A MESSIAH OF THE SUPPRESSED AND THE OPPRESSED - III

V.SUNDARAM I.A.S.

Dr Ambedkar

‘Vishwakarma’ of the Indian Constitution

Dr Ambedkar will live in Indian History forever, not only as an unquestioned and unsurpassed Liberator of the oppressed and suppressed classes of India, but also as the ‘VISHWAKARMA’ of the Indian Constitution which came into force on 26th January, 1950.

Recently I was looking at the Constituent Assembly Debates relating to the Indian Constitution between September 1, 1947 and November 30, 1949.  When I re-read the speeches made by the stalwarts in the Constituent Assembly those days, I was transported to an ethereal world of surging sublime thoughts, feelings and emotions relating to India’s glorious past, degrading and disgraceful Italian-controlled present and tragically uncertain future.  The following quotation from Sir Winston Churchill flashed in my mind: ‘History like a flickering lamp, stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes and to kindle, with pale gleams, the passions of former days’.  Let me present the exciting story relating to the part that Dr. Ambedkar played as one of the makers of Modern India in his capacity as Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution between August 29, 1947 and November 26, 1949.

The Constituent Assembly passed the following Resolution on August 29, 1947.  “This Assembly resolves that a Committee consisting of:

1. Shri Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar

2. Shri N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar
3. The Honourable Dr. B.R.Ambedkar
4. Shri K.M. Munshi
5. Saiyed Mohamed Saadulla
6. Shri B. L. Mitter
7. Shri D.P. Khaitan

be appointed to scrutinise the Draft of the Text of the Constitution of India prepared by the Constitutional Adviser giving effect to the decisions taken already in the Assembly and including all matters, which are ancillary thereto, or, which have to be provided in such a Constitution, and to submit to the Assembly for consideration the Text of the Draft Constitution as revised by the Committee”.

After considerable discussion, the Draft, as amended and altered, was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949.  CERTAIN ARTICLES OF THE CONSTITUTION CAME INTO FORCE AT ONCE; THE REMAINING ARTICLES AND THE PREAMBLE CAME INTO FORCE ON 26TH JANUARY, 1950. 

 

What were the objects which the framers of the Constitution set out to achieve in their Draft Constitution?  What were the models to which they turned?  What were the pitfalls they tried to avoid?  Dr Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee, answered some of these questions when he moved that the Constituent Assembly should take the Draft Constitution into consideration in November 1949. The form in which Dr Ambedkar’s speech was cast and the popular Assembly to which it was addressed, made it difficult for him to give his analysis the kind of sharpness and precision, which he would certainly have given were he writing on the Draft Constitution. And yet as a Master of Law and Jurisprudence and above all, as a great National Leader wedded to the eternal causes of equity, natural justice, social justice, rule of law, liberty, equality and fraternity,  Dr. Ambedkar rose to Himalayan heights in giving a final concrete shape to our Constitution and breathed a new life into it forever.

 
 
 

In a historic speech in the Constituent Assembly in November 1949, Dr. Ambedkar listed several features of the Draft Constitution which mitigated the rigidity and legalism of federalism.  For the convenience of the general reader, I have replaced the references to the Articles of the Draft Constitution in Dr. Ambedkar’s speech on that occasion by references to the Articles as finally enacted in the Indian Constitution.  Dr Ambedkar referred to the following items:

1. The distribution of Legislative Power between the Union and the States, which gives to the Union, exclusive power to legislate in respect of matters contained in List I and a concurrent power to legislate in respect of matters contained in List III of Schedule VII (Article 246)

2. The Power given to Parliament to legislate on exclusively State subjects, namely,
     a. with respect to a matter in the State List in the national interest (Article 249)
     b. in respect of any matter in the State List if a proclamation of Emergency is in operation (Article 250)
     c. For two or more States by consent of those States (Article 252)




3. Provisions for proclamation of Emergency and the effect of such     proclamation (Articles 352 and 353)

4. Provisions included in the Constitution which are to be operative unless ‘provision is made to the contrary by Parliament by Law’ or words to the same   effect.

5. Provisions regarding the amendment of the Constitution.

Dr Ambedkar made it clear that the power under Articles 250, 352 and 353 of the Constitution can only be exercised by the President of India and requires the approval of both Houses of the Indian Parliament.  He summed it up precisely when he said ‘These provisions make the Indian Constitution both ‘Unitary as well as Federal’ according to the requirements of time and circumstances. In normal times, it is framed to work as a federal system.  But in times of war, it is so designed as to make it work as though it was a Unitary system’. 

