Dalits and the Indian Constitution is a recent addition to the extensive body of work in Caste Studies produced by Anand Teltumbde, one of the foremost anti-caste intellectuals in contemporary India. Teltumbde’s oeuvre, which includes significant publications such as The Persistence of Caste (2010), The Republic of Caste (2018) and Dalits: Past, Present and Future (2020), is remarkable because, while being deeply committed to the Ambedkarite project of ‘annihilation of caste’, he does not shy away from drawing attention to various errors of omission and commission perpetrated by the Dalit leadership in postcolonial India. It is precisely in this context that his critical appraisal of the Indian Constitution needs to be read.
Teltumbde concedes right at the start that the Constitution, as it stands today, is regarded by Dalits as an emancipatory document not only because of their beloved Babasaheb’s association with it as Chairperson of the Drafting Committee, but also because of its enactment of certain important remedial measures intended to neutralize the centuries-old oppression to which they had been subjected within the Hindu society. These measures included the abolition of the practice of untouchability, and the introduction of affirmative action which would ensure reservation of a certain number of seats in state-run educational institutions and also stipulation to provide a minimum quota of jobs in the public sector to members of the hitherto stigmatized communities.
The upward mobility of this relatively privileged section among the Dalits has made the Dalit presence in the country more visible than ever before. But to what extent are these Dalits, who have climbed the social ladder and are in a position to represent the Dalit cause, really representative of the Dalit community at large? In an insightful discussion in the chapter titled, ‘The Folly of Representation’, Teltumbde cites eminent political theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon and Partha Chatterjee, to establish how ruling elites assimilate dissent by coopting subaltern spokespersons into their ranks, thus neutralizing their radical potential. ‘The system of political reservation,’ he writes in one of his earlier books, ‘has entailed what may be called the “domestication” of the Dalit leadership; instead of confronting caste power, the leadership has been absorbed by it.’ In what might be regarded as a piece of heterodox wisdom, he observes, ‘Even Ambedkar’s proposed separate electorates might not have averted this tendency towards elite capture and dependence.’
Meanwhile, he points out, referring to facts and figures buttressed by statistical data as and when necessary, that, notwithstanding the law against untouchability, enshrined in Article 17 of the Constitution, the scriptural as well as customary injunctions to maintain physical distance, amounting to social segregation of the ‘untouchable’ castes, still prevail.
Indeed, the neoliberal economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s paradoxically gave a new lease of life to caste-driven rites and rituals, including untouchability practices, as dominant castes felt threatened by the consequent, real or imagined, social churning and Dalit self-assertion. Caste atrocities have become a common feature of everyday life in many parts of the country, with the triumphalist Hindutva administrations at the Centre and in the States more often than not choosing to turn a blind eye to these episodes and their perpetrators.
What, after all, in Teltumbde’s opinion, accounts for the ‘persistence of caste’ in India? There is no doubt in his mind that it is the inability (unwillingness?) of the Constitution-makers to even contemplate the outlawing of the caste system while banning, and even criminalizing, the practice of untouchability. Untouchability being only a symptom of the caste system, how would it have been possible to deal with the symptom of a disease without rooting out the disease itself? With his firm grasp on debates which took place in the Constituent Assembly, Teltumbde records that only a small handful (three to be precise) of the members of that forum raised the issue of the imperative to banish caste. Curiously, Ambedkar himself maintained stoic silence during this debate.
Teltumbde’s critique of the Constitution however goes further than this. Caste was not only not abrogated; it was all but rehabilitated as part of the Hindu faith in a ‘secular’ Constitution which defined secularism not in the Western sense, as total separation of church and state, but as equidistance maintained by the state from all religions, couched with a rhetorical flourish as ‘sarva dharma sambhava’. In practical terms, this translated into religious autonomy or freedom of every religion to carry on with its own practices, however nefarious though these might be. The catch was that the state reserved the right to interfere, and even prevent, any ‘unlawful’ activities that might be conducted in the name of religion. This leads to, as Teltumbde puts it, ‘the uneven application of secular principles, often (aligned) with the interests of the dominant majority’. Hence the state can (and has), with impunity, extend its enthusiastic support to ceremonial occasions for the Hindus (such as the foundation-laying ceremony for the Ram Temple at Ayodhya or Kumbh Mela extravaganzas in Prayagraj). Likewise, the state overlooks the exclusionary practices of the Jagannath Temple in Odisha or the Sabarimala in Kerala while indicting the observance of the Muslim Personal Law and the wearing of the hijab or the burqa by Muslim women studying in schools and colleges run by the state.
Going back to the Dalit question, Teltumbde declares that the alignment of secularism with majoritarian interests has had profound consequences for Dalit politics, fragmenting the Dalits in terms of their Hindu belonging or otherwise. In order to be ‘deserving’ beneficiaries of state largesse doled out to them as affirmative action, Dalits must opt to remain within the Hindu fold as the downgraded ‘scheduled castes’, while those Dalits who exercise agency by stepping out of Hinduism to convert to Islam or Christianity are ‘punished’ by being denied the mechanics of reparation of historical wrongs afforded to the ‘Hindu’ Dalits. Quite inexplicably, and rather arbitrarily, Dalit converts to Sikhism or Buddhism do not have to pay any penalty for their conversion. Such contradictory directives of the state machinery, Teltumbde argues, result in the segmentation of the Dalits and reduce their collective bargaining power, subtly incentivizing their cooption into Hindu social structures.
So, what do these ‘limitations’ of the Constitution make of the role of Ambedkar as the Constitution’s ‘architect’? For one thing, it is important to recognize that this intentional inflation of the part which he played (as mentioned earlier, he was only the Chairman of the Drafting Committee) was a clever ploy of those who wanted to load him with ‘the burden of [the] text’ (Teltumbde’s phrase) so as to put on him the responsibility of having framed the entire charter, with its credits as well as its debits. Teltumbde cautions his readers that it is important not to forget that, all things considered, it was the Congress Party’s ‘largesse’ which brought Ambedkar back to the Constituent Assembly (after the seat which he had won from Bengal became a portion of Pakistan after Partition) and it was Gandhi, Ambedkar’s inveterate opponent on caste matters, who recommended that he be appointed as the Chairperson of the Drafting Committee. Once he had entered the Constituent Assembly (as Congress nominee), he had no option but to become a party to decisions taken by vote.
However, person of conscience that he was, Ambedkar never shied away from admitting the compromises he had made in the process of seeing the Constitution come into effect. About his own contribution to this process, he was brutally candid:
People always keep on saying to me, ‘Oh, you are the maker of the Constitution.’ My answer is that I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did, much against my will.
He further elaborated:
Sir, my friends tell me that I have made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody.
To wear the mantle of a hero on this count, Ambedkar well knew, would be an act of bad faith.
Tapan Basu is former Professor, Department of English, University of Delhi, Delhi.