10-20-2005, 01:39 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 17, 2005
<b>Introduction: Political activists should not testify before US Congress </b>
In June 1952, Dr B R Ambedkar left for New York to receive, in person, the award of a honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Columbia University. Although he had previously earned a more conventional PhD, and from the same university, he was deeply touched by the honour. The past few years had been a time of great personal strife and disappointment.
After the Indian Constitution whose drafting he had supervised came into effect in 1950, Ambedkar had felt slighted and sidelined within the Union cabinet. The Hindu Code Bill he had set such great store by had been stalled in Parliament; despite his PhD in Economics he was left out of all cabinet discussions on planning; nor, despite his great legal acuÂmen, was he consulted on critical issues such as Kashmir. At length, in October 1951, he resigned from the cabinet and revived his Scheduled Caste Federation.
However, the party fared disasÂtrously in the general elections of 1952 (the country's first); contesting a Lok Sabha seat in Bombay, Ambedkar himÂself was trounced by a Congressman obscure even then and wholly forgotten now. Ambedkar thus had good reason to be disenchanted with Indian politics in June 1952. On the eve of his departure for the US, he was felicitated at a function held at the Cricket Club of India. According to his biographer, Dhananjay Keer, he said here that "although he was said to possess vitriolic temperament and had on many occasions conflicts with those in authority,<b> no one should be under an apprehension that he would say anything harsh there about India. He had not on a single occasion been a traitor to the country and always had the interests of the country at heart". </b>
<b>I was reminded of Ambedkar's remarks when reading a news report about some testimonies in the US Congress by promiÂnent human rights activists from India. Among those who spoke out, in this American official forum, against caste abuses in their own country were the Bahujan professor Kancha Ilaiah and the Dalit union organiser Udit Raj.</b>
This was not, of course, the first occasion on which an Indian activist has travelled to Washington to testify before the US Congress. <b>About 15 years ago, Medha Patkar went before a congressional sub-committee to speak about the problems, social as well as ecological, with the Sardar Sarovar Dam being built on the Narmada river. </b>
At the time, Patkar's testimony was the subject of a most thoughtful editorial in this newspaper, written I believe by the late Arvind Narain Das. Das pointed out that her decision to go before the US Congress could easily be misread as unpatriotic. Patkar and her Narmada Bachao Andolan had worked tirelessly in raising public consciousness about the devastation wreaked by large dams in modern India. Vast sections of the uncommitted middle class, once taught to regard these dams as the very symbol of progress and modernity, were beginning to see that they were, to say the least, not an unmixed blessing.<b> The hard work would be undone by this careless act of criticising the Indian government before the legislature of a foreign and not always friendly power. </b>
I think Das's criticisms hold good for this latest venture by Indian activists. There is no question that there are daily violations of the laws against untouchability in India. These are usually more manifest in the countryside, but have now - as the horrific incident in Gohana showed - made their presence in the towns as well. However, these abuses must be fought within India and by the means of the very Constitution bequeathed to us by Ambedkar and his colleagues. <b>Asking a foreign power to interÂvene - which is what testifying before the US Congress amounts  o - merely underÂcuts and undermines the slow, patient work done by lawyers, reporters, and activists in documenting these abuses and seeking to bring their agents to book</b>.
When, back in 1952, Ambedkar made the remarks he did before his departure to Columbia, he was speaking in the first flush of Indian Independence. <b>His assurance that he would not be a traitor to the country echoes Winston Churchill's famous boast that while he would always be free to criticise his country to his own countrymen, outside its borders he would seek always to defend it. But Ambedkar was also being sensitive to the fragile and too easily wounded ego of a nation then just emerging from many years of colonial bondage. </b>
<b>Fifty years down the road, one might be more relaxed about our national ego. I think it would be perfectly in order for Udit Raj or Kancha Ilaiah or anyone else to speak against any kind of oppression in any part of India to any non-official foreign forum, be it to a British newspaper, before a American university audience, or at a protest rally outside a G-8 summit.</b>
<b>However, to testify before the US Congress is another matter altogether. As with Patkar back in 1990, there will be shrill cries accusing the activists who spoke before the US Congress of betraying the nation. Their action, however, was not so much unpatriotic as it was unwise. </b>
The writer is an historian.