According to Article 1(i) of the Constitution India is a Union of States.  In his capacity as Chairman of the Drafting Committee, Dr. Ambedkar saw to it that the word UNION was substituted for the word FEDERATION.  The Drafting Committee said that there were advantages in describing India as a ‘Union’, although its Constitution was federal in structure.  Amplifying this view in the Constituent Assembly, Dr Ambedkar said that the Unitary Government of South Africa was called a Union and so it was not contrary to usage to describe India as a Union.  Dr. Ambedkar made it clear that though India was to be a Federation, the Federation was not the result of an agreement by the States to join a Federation, and that the Federation, not being the result of an agreement, no State had the right to secede from it. The Federation was a Union because it was indissoluble. Again and again Dr Ambedkar emphasised the cardinal fact that the Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States. Kashmir Valley does not have the right to secede from the Indian Union as Ukraine seceded from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Quite unlike the cheap, corrupt, irresponsible, immoral, illegal pseudo-secular, anti-social and anti-national criminal politicians and Cabinet Ministers of today, Dr Ambedkar was an extraordinary man blessed with a transcendental moral vision and integrity. This will be clear from the brilliant and clairvoyant way in which he touched upon the controversial issue of equality in his final address to the Constituent Assembly.  Let us hear the bracing words of Dr. Ambedkar on that occasion: ‘I would not like to interpret but to illumine the scheme of the Equality Code. I remember the days when politically minded Indians resented the expression ‘the people of India’.  They preferred the expression ‘the Indian Nation’.  I am of opinion that in believing that we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion.  How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation?  The sooner we realized that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the word, the better for us.... For, fraternity can be a fact only when there is a nation.   Without fraternity, equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.’

I am shocked to see that most of the legal experts on the Indian Constitution and the historians have not taken note of a very stark fact that, it was Dr Ambedkar and Dr Ambedkar alone, who in a  single handed manner finalised the Draft of the Indian Constitution. This becomes clear from the speech of Shri T T Krishnamachari on behalf of the Scrutiny Committee, during the general debate in the Constituent Assembly, at the start of the second reading on November 5, 1948. It makes very sad reading and this by itself ought to give us all a sense of inner shame and loss of honour. 

Shri T T Krishnamachari said ‘At the same time, I do realise that that amount of attention that was necessary for the purpose of drafting a Constitution so important to us at this moment has not been given to it by the Drafting Committee.  The House is perhaps aware that of the seven (7) members nominated by YOU, one had resigned from the House and was replaced.  One died and was not replaced.  One was away in America and his place was not filled up and another person was engaged in State affairs and there was a void to that extent. One or two people were far away from Delhi and perhaps reasons of health did not permit them to attend.  So it happened ultimately that the burden of Drafting this Constitution fell on Dr Ambedkar and I have no doubt that we are grateful to him for achieving this task in a manner which is undoubtedly commendable.  But my point really is that the attention that was due to a matter like this has not been given to it by the Drafting Committee as a whole.... The point why I mention all these is that certain aspects of our Constitution have not had the amount of expert attention that was necessary, the amount of attention that could have been provided to it if a person like Shri. Gopalaswami Ayyangar or Shri Munshi or certain another persons had attended the meetings all through’.

THUS IT WILL BE CLEAR THAT NEHRU AND HIS GOVERNMENT DURING THAT PERIOD HAD NOTHING BUT UNCONCEALED CONTEMPT FOR THE SACRED PROCESS OF FORMULATION AND CREATION OF THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION.  NEHRU GAVE A HIGHER KNOCKDOWN PRIORITY TO HIS PRIVATE AFFAIRS WITH LADY EDWINA MOUNTBATTEN AT THAT TIME THAN TO THE AFFAIRS OF THE INDIAN STATE!

Dr Ambedkar was firmly of the view that A NATION MAY MAKE A CONSTITUTION, BUT A CONSTITUTION CANNOT MAKE A NATION.  He often expressed the view that the Constitution, viewed as a continuously operative Charter of Government, is not to be interpreted as demanding the impossible or the impracticable.  At the same time, the interpretation of Constitutional principles must not be too liberal. At the same time he was also pragmatic enough to say ‘We must remember that the machinery of Government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints’.  Dr Ambedkar’s  Constitutional philosophy can be generally summed up in these words: ‘Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are Constitutional.... The people of India have made the Constitution and they can unmake it.  It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will.  Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by Authority. The Constitution overrides a statute, but a statute, if consistent with a Constitution, overrides the ‘ Personal Law’ of Judges’.

It is a sad public fact that the Supreme Court of India today is more concerned with the Personal Law of ephemeral and transitory Judges than with the Permanent Law of the Constitution.

