), Ambedkar was appointed chairman of the 'Committee to Scrutinise the Draft Constitution', after a draft had already been prepared on the basis of the reports of various committees comprising numerous members of the Constituent Assembly. These reports were then compiled and collated by the secretariat of the assembly led by S N Mukherjee, who was the chief draftsman, and by an expert 'Constitutional Adviser' named B N Rau, a retired ICS officer.

In his peroration on November 25, 1949, just before our Cons-titution was adopted, Ambedkar modestly and handsomely acknowledged that 'the credit that is given to me does not really belong to me'. He named both Rau and Mukherjee and offered them unstinted praise. This was after he had offered an elaborate justification for the fact that it had taken precisely 'two years, eleven months and seventeen days' for the assembly to finalise the Constitution. Ours was a big country, he said, and our Constitution was bigger than any other Constitution. In a rare stylistic flourish, he added that it had not been a case of 'Nero fiddling while Rome was burning' - a poignant allusion possibly to the violence of Partition which had taken place during the time span of the framing of the Constitution from 1946 to 1949.

But why is our Lok Sabha burning with indignation now? It obviously thinks that Ambedkar is being unfairly blamed. And could that be because all this while, he has been given all the credit for being the author and the architect of our Constitution - perhaps equally unfairly?

But there is another factor at play here; in fact, it is (if one may use the metaphor) the elephant in the room. There is an Ambedkar who contributed to our Constitution, and there is another Ambedkar who is the father figure of dalit power. In our present political scenario, because the latter is sacrosanct, therefore the former cannot be touched with a bargepole either. Thus, ironically, Ambedkar is now again 'untouchable', in the original Anglophone sense in which the dictionaries define the word: 'exempt from criticism or control' or 'beyond the reach of criticism, impeachment, or attack'.

The writer is former professor of English, Delhi University.

The Times of India, 26 May, 2012, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-05-26/edit-page/31863698_1_draft-constitution-cartoon-b-r-ambedkar


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