Ambedkar was prescient indeed! I'd never read that speech and learned a lot. Lots of lessons the world could pay heed to.
These lines were especially important and a warning against forces that seek to destroy the most important institutions in democracies everywhere...a warning against populist demagoguery as well as the woke/illiberal left in USA -- "The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha (hunger strikes). When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us..."
Others have drawn similar parallels too. Arundhati Roy offers an interesting reflection on the source of Ambedkar's animus to Gandhian resistance tactics after the departure of the British; he felt they were manipulative and would stymie his more radical social reforms given that they wouldn't bear fruit, in the Indian context, if dalits deployed them-- but upper castes could deploy them against dalit interests. (Millions of dalits could starve themselves and that would do nothing to abolish the system.) For the record, I think AR is unfair to Gandhi although totally right about Ambedkar being his moral superior: https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/how-gandhi-made-ambedkar-a-villain-in-his-fight-to-be-the-real-representative-of-dalits/237642/
Interesting. My point was slightly different ...more of a conservative stance regarding having respect for institutions within an established constitutional democracy - there is of course a place for Gandhian tactics outside - and not raising the stakes in ways that threaten tested/ established processes and the institutions, which we stand to lose at our democracy's own peril. Sort of like a warning against "revolution now!" tactics which seem to end terribly the world over...
PS. Personally I used to favor the more drastic ones in my own foolish youth - maybe why I can forgive the young woke, but can't for the life of me fathom the middle aged ones ;-)
Yes, small yet substantial changes. Social justice should matter to everyone and especially in India even more so... Ambedkar was the real deal. Too bad he's still relatively poorly understood even in India.
Absolutely! And their privilege is still a problem. Even here in USA that problem is real. Stultified systems that keep privilege intact (e.g., legacy college admissions is one teeny example) need change but we won't get much by destroying the institutions themselves...is I guess his point, which is spot on!
A truly minor editing observation: in the transcript of Ambedkar's speech, the two sentences "Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative." currently appear twice – they're duplicated.
Weird, too! I'm now seeing just one potentially duplicated sentence: "Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative.", near the end of "The Secular Trinity" section. (So I might have been mistaken last night?)
Here's a copy-and-paste of that section, identical in two different browsers (per text-compare.com):
"The Secular Trinity
The third thing we must do is not to be content with mere political democracy. We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life that recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things. It would require a constable to enforce them."
Ambedkar was prescient indeed! I'd never read that speech and learned a lot. Lots of lessons the world could pay heed to.
These lines were especially important and a warning against forces that seek to destroy the most important institutions in democracies everywhere...a warning against populist demagoguery as well as the woke/illiberal left in USA -- "The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha (hunger strikes). When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us..."
Others have drawn similar parallels too. Arundhati Roy offers an interesting reflection on the source of Ambedkar's animus to Gandhian resistance tactics after the departure of the British; he felt they were manipulative and would stymie his more radical social reforms given that they wouldn't bear fruit, in the Indian context, if dalits deployed them-- but upper castes could deploy them against dalit interests. (Millions of dalits could starve themselves and that would do nothing to abolish the system.) For the record, I think AR is unfair to Gandhi although totally right about Ambedkar being his moral superior: https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/how-gandhi-made-ambedkar-a-villain-in-his-fight-to-be-the-real-representative-of-dalits/237642/
Interesting. My point was slightly different ...more of a conservative stance regarding having respect for institutions within an established constitutional democracy - there is of course a place for Gandhian tactics outside - and not raising the stakes in ways that threaten tested/ established processes and the institutions, which we stand to lose at our democracy's own peril. Sort of like a warning against "revolution now!" tactics which seem to end terribly the world over...
PS. Personally I used to favor the more drastic ones in my own foolish youth - maybe why I can forgive the young woke, but can't for the life of me fathom the middle aged ones ;-)
In my old age I have become more progressive (more concerned with social justice) and more Burkean (incrementalist), as I said in one podcast.
Yes, small yet substantial changes. Social justice should matter to everyone and especially in India even more so... Ambedkar was the real deal. Too bad he's still relatively poorly understood even in India.
His radicalism doomed him with upper caste Hindus whose "privilege" -- to use a woke term! -- he threatened.
Absolutely! And their privilege is still a problem. Even here in USA that problem is real. Stultified systems that keep privilege intact (e.g., legacy college admissions is one teeny example) need change but we won't get much by destroying the institutions themselves...is I guess his point, which is spot on!
A truly minor editing observation: in the transcript of Ambedkar's speech, the two sentences "Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative." currently appear twice – they're duplicated.
Weird. I'm not seeing it on my end. Can you send a screenshot?
Weird, too! I'm now seeing just one potentially duplicated sentence: "Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative.", near the end of "The Secular Trinity" section. (So I might have been mistaken last night?)
Here's a copy-and-paste of that section, identical in two different browsers (per text-compare.com):
"The Secular Trinity
The third thing we must do is not to be content with mere political democracy. We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life that recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things. It would require a constable to enforce them."