Amit Shah’s comments on Ambedkar: They want to turn the clock back

But the real story is not that of polarised politics, or the competitive claims to social justice — the roll-call of achievements and recriminations fuelling TV debates. History is well witness to the rough ride of social justice in recent memory, of those who made laws for equity and those who resisted. While the upholders of old social orders are now being exposed, new history books also expunge caste references in order to shield them. The real story is actually about a lingering mindset, more pervasive and more upsetting than we think, which makes remarks such as these slip through.

The god analogy is an appropriate one. In ancient India, the glories of which many invoke, there was joint sovereignty between the king and the deity over land and its people. This supreme alliance, one complementing the other, allowed the exclusionary social system both a divine and administrative sanction. One can argue that the current regime, through its recent consecrations, is implicated in a similar old-world revival. For the conquering rulers, the deity represented the fulcrum of the relationship between the protector and the protected; its absence would serve to invalidate his triumphalisms. If cracks emerged, since no system can be perfectly rigid, the symbiosis was reinforced.

Historically, the Dalits, the “outcastes”, were coerced into this ancient arrangement, and without ever having the benefit of “darshan”: Looking at the deity in the eye and seeking blessings. In fact, their mere presence was a defilement. The search for alternate gods continued and the 16th-century cobbler-mystic Ravidas, whose devotional yet irreverent verses braved the minefield of caste, struck a chord with the changing times. Many were also included in the Guru Granth Sahib. But it was only in the 20th century, when the self-affirming need for community gods and heroes became acute, that Ravidas got firmly entrenched in Dalit consciousness. Decolonisation and democracy threw more icons, this time political actors involved in both social justice and nation-building. Among the many notables were Jagjivan Ram, who rose to become Deputy Prime Minister, and B R Ambedkar, under whom India’s Constitution, its most sacred document, was penned. The latter is the icon at the centre of debate.

Here were icons who had earned their divine pedestals, who had had near-impossible achievements, and for their followers, managed to squeeze water from a stone. If anything, this divination is not merely performative, it becomes a form of ritualistic insurgency — a time to reboot privileges, force equity and compel social change. In the old order of kings and priests, divination could only be affirmed by its negation at its polar end. Dalit worship of its own idols not only subverts this idea but offers disassociated alternatives. For the vanguards of the status quo, this idea is unthinkable. And far too many lurk among us.

Reading tea leaves is not necessary. Comments like these will continue to de-privilege chosen icons and as a result, de-historicise their loyalists. At the core of this debate is the scourge of modern India, the caste system — the greatest betrayal of humanity ever conceived by man.

The writer is national spokesperson, Indian National Congress