The Essential Ambedkar: Review

The Essential Ambedkar: Review

FPJ BureauUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 08:56 AM IST
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The Essential Ambedkar                                                   

Edited by: Dr. Bhalchandra Mungekar

Publisher: Rupa

Pages: 440

Price: Rs. 395

Contribution of Ambedkar in making of modern India

Dr. Bhalchandra Mungekar is an economist and former Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University. He was also a member of Rajya Sabha and member of Planning Commission of India. Though he specializes in agriculture economics, he is also a political scientist. He was part of various progressive movements. He is highly influenced by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Gautam Buddha, Ram Manohar Lohia, Karl Marx and their social-political thoughts. He has written number of books on the thoughts of Ambedkar, Buddha, Jawaharlal Nehru etc. Recently, he has edited The Essential Ambedkar. The book consist finest extracts from Ambedkar’s writings and speeches. It took him seven years to put together finest extracts of Ambedkar in around 450 pages from 17,500 pages of the corpus of Ambedkar’s writings and speeches.

Dr. Ambedkar was a social reformer and a prolific writer. Ambedkar was one of the tallest and finest yet misunderstood intellectual-political leaders. It is not easy to put Ambedkar’s opinions, comments in a couple of hundred pages. Finding finest extracts, quotes and putting it into a book is surely a herculean task. Many years ago, the Government of Maharahtra published the collected writings and speeches of Dr. Ambedkar. It also helped Mungekar.

Ambedkar is known as the principal architect of the Constitution of India. He was against all kinds of discrimination. Ambedkar fought for the rights of backward classes and untouchables. He fought for womens’ rights and also for the tillers. The Constitution of India is a unique as it talks of socialism, secularism and emancipation of downtrodden.

Everyone knows how Abraham Lincoln defined democracy. He defined democracy as ‘a government of the people, by the people and for the people. On 22nd December 1952, Ambedkar in a speech in Poona said,” I define democracy in a different way, in a much more concrete way, I think. My definition of democracy is ‘a form and a method of government whereby revolutionary changes in the economic and social life of the people are brought without bloodshed”.

The chapter The Challenges before the Parliamentary Democracy in India and their Remedies gives details of what parliamentary democracy meant for Ambedkar. He said that democracy always change its form. Democracy is not always the same. Today’s democracy is quite different from the Athenian Democracy. Ambedkar also said democracy also always undergoes changes in purpose.

As we are going through major elections it is interesting to know how much importance Ambedkar gave it to the Independent Election Commission. He told Constituent Assembly,” It was unanimously resolved by the members of the Fundamental Rights Committee that the greatest safeguard for purity of election, for fairness in elections, was to take away the matter from the hands of the executive authority and to hand it over to some independent authority. Although Clause 23 does not specifically refer to the details of the scheme that was considered in the Fundamental Rights Committee, I should like to state to the House that the scheme that was in the minds of the members of the Fundamental Rights Committee was that there would be Central Commission appointed by the President in order to deal with the elections throughout India”.

In the chapter On the Making of the Indian Constitution, Mungekar, narrates Ambedkar in detail. Ambedkar explained in detail how Indian Parliamentary system of Democracy is different from Presidential system. He said,” Under the Presidential system of America, the president is the chief head of the executive. The administration is vested in him. Under the Draft Constitution the president occupies the same position as the King under the English Constitution. He is the head of the state but not of the executive. He represents the nation but does not rule the nation.” On Rights of minorities he said that no minority shall be precluded from establishing any educational institution which such minority may wish to establish. Ambedkar also stated that whenever a state decide to provide aid to schools or other educational institutions maintained by the minority, they shall not discriminate in the matter of giving grant on the basis of religion, community or language.

Society based on social justice and equality was Ambedkar’s mission. Caste system and untouchability are inseperable. Untouchability is an extension of caste system. Ambedkar said,” The real remedy for breaking caste is intermarriage”.

The book is a must read for people who want to understand Ambedkar’s thoughts on caste and untouchability, on annihilation of caste, philosophy of the Hindu religion, on the making of the Constitution, the challenges before parliamentary democracy, thoughts on linguistic states, Buddha and Karl Marx, the emancipation of women, thoughts on Pakistan or the partition of India.

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