DR. Ambedkar drafted India’s Constitution to protect the rights of Indian citizens, especially of oppressed sections and minorities in an unequal society. He stressed that a great effort would be needed to turn India into a real democracy, with real equality, in which ‘Constitutional morality’ would be the guiding principle of society.

Dr Ambedkar had mobilised people to burn the Manusmriti, as the fountainhead of obnoxious anti-dalit and anti-women views and practices that continue to govern society.

In contrast, the RSS wanted the Indian Constitution to be based on Manusmriti! The RSS was also opposed to any hint of equality and rights for women.

  • During the drafting and adoption of India’s Constitution, the RSS wanted Manusmriti as the constitution of the “Hindu nation” of their dreams. Saffron brigade’s hero Savarkar wrote:

“The worst about the new constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bharatiya about it…Manusmriti is that scripture which is most worship-able after Vedas for our Hindu Nation and which from ancient times has become the basis of our culture-customs, thought and practice. This book for centuries has codified the spiritual and divine march of our nation. Even today the rules which are followed by crores of Hindus in their lives and practice are based on Manusmriti. Today Manusmriti is Hindu Law”.

(VD Savarkar, ‘Women in Manusmriti’ in Savarkar Samagar
(collection of Savarkar’s writings in Hindi), vol.4, Prabhat, Delhi, p. 416)

  • After the secular-democratic Constitution was adopted on Nov 26, 1949, the RSS English organ, Organizer, in an editorial on Nov 30, 1949, complained:

“But in our constitution there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing”.

Who was the Organiser referring to when it claimed that the Manusmriti was admired the world over? It was Ambedkar who, in his writings, had revealed the ideological link between the Manusmriti which had inspired the German philosopher Nietzsche, who in turn inspired Hitler. The RSS leaders were in turn inspired by Hitler and Mussolini.

  • Even when our democratic-secular Constitution was in force, RSS continued denigrating India’s Constitution. How loyal the RSS is to the Constitution of India can be known by the following statement of Golwalkar:

“Our Constitution too is just a cumbersome and heterogeneous piecing together of various articles from various Constitutions of the Western countries. It has absolutely nothing which can be called our own. Is there a single word of reference in its guiding principles as to what our national mission is and what our keynote in life is? No!” (MS Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1996, p. 238)

  • Ambedkar drafted the Hindu Code Bill, attempting to introduce reforms in Hindu personal laws which would ensure inheritance and other rights for women. The RSS was part of the Anti Hindu Code Bill Committee. Golwalkar declared that granting of rights to women would “cause great psychological upheaval” to men and “lead to mental disease and distress”. (see Paola Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologues, p.124)

  • “On the 11th of December, 1949, the RSS organised a public meeting at the Ramlila grounds in Delhi, where speaker after speaker condemned the bill. One called it ‘an atom bomb on Hindu society’… The next day a group of RSS workers marched on the assembly buildings, shouting ‘Down with Hindu code bill’… The protesters burnt effigies of the prime minister and Dr Ambedkar…” (Ramchandra Guha, ‘Bhagwat’s Ambedkar’, Indian Express, December 10, 2015)

 