Dr. Ambedkar was the only statesman in India in 1940 who fully understood the sinister and evil anti-Hindu designs of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. It was 1940 that Dr. Ambedkar wrote his classic book “Pakistan or the Partition of India”. Dr. T. Hanuman Chowdary has rightly summed up as follows: "In this book Dr. Ambedkar analyzed and criticized the many sinister views and designs of the advocates of Pakistan, to be created by the Partition of India. It may be recalled that until 1944, not many Muslims of what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh were with the Muslim League. It was the Muslims of what is now India that were demanding the Partition of India and the creation of an Islamic State at that time".

DR. HANUMAN CHOWDARY'S PERCEPTION IS CORRECT AND EXACT. In the Elections to the Central Legislative Assembly and to the Legislative Assemblies/Councils in the Provinces in 1946, there were separate electorates for Muslims. The Congress under the Leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel and Azad fought the elections promising that India would not be divided. The Muslim League fought the elections demanding and promising that India would be divided and Pakistan would be created. Only 1.3 percent of the Muslims voted for the nationalist Muslim candidates put up by the Congress Party for the Central Legislative Assembly and only 4.67 percent voted for Congress Muslim for the Provincial Legislatures. In other words, it is the Muslims of what is now India that asserted that they were not part of the Indian Nation; they were a separate nation because they were Muslims and Pakistan should be carved out as a Muslim State.

The Muslim League of Jinnah launched the DIRECT ACTION _ civil war _ for creation of Pakistan on the 16th of August 1946. Sir H.S.Suhrawardy was the Muslim League Chief Minister of Bengal Province at that time and acting like a pre-meditating criminal he declared holiday for the police for two days and sponsored a pogrom of massacre of Hindus in Calcutta city and its neighbourhood, which triggered supportive and retaliatory killings in many parts of Bengal and Bihar. As planned by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and H.S. Suhrawardy, the Hindus were frightened and Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and all the Congressmen were frightened into agreement for Partition. That this would be inevitable was clearly foreseen by Dr. Ambedkar in his book on Pakistan published in 1940. I am giving below a few excerpts from this book which speak for themselves:

"Islam is a closed corporation of Muslims by Muslims for Muslims. For those who are outside the Corporation there is nothing but contempt and enmity. The second defect of Islam is that it is a system of social self-Government and that is incompatible with local self-Government, because the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his, but on the faith to which he belongs. Wherever there is a rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his Motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin. That probably is the reason why Maulana Mohammed Ali, a great Indian but a true Muslim, preferred to be buried in Jerusalem rather than in India. Let us also recall what Maulana Mohammed Ali, at the height of his comradeship with Mahatma Gandhi, during the Muslims Khilafat Movement in 1921 to which Gandhiji committed the secular Congress, said: `However pure Mr. Gandhi's character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of religion, inferior to any Musalman, even though he be without character.' This statement created a flutter all over India. Mohammed Ali was asked whether the sentiments attributed to him were true. Mr Mohammed Ali, without any hesitation or compunction replied: “Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Musalman to be better than Mr. Gandhi”.(Dr. Ambedkar's `Pakistan', Page 343)

Dr. Ambedkar wrote thus about the future Pakistan in 1944: "Rightly or wrongly, most people suspect that Pakistan is pregnant with mischief. They think that it has two motives, one immediate, the other ultimate. The immediate motive, it is said, is to join with the neighbouring Muslim countries and form a Muslim Federation. The ultimate motive is for the Muslim Federation to invade Hindustan and conquer or rather re-conquer the Hindu and reestablish Muslim Empire in India. Nobody can fathom the mind of the Muslims and reach the real motives that lie behind their demand for Pakistan". Today, the Jihadis in Pakistan say “Haske liye Pakistan, Ladke lenge Hindustan”.

Dr. Ambedkar was the first statesman who suggested that there should be an exchange of minorities between the two States of Pakistan and India by common agreement and in an orderly fashion all the Muslims of India should go to Pakistan and non-Muslims of Pakistan should come to India. Most pseudo-secular Politicians and anti-Hindu Historians in India today posed to be deliberately ignorant about the patent fact that Dr. Ambedkar even drafted the treaty for exchange of population that should be signed by the two new States in July 1947. He sighted the example of such large scale transfer of population between Greece and Bulgaria which was on a voluntary basis and that between Greece and Turkey, on a compulsory basis. Dr. Ambedkar clinched the issue and wrote sharply “Nobody can deny that transfer of minorities has worked, has been tried and found workable... What succeeded elsewhere may well be expected to succeed in India”.

