BY DEVIKA C.MEHTA
LONG BEACH, CA - The 15th Annual Uka and Nalini Solanki Foundation Lecture at the Yadunandan Center for India Studies at California State University, Long Beach on April 25 saw a brilliant precision of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s life and struggles by keynote speaker Dr Ananya Vajpeyi after she was introduced by moderator...
LONG BEACH, CA - The 15th Annual Uka and Nalini Solanki Foundation Lecture at the Yadunandan Center for India Studies at California State University, Long Beach on April 25 saw a brilliant precision of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s life and struggles by keynote speaker Dr Ananya Vajpeyi after she was introduced by moderator...
Dr Tim Keirn, Director, to the audience.Elegantly draped in a green sari, Vajpeyi is an Associate Professor and Fellow with the Center for Developing Societies in New Delhi as well as a current Fellow with the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. She also writes regularly for The Hindu and contributes to Foreign Affairs, World Policy Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is also currently working on a biography of Dr BR Ambedkar (1891-1956).
Presenting her lecture, Vajpeyi lined up details of Ambedkar to a gathering of nearly 250 attendees including students, teachers, and other guests who find ‘Baba Saheb’s’ journey interesting and thought-provoking.
Elaborating on the topic - “The Difficulty of Being Equal: Ambedkar and his struggles with India”, Vajpeyi presented a detailed history of the ‘the iconic leader’, who questioned and contested the caste system throughout his life.
She went on to explain how he sought to end it through many different routes: intellectual argumentation, mass politics, scholarly critique, systematic legislation and finally, religious conversion to Buddhism.
“Though he was able to surround himself with ideas of non-violence, liberation and even forms of fraternity, it was the issue of equality that brought him face to face with many of the ills in society. Indian society was not ready to adopt, adapt and accept and arguably this is true even today, 70 years after India’s independence from British rule. What makes equality so elusive despite electoral democracy and equal citizenship and how Ambedkar dealt with the issue?”
She wove her lecture through the story and actions of r Ambedkar, who she finds as an interesting and a complex thinker. She called him a patron of the lowest of the low (The untouchables) in the caste system.
“Out of all political leaders, he was the most educated and the first person from his community to earn a double doctorate, yet failed to become a mass leader unlike his many other counterparts. His ways of work were very different from Mahatma Gandhi and others, due to which he opted out of several mass movements.”
Transporting the audience to a pre-independent India, she explained, “Dr Ambedkar took the grievances of the Dalits to court, and brought them justice. He organized marches demanding Dalit’s rights to drinking water from public resources, and their right to enter temples. He claimed that political reform without social reform is a farce.”
“He tried to get separate electorates for the depressed classes. The British granted this demand, but Ambedkar was countered by Gandhi, who felt strongly that this would divide society in future generations and prevent the political and social unity of Hindus. Gandhi’s fast unto death protest forced Ambedkar in 1932 to sign the Pune Pact, in which the demand for separate elections was replaced with reservation practices, which further miffed him.”
“Disgusted with the malpractices in Indian society, at the Yeola Conversion Conference in 1935, he stated famously- I was born as a Hindu but will not die as a Hindu; he later exhorted his followers to leave Hinduism and join another religion.”
Then turning a leaf from post-independent India, she further stated, “When he was invited by Congress to serve as the nation’s first Law Minister, he soon drafted India’s new Constitution involving Article 11 that abolished untouchability in every form, but knew that this will be a difficult process.”
During the fifties, he slowly drifted away from politics and started writing books addressing the moral void Mahatma’s assassination had created in Indian politics. A believer of non-violence, satyagraha, and dhamma, he then took to the ideas of Buddhism and converted to the religion in the mid 1950s. Six weeks later, he perished leaving a void forever”
She then quoted his famous words- “Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny. Therefore today it is important to try and engage the different aspects of his thought.”
She then went on to provide a deposition of atrocities against Dalits in India that still happen in the name of politics and minorities.
Vajpeyi argued that sixty years since Ambedkar, caste and inequality in Indian society continues to remain a part of the social reality. “Today, it is impertinent to understand that formation of an equal society is the only way forward.”
Later, a lively Q& A session followed where she debated several burning issues of relevance to contemporary India.
