Arundhati Roy’s Gandhi and Ambedkar: Issues of Mediation

Arundhati Roy’s Gandhi and Ambedkar: Issues of Mediation

Arundhati Roy’s longer than text introduction to B.R Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste has become an instant success in the book market and soon invited both biting criticism and venerating praises. Roy’s critique of Gandhi has been interpreted as untimely because a small section of Indian people has started glorifying Godse, the assassin of Gandhi and the fascists of the country are about to seize power and sabotage the constitution. Roy juxtaposed Ambedkar against Gandhi and missed the real rival of Gandhi that was Godse and the ideology of Hindutva. Gandhi’s patronising approach to the Dalits and his stance against Communal Award along with his untoward remarks about the black in South Africa are serious mistakes committed by the mahathma. There is no scope for contention regarding Gandhi’s anti-modernity that deprived women of individuality, vilified industry, infringed personal freedom in matters like drinking alcohol, and foregrounded sanatana dharma in Indian politics. Ambedkar’s own fierce critique of Gandhi that produced texts like Beware of Gandhi and What Gandhi and the Congress did to the Untouchables, Mr. Gandhi and the emancipation of the Untouchables, not to mention scores of speeches and press statements, exposed the ideological follies of Gandhi.

The spine of Roy’s critique of Gandhi is that, Gandhi was a moderate and Ambedkar repudiated the very idea of a moderate Hindu on the ground that a Hindu is essentially fanatic. She argues that Ambedkar’s project was to destabilize the moderates, but he never targeted the extremists. This distorted interpretation reaches the point of surreptitiously legitimizing Godse by saying that the assassin and the assassinated upheld the same text Gita. In this logic, Trotsky’s murder can be justified on the ground that Das Capital inspired both the murdered and the murdered.

Her own autobiographical statement “My father was a Hindu, a Brahmo…I grew up with my mother in a Syrian Christian family in Ayemenem, a small village in communist-ruled Kerala” (12) is both a domineering statement about her lineage, and the remarks about Kerala, with a hidden sarcasm against the communists (that she started in her novel and took a short-cut at the cost of valorising the extreme left to decentre the left) torpedoes her credentials as an anti-Brahminical intellectual.

The dalit intellectuals of Kerala, especially K.K Baburaj, O.K Santhosh and many youngsters questioned Roy’s right to introduce Ambedkar because many Dalit intellectuals proved their scholarship in the field of Ambedkar studies. M.S.S. Pandian, one of the most remarkable intellectuals in the field of cultural studies, an intellectual belonging to dalit community raised doubts about the credentials of S. Anand, the publisher who once supported the anti-reservation agitation in his student days. The focal point of this kind of criticism is the issue of mediation. Dalits in India no longer needs mediators, or adopted children because they have created their own subjectivity, agency and given birth to plenty of children to speak for themselves. Should we see this introduction as a lesson in book marketing is the remaining question?

Reference

Ambedkar-Annihilation of Caste, Mr.Gandhi and the Emanciaption of the Untouchables.

Arundhati Roy-Doctor and the Saint

Raj Mohan Gandhi-(“Independence and Social Justice: TheAmbedkar–Gandhi Debate,” EPW, 11                                                                                                                                                              April,2015.