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Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 17, 2005
<b>Introduction: Political activists should not testify before US Congress </b>
In June 1952, Dr B R Ambedkar left for New York to receive, in person, the award of a honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Columbia University. Although he had previously earned a more conventional PhD, and from the same university, he was deeply touched by the honour. The past few years had been a time of great personal strife and disappointment.
After the Indian Constitution whose drafting he had supervised came into effect in 1950, Ambedkar had felt slighted and sidelined within the Union cabinet. The Hindu Code Bill he had set such great store by had been stalled in Parliament; despite his PhD in Economics he was left out of all cabinet discussions on planning; nor, despite his great legal acuÂmen, was he consulted on critical issues such as Kashmir. At length, in October 1951, he resigned from the cabinet and revived his Scheduled Caste Federation.
However, the party fared disasÂtrously in the general elections of 1952 (the country's first); contesting a Lok Sabha seat in Bombay, Ambedkar himÂself was trounced by a Congressman obscure even then and wholly forgotten now. Ambedkar thus had good reason to be disenchanted with Indian politics in June 1952. On the eve of his departure for the US, he was felicitated at a function held at the Cricket Club of India. According to his biographer, Dhananjay Keer, he said here that "although he was said to possess vitriolic temperament and had on many occasions conflicts with those in authority,<b> no one should be under an apprehension that he would say anything harsh there about India. He had not on a single occasion been a traitor to the country and always had the interests of the country at heart". </b>
<b>I was reminded of Ambedkar's remarks when reading a news report about some testimonies in the US Congress by promiÂnent human rights activists from India. Among those who spoke out, in this American official forum, against caste abuses in their own country were the Bahujan professor Kancha Ilaiah and the Dalit union organiser Udit Raj.</b>
This was not, of course, the first occasion on which an Indian activist has travelled to Washington to testify before the US Congress. <b>About 15 years ago, Medha Patkar went before a congressional sub-committee to speak about the problems, social as well as ecological, with the Sardar Sarovar Dam being built on the Narmada river. </b>
At the time, Patkar's testimony was the subject of a most thoughtful editorial in this newspaper, written I believe by the late Arvind Narain Das. Das pointed out that her decision to go before the US Congress could easily be misread as unpatriotic. Patkar and her Narmada Bachao Andolan had worked tirelessly in raising public consciousness about the devastation wreaked by large dams in modern India. Vast sections of the uncommitted middle class, once taught to regard these dams as the very symbol of progress and modernity, were beginning to see that they were, to say the least, not an unmixed blessing.<b> The hard work would be undone by this careless act of criticising the Indian government before the legislature of a foreign and not always friendly power. </b>
I think Das's criticisms hold good for this latest venture by Indian activists. There is no question that there are daily violations of the laws against untouchability in India. These are usually more manifest in the countryside, but have now - as the horrific incident in Gohana showed - made their presence in the towns as well. However, these abuses must be fought within India and by the means of the very Constitution bequeathed to us by Ambedkar and his colleagues. <b>Asking a foreign power to interÂvene - which is what testifying before the US Congress amounts  o - merely underÂcuts and undermines the slow, patient work done by lawyers, reporters, and activists in documenting these abuses and seeking to bring their agents to book</b>.
When, back in 1952, Ambedkar made the remarks he did before his departure to Columbia, he was speaking in the first flush of Indian Independence. <b>His assurance that he would not be a traitor to the country echoes Winston Churchill's famous boast that while he would always be free to criticise his country to his own countrymen, outside its borders he would seek always to defend it. But Ambedkar was also being sensitive to the fragile and too easily wounded ego of a nation then just emerging from many years of colonial bondage. </b>
<b>Fifty years down the road, one might be more relaxed about our national ego. I think it would be perfectly in order for Udit Raj or Kancha Ilaiah or anyone else to speak against any kind of oppression in any part of India to any non-official foreign forum, be it to a British newspaper, before a American university audience, or at a protest rally outside a G-8 summit.</b>
<b>However, to testify before the US Congress is another matter altogether. As with Patkar back in 1990, there will be shrill cries accusing the activists who spoke before the US Congress of betraying the nation. Their action, however, was not so much unpatriotic as it was unwise. </b>
The writer is an historian.
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