Ending an hour-long session, Vajpeyi concluded, discrimination can come into existence anywhere, for instance, racism did not end in US with Barack Obama becoming the President of America.
When IJ asked her to elaborate, she replied, “Racism in US continues to thrive on streets, against Indians in the form of hate crime. So much so that the American dream has taken a complete hit; now Indian families don’t want to send their kids to America for education. Indians even today are facing the heat and difficulty of being equal. So, it is a similar situation everywhere. Though, what happens in the next four years here remains to be seen.”
Presenting her lecture, Vajpeyi lined up details of Ambedkar to a gathering of nearly 250 attendees including students, teachers, and other guests who find ‘Baba Saheb’s’ journey interesting and thought-provoking.
Elaborating on the topic - “The Difficulty of Being Equal: Ambedkar and his struggles with India”, Vajpeyi presented a detailed history of the ‘the iconic leader’, who questioned and contested the caste system throughout his life.
She went on to explain how he sought to end it through many different routes: intellectual argumentation, mass politics, scholarly critique, systematic legislation and finally, religious conversion to Buddhism.
“Though he was able to surround himself with ideas of non-violence, liberation and even forms of fraternity, it was the issue of equality that brought him face to face with many of the ills in society. Indian society was not ready to adopt, adapt and accept and arguably this is true even today, 70 years after India’s independence from British rule. What makes equality so elusive despite electoral democracy and equal citizenship and how Ambedkar dealt with the issue?”
She wove her lecture through the story and actions of r Ambedkar, who she finds as an interesting and a complex thinker. She called him a patron of the lowest of the low (The untouchables) in the caste system.
“Out of all political leaders, he was the most educated and the first person from his community to earn a double doctorate, yet failed to become a mass leader unlike his many other counterparts. His ways of work were very different from Mahatma Gandhi and others, due to which he opted out of several mass movements.”
Transporting the audience to a pre-independent India, she explained, “Dr Ambedkar took the grievances of the Dalits to court, and brought them justice. He organized marches demanding Dalit’s rights to drinking water from public resources, and their right to enter temples. He claimed that political reform without social reform is a farce.”
“He tried to get separate electorates for the depressed classes. The British granted this demand, but Ambedkar was countered by Gandhi, who felt strongly that this would divide society in future generations and prevent the political and social unity of Hindus. Gandhi’s fast unto death protest forced Ambedkar in 1932 to sign the Pune Pact, in which the demand for separate elections was replaced with reservation practices, which further miffed him.”
“Disgusted with the malpractices in Indian society, at the Yeola Conversion Conference in 1935, he stated famously- I was born as a Hindu but will not die as a Hindu; he later exhorted his followers to leave Hinduism and join another religion.”
Then turning a leaf from post-independent India, she further stated, “When he was invited by Congress to serve as the nation’s first Law Minister, he soon drafted India’s new Constitution involving Article 11 that abolished untouchability in every form, but knew that this will be a difficult process.”
During the fifties, he slowly drifted away from politics and started writing books addressing the moral void Mahatma’s assassination had created in Indian politics. A believer of non-violence, satyagraha, and dhamma, he then took to the ideas of Buddhism and converted to the religion in the mid 1950s. Six weeks later, he perished leaving a void forever”
She then quoted his famous words- “Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny. Therefore today it is important to try and engage the different aspects of his thought.”
She then went on to provide a deposition of atrocities against Dalits in India that still happen in the name of politics and minorities.
Vajpeyi argued that sixty years since Ambedkar, caste and inequality in Indian society continues to remain a part of the social reality. “Today, it is impertinent to understand that formation of an equal society is the only way forward.”
Later, a lively Q& A session followed where she debated several burning issues of relevance to contemporary India.
Ending an hour-long session, Vajpeyi concluded, discrimination can come into existence anywhere, for instance, racism did not end in US with Barack Obama becoming the President of America.
When IJ asked her to elaborate, she replied, “Racism in US continues to thrive on streets, against Indians in the form of hate crime. So much so that the American dream has taken a complete hit; now Indian families don’t want to send their kids to America for education. Indians even today are facing the heat and difficulty of being equal. So, it is a similar situation everywhere. Though, what happens in the next four years here remains to be seen.”
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