Taking on Gandhi

During India’s struggle to break free of British colonial rule, Mohandas Gandhi dominated the political stage. But there were two other important leaders who challenged Gandhi’s hegemony over the independence movement. One, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, became the founder of Pakistan. The other, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, won crucial victories in the emancipation of India’s oppressed untouchables, making them beneficiaries of what is today the world’s largest program of affirmative action for education, jobs and political office.

His achievement was stunning. Born in 1891, Ambedkar was himself an untouchable, the 14th child of a poor school teacher. He faced extreme prejudice growing up in western India: in school, he had to sit separately from high-born students. During his college education in Bombay, a Sanskrit professor refused to teach an outcaste the language of Hindu scriptures. Ambedkar compensated by becoming one of the most highly educated Indians of his time. After the British left in 1947, Ambedkar helped draft the newly independent nation’s constitution and piloted legislation banning untouchability. He grew disillusioned with the slow pace of Hindu reform, however, resigned from the government and, shortly before his death in 1956, converted to Buddhism along with thousands of his followers.

This dramatic life, marked by audacious leaps and deep disappointments, great statesmanship and eventual political marginalization, is natural material for a bio-pic. Though there have been major international movies about Gandhi and Jinnah, Ambedkar has been ignored. Indian filmmaker Jabbar Patel has redressed that neglect with Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar (that’s what his followers call him), an exhaustive three-hour-long English-language docu-drama, with a moving and memorable lead performance by south Indian actor Mammootty.

The tussle between Ambedkar and Gandhi for the leadership of the untouchables takes up a good part of the film. The problem was more than just a clash of personal ambitions. Gandhi was a conservative reformer against untouchability, but he valued the Hindu caste system and opposed inter-caste marriages until two years before his 1948 assassination. Ambedkar, by contrast, wanted radical change. He believed that untouchables could not be emancipated until the caste system was altogether destroyed. “There will be outcastes as long as there are castes,” he declared.

The pair’s greatest conflict occurred in 1932 when, thanks to Ambedkar’s lobbying, the British agreed to grant communal electorates to untouchables separate from the Hindus. Gandhi went on a fast in a Pune prison opposing that decision, which he saw as a division of Hindu voters. But Ambedkar bargained hard, and the Mahatma agreed to a historic compromiseinstead of separate electorates, a specified number of seats in provincial and national legislative bodies were reserved exclusively for untouchables, a reservation system that is still used in India to ensure a voice for untouchables in India’s parliament.

After his death Ambedkar was all but forgotten, and the political party faded in significance. But the 1990s saw an extraordinary revival of interest in the great untouchable leader. India’s 160 million former untouchables (who now call themselves Dalits, or “the oppressed”) have become more politically aware and assertive thanks to education and government jobs, and Ambedkar has been resurrected as their rallying symbol. Patel’s film on Ambedkar is drawing large Dalit audiences, and the screenings are like political carnivals. The audience identifies completely with the hero, cheers him wildly at every opportunity and hurls insults at his opponentsespecially Gandhi. Many watch the film with tears in their eyes.

In a corner of New Delhi’s Parliament compound stands an oversized bronze statue of Ambedkar. In one hand he holds a copy of India’s constitution (the one he helped write); the forefinger of the other points toward parliament. Beyond parliament lies President House, occupied for the first time by a Dalit, K.R. Narayanan, who rose from a poor outcaste family in Kerala to hold the highest office in the land. Every Dalit who goes to see Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar will no doubt walk away with the hope that one day his life too will be transformed.