Dr. Ambedkar was a great patriot who was passionately concerned about the well-being and safety of India. While that political eunuch, murky and shaky somersaulting Jawaharlal Nehru stopped the Army from re-conquering all of Kashmir from Pakistan in 1948 and allowed the Chinese to overrun Tibet in his mindless Hindi-Chini-bhai-bhai euphoria in 1962.

Dr. Ambedkar warned against the danger of Islamic and communist aggression and even suggested that India should join the pro-western SEATO (South-East-Asian Treaty Organization) when he said in 1954 "The Prime Minister Nehru has practically helped the Chinese to bring their border down to the Indian border. Looking at all these things, it would be an act of levity not to believe that India, if it is not exposed to aggression right now, will be exposed to aggression and that aggression might well be committed by people who are always in the habit of committing aggression.... Nehru's foreign policy has made India a friendless country.... Nehru had bungled the Kashmir issue and had sheltered men who were dishonest. Today India is encircled by a kind of United States of Islam on one side and on the other side Russia and China in a combination for the conquest of Asia". Dr. Ambedkar was proved mathematically, exactly and precisely correct on this core in 1962 and 1965. In 1962 India was humiliated by China. The shameless Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru did not have the decency to resign from his post. In 1965, Pakistan, armed to the teeth with American weapons, made an armed bid for capturing New Delhi and flying the flag of Islam on the ramparts of the Red Fort. Thanks to the bravery and valour of the Indian Armed Forces under the inspiring leadership of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, India was able to throw out the Pakistani aggressors.

In the evening of his life Dr. Ambedkar decided not to die as a Hindu though born as one. He was approached by the greatest and the mightiest and the richest in Islam and Christianity asking him to convert to their religion. AS A GREAT PATRIOT-STATESMAN HE REFUSED TO CONVERT TO ISLAM SAYING THAT THE FRATERNITY IN IT IS CONFINED ONLY TO THE ‘BELIEVERS’ AND THAT IF ANY ONE CONVERTED TO CHRISTIANITY, HE CEASED TO BE AN INDIAN. Thus he spurned both Islam and Christianity and chose a religion of the soil of Bharat, Buddhism, whose appeal is universal.

Dr. Ambedkar said emphatically that Buddhism is our indigenous religion which does not bring with it extra-territorial loyalties. Let us hear his inspiring and patriotic words uttered on that occasion: "I will choose only the least harmful way for the country. And that is the greatest benefit I am conferring on the country by embracing Buddhism; for Buddhism is a part and parcel of Bharatiya Culture. I have taken care that my conversion will not harm the tradition of the culture and history of this land."

During the last 30 years, the RSS has gone all out to applaud Dr. Ambedkar as an eternal and shining symbol of Hindu solidarity and Hindu integration. During his visit to Europe in 1995, the RSS Sarsanghachalak Professor Rajendra Singh at a celebration of Dr. Ambedkar's 104th Birth Anniversary hosted by the Friends of India Society International in London had said, “Sangh celebrated the Birth Centenary of late Dr. Ambedkar 4 years ago.... We also published a small life and work sketch of Dr. Ambedkar, outlining his key achievements. We enlisted Dr. Ambedkar in the RSS programme of `character-building' by presenting his life story as an inspiring example. We could distribute 20 million copies of that small booklet throughout the country.”

Firebrand Dalit Leader and Poet Namdeo Dhasal

shaking hands with RSS Sarsanghchalak Sri K.S. Sudharshanji

in New Delhi in September 2006.

A great moment in the recent history of this noble effort to bring all the Hindus of India together as an integral part of the larger and more glorious Bharat Hindu Parivar was reached when in September 2006 firebrand Dalit poet Namdeo Dhasal and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Chief K Sudarshanji came together on the same public platform at a book release function in New Delhi.

 

The internationally renowned poet and Dalit leader Namdeo Dhasal is the founder President of Maharashtra's Dalit Panther Party. This is a path-breaking and magnificent effort by the Sangh to publicly reach out to the Dalit leaders in India. The psuedo-secular mafia of mass media in India is continuing to suppress and black out from public view the solid fact that the RSS and Sangh Parivar at large have done astonishing amount of work to reduce the Caste differences in Bharat. Though I do not belong officially to the `inglorious' (!!) Sangh Parivar or to the ‘glorious’ (!!!) sycophantic Sonia Congress Parivar, yet I can say with certainty that the Sangh Parivar in its 85 years history has done more to solve the caste problem in Bharat than everything else combined during the last one century. More than 60,000 daily shakhas are nothing but an experiment in removing those caste differences by making people of every caste sit together, sing together, play together and eat together. That is why they are called communal by the shameless Congress Party and other equally despicable pseudo-secular anti-national and anti-social political parties like the DMK, RJD, SP, BSP, CPM, CPI, etc!