f
we rework Shankar’s cartoon with, say, Mahatma Gandhi riding a bullock
cart of democracy in his dwija (twice-born, or upper-caste)
dress and Jawaharlal Nehru standing in his sanatan (upper-caste
Hindu) pandit’s dress, a thread across his body, and Babasaheb
Ambedkar in his suit, unhitching that cart, would Yogendra Yadav and
Suhas Palshikar – former NCERT advisers – have included that cartoon
for a lesson in democracy? I am sure they would not.
In 1949 when Shankar drew that cartoon – wherein
Ambedkar sits with a whip on a snail that is the Constitution and
Nehru stands behind, also with a whip in his hand, while the masses
watch the fun – Ambedkar’s role as chairman of the drafting committee
had still not been appreciated by the Indian elite. The political
elite in particular were cursing him. He also did not have high
standing among the people at large. Only a very few educated Dalits
treated him as their worthy representative.
After Ambedkar joined Nehru’s cabinet, he was also
seen as one who compromised himself for power. After he resigned from
the cabinet in 1951 and after he embraced Buddhism five years later,
his image and status transformed quite dramatically. And after the
Mandal movement of 1990, Ambedkar’s stature assumed messianic
proportions. The present Ambedkar is not a negotiator with Nehru or
Gandhi. Rather, as a messiah of the large army of the oppressed people
of this country, he is quite different from Gandhi and Nehru. While
picking this cartoon from Shankar’s archives for the Class XI
political science textbook, the editors should have understood this
phenomenal change in perception, in the media, of the Dalit bahujan
(majority).
Early in May, Dalit MPs cutting across party lines
took up a cultural issue that related to the dignity and status of the
most oppressed community and their icon. Human resource development
minister Kapil Sibal did the right thing by apologising over the
matter and promising immediate withdrawal of the textbook that carries
the controversial cartoon.
Questions like why this issue is being raked up seven
years after the book’s publication or why this cartoon is being
attacked 63 years after it was drawn need to be answered with sound
reasoning and a proper understanding of the level of consciousness of
the Dalit leadership itself. Do these questions not sound like yet
another question, namely why make an issue of untouchability and
caste, as they have, after all, been practised for 3,000 years? The
answer lies in the changing consciousness as also the possible avenues
that are opening up for fighting the matter out. If Ambedkar had not
fought for the education of the lower castes as also for reservation
in politics and jobs, there would not have been any Dalits in
Parliament. Had it not been so, nobody would have asked any questions
even if Ambedkar’s name was removed from Indian history altogether.
The consciousness of Mr Yadav and Mr Palshikar is
couched in Lohiaite-Marxist-Gandhian politics which refuses to
recognise the far greater transformative status of Ambedkar. In the
intellectual realm, Mr Yadav represents a typical, symptomatic
socialist transformation of Lohia – similar to what Mulayam Singh
Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav do in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Somehow
they are very uncomfortable with Ambedkar. This is reflected in the
selection of this cartoon in the 21st century – a time when Ambedkar
has overtaken Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia in stature. What Mr Yadav and Mr
Palshikar refuse to recognise is that Ambedkar was not just a writer
of the Indian Constitution, not just a nationalist leader and not just
a theoretician; he was a prophetic figure who revived Buddhism which
was driven out of India by a whole range of social forces over a
period of several centuries. Thus in every Buddha Vihara today he sits
alongside Buddha.
The icon of the oppressed community cannot be compared
with a god or goddess of the oppressors. Nor can the protest against
the Ambedkar cartoon be seen on a par with the Hindutva protest
against the painting of Goddess Saraswati by MF Husain. The May 11
protest in Parliament by Dalit MPs to remove the derogatory Ambedkar
cartoon from the NCERT’s political science textbook is a demand that
came from those representing the oppressed masses. This is the first
ever major fight for the cultural transformation of Indian society.
Earlier, Dalits were not seen as a people who could fight for their
own cultural identity. They were seen as a people who fight for higher
wages, reservation and scholarships. Shankar Pillai’s cartoons were
friendly jokes for the upper-caste English-educated elite of the
post-independence ruling class but certainly not for the Dalit/OBC
(other backward classes)/Adivasi population.
Cartoons also carry with them the politics and culture
of those who drew them. In fact, no cartoon is free from politics and
caste/class bias. This is where the need arises for the emergence of a
new brand of cartoonists from among the deprived sections, if only to
induct Dalit culture into the realm of cartoons. Caste bias operates
not only in religion, politics and economics but also in art, music
and dance. Political scientists Mr Yadav and Mr Palshikar know this
only too well.
When NCERT textbooks were written by right-wing
historians and political scientists, they were criticised by left-wing
historians, political scientists and sociologists. Later, the
left-wing secular academics undertook a rewriting of the textbooks.
However, the problem with secular, democratic social scientists is
that they are not caste-sensitive. They also do not include enough
caste-sensitive Dalit-bahujan social scientists. Today any
discussion on caste is seen as undemocratic; and Mr Yadav and Mr
Palshikar thought Nehru belonged to the fast track democratic school
whereas Ambedkar drove snail-paced Constitution drafting! This kind of
senseless handling of democratic casteism must be checkmated and that
is precisely what happened in the Indian Parliament on May 11.
One way to train our children in ideological politics
is by making use of school textbooks. When the National Democratic
Alliance was in power, it prepared school textbooks with an overdose
of Hindutva ideology. Later on, the United Progressive Alliance
government appointed a well-known educationist, Prof Krishna Kumar, as
director of the NCERT. The textbooks that have sparked a controversy
now were prepared under his directorship. By and large, the new team
prepared much better schoolbooks. But the problem was that the left,
secular and socialist social scientists never bothered to examine the
Indian caste system. Most of these men treat Ambedkar simply as one of
the nationalist leaders. They also do not seriously examine Ambedkar’s
socio-spiritual status and the deep emotions of the oppressed masses
that were built around his Buddhist spiritual existence. It is this
status that is likely to lead to many self-assertive struggles by the
Dalits.
A national-level response to any desecration of
Ambedkar’s statues and a similar response to remove a cartoon that
depicted him in a derogatory manner are all part of an effort to put
him on a different liberationist level from what an ordinary political
scientist could comprehend. All the same, it is important that one
respects in all humility the decision of Parliament. It is also
important that one does not demonstrate an intellectual ‘Annagiri’
against Parliament. Parliament is supreme and can decide everything in
this country.