BJP’s Mann Ki Baat on Caste and Constitution

TIME and again, BJP and RSS leaders have made statements revealing their real attitudes towards caste and the Constitutional rights of the oppressed castes. Madhu Mishra, leader of the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh Mahila Morcha was suspended from the BJP for her remarks at a Brahmin Mahasammelan (Brahmin Conference) calling for a war on the Constitutional rights of Dalits. While BJP was forced to suspend her, the fact remains that her words reveal the BJP’s and RSS’s anti-Dalit, anti-Constitution ideology. She had said “Aaj tumhare sar par baithkar, samvidhan ke sahaare jo raaj kar rahe hain, yaad karo, who kabhi tumhare joote saaf karte the, aaj tumhare huzoor ho gayen hain. Kyun? Hum bant gaye hain, hum vibhajit ho gaye hain. Mere chhote bhai Satish Gautam (BJP candidate from Aligarh, also a Brahmin) ko shayad aaj se 40 saal baad ka Bharat dikh raha hai ki tumhare bacche kahin phir ghulam na ho jayen, kahin phir huzoor na kehne lagen unhen, jinhen tum apne barabar me bithana pasand nahin karte. Utho, jaago, jab tak apne adhikar le na lo, tab tak Sathish Gautam ki tarj par yuddh karte raho.” (Remember, those who are ruling over you with the help of the Constitution, once used to polish your shoes. Now, they are your masters. This is because we have become divided. My younger brother Satish Gautam (BJP candidate from Aligarh, also a Brahmin) can perhaps see and India 40 years from now, when heaven forbid your children will become slaves once again, will have to call those ‘huzoor’ (Sir) whom you do not like even to have sit next to you. Wake up, arise, wage war like Sathish Gautam until you achieve your rights.).”

RSS and BJP leaders have often made statements against castebased reservations. In January 2016, senior BJP leader and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said that Ambedkar had backed a “rethink on caste based reservations” and that “we have done nothing” in this direction. In Raipur in August 2015, RSS leader MG Vaidya called to abolish caste-based quotas, claiming that ‘caste has now become obsolete’. The RSS has recently adopted a ‘resolution on social justice’, ostensibly affirming reservations as necessary for social justice. But they have added a rider: ‘affluent sections should not get reservation benefits.’ Now, they have yet to clarify what they mean by ‘affluent sections’? Are they just saying that Jats should not demand reservations? Or are they hinting that ‘creamy layer’ among SC/STs should not get reservation?

RSS outfits in the US campaign to delete mentions of caste-based discrimination from US textbook chapters on India. And RSS outfits in the UK campaign against a UK law on caste based reservations. In the last UK Parliamentary elections, the Conservative Party candidate in Harrow East, a constituency with a large Indian community, campaigned specifically on a promise to ‘work with the Dharmic community’ (sic) to overturn legislation outlawing caste discrimination which was recently passed in Britain after a campaign by Dalit organisations. Leaflets issued by a Sangh Parivar group urged their supporters to vote Conservative and vote for Cameron to overturn the anti-caste legislation.

BJP’s Bihar leader and Modi Government Minister Giriraj Singh, had called the Ranveer Sena chief Brahmeshwar Mukhiya ‘Bihar’s Gandhi.’ Brahmeshwar is notorious as the ‘Butcher of Bihar’s Dalits’, whose Ranveer Sena massacred Dalit and oppressed caste women and children in the 1990s.

Responding to the Haryana Government’s failure to protect Dalit kids from being burnt alive in Faridabad, Modi Cabinet Minister VK Singh said, “If someone throws stones at dogs, will you hold the Government responsible?”

Modi’s Ministers Bandaru Dattaraya, VK Singh, Smriti Irani and Venkaiah Naidu have all called Rohith Vemula ‘anti-national,’ and have implied that he lied about his identity as a Dalit son of a Dalit mother. For all these Ministers, it is clear that Ambedkarite activism is ‘anti-national’. Rohith’s father abandoned his mother and their children when he realized that she is Dalit; yet the BJP Government insists that Rohith must be known by his anti-Dalit father not his courageous Dalit mother.

“Hamare shastron ke hisab se gau ka jeevan bahumoolya hai” (“According to our scriptures, the life of a cow is of immeasurable value”) – this is what VHP leader Acharya Giriraj Kishore, in 2002, said as he defended the VHP’s lynching of five dalit youths in Jhajjar, who were accused of killing a cow. Today, the BJP tries to appeal to Dalits to share in their hatred against Muslims who are lynched for ‘killing cows.’ The truth is that the sanghi brigade organizes the lynching and murder of both Dalits and Muslims – on the pretext of ‘killing cows.’ It also organizes fake rape charges against Dalit and Muslim men who have eloped with caste Hindu women, beating and torturing the women till they make false statements against their lovers or husbands.