As student leader Kanhaiya belonging to the student wing of the Communist party of India walked out of jail and in his speech evoked Dr.Ambedkar and Rohit Vemula, it was laughable. Instead of evoking communist icons like Marx-Lenin or for that matter his own party leaders A B Bardhan or S. A Dange he chose to appropriate Dr.Ambedkar who hated the communists and thought about them as the biggest dangers to Indian democracy.
Kanhaiya did this obviously to shift the goal post and play to the media .he wanted to play politics over Rohit Vemula's tragic death and transfer the sympathy to himself.
Rohit Vemula's facebook posts a few months before his death mentioning his anguish with the left parties suddenly all forgotten.
In 2014, though, Rohith moved to the ASA (Ambedkar student association), with Ramji. “Rohith and I had different problems with the SFI( student fedeartion of India) communist wing of CPI(ML) Liberation. I felt I was being manipulated, but his problems were ideological… Rohith had long argued in the SFI that it did not look at caste, but only class. The SFI believed that since they did not believe in caste, it did not matter. Rohith and I knew this was a weak argument,” says Ramji. - See more at:
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/dalit-scholar-rohith-vemula-the-student-the-leader/
Ironically we have to remember kanhaiya spoke at the leftists den Jawaharlal Nehru University which they proudly call JNU . The communists in India owe much to Nehru than anyone else for whatever they are today.Right from letting them spit out distorted history to allowing them to play disruptive politics.
Hence it will not be wrong to call Pt. Nehru as the
godfather of all communists including Kanhaiya kumar.
It is pertinent for all communists including kanhaiya to read Dr.Ambedkar's Resignation speech. They should feel the anguish and the suffering Dr.Ambedkar had to go through at the hands of Kanhaiya's godfather Nehru.
Dr. Ambedkar was propbably one of the best intellectual minds India has ever produced and we can see from the below letter how his career was circumvented and his talent squandered away by Nehru.Talk about the Orignial Dalit atrocity at the hands of a Pandit.
Ambedkar’s
Resignation Speech
Most
of us know Dr. BR Ambedkar’s ideological fights with Gandhi. Not many, however,
would know the kind of issues Dr. Ambedkar had with Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first
Prime Minister. The modernist Pt. Nehru had turned so conservative after India’s freedom
– or he was a conservative throughout his life that Dr. Ambedkar could no more
remain his co-traveler and had to resign from his Cabinet on September 27,
1951. Reproduced [Ambedkar’s Writings, Vol. 14, Part Two, pages.1317-1327] is
the full text of Dr. Ambedkar’s speech on his resignation
Text of the
Resignation
The House I am sure
knows, unofficially if not officially, that I have ceased to be a member of the
Cabinet. I tendered my resignation on
Thursday, the 27th September to the Prime Minister and asked him to relieve me
immediately. The Prime Minister was good
enough to accept the same on the very next day.
If I have continued to be a Minister after Friday, the 28th, it is
because the Prime Minister had requested me to continue till the end of the
Session -- a request to which I was, in obedience to constitutional convention,
bound to assent.
Our Rules of
Procedure permit a Minister who has resigned his office, to make a personal
statement in explanation of his resignation.
Many members of Cabinet have resigned during my tenure of office. There has been however no uniform practice in
the matter of Ministers who have resigned making a statement. Some have gone without making a
statement and others have gone after
making a statement. For a few days I was
hesitant what course to follow. After
taking all circumstances into consideration I came to the conclusion that
making of a statement was not merely necessary, but it was a duty which a
member who has resigned owes to the House.
The House has no
opportunity to know how the Cabinet works from within, whether there is harmony
or whether there is a conflict, for the simple reason that there is a joint
responsibility under which a member who is in a minority is not entitled to
disclose his differences. Consequently,
the House continues to think that there is no conflict among members of Cabinet
even when as a matter of fact a conflict exists. It is,
therefore, a duty of a retiring Minister to make a statement informing
the House why he wants to go and why he is not able to continue to take further
joint responsibility.
Secondly, if a
Minister goes without making a statement, people may suspect that there is
something wrong with the conduct of the
Minister, either in his public capacity or in his private capacity. No Minister should, I think, leave room for
such suspicion and the only safe way out is a statement.
Thirdly, we have
our newspapers. They have their age-old
bias in favour of some and against others.
Their judgements are seldom based on merits. Whenever they find an empty space, they are
prone to fill the vacuum by supplying grounds for resignation which are not the
real grounds but which put those whom they favour in a better light and those
not in their favour in a bad light. Some
such thing I see has happened even in my case.
It is for these
reasons that I decided to make a statement before going out.
It is now 4 years,
1 month and 26 days since I was called by the Prime Minister to accept the
office of Law Minister in his Cabinet.
The offer came as a great surprise to me. I was in the opposite camp and had already
been condemned as unworthy of association when the interim Government was
formed in August 1946. I was left to
speculate as to what could have happened to bring about this change in the
attitude of the Prime Minister. I had my
doubts. I did not know how I could carry
on with those who have never been my friends.
I had doubts as to whether I could, as a Law Member, maintain the
standard of legal knowledge and acumen which had been maintained by those who
had preceded me as Law Ministers of the Government of India. But I kept my doubts at rest and accepted the
offer of the Prime Minister on the ground that I should not deny my cooperation
when it was asked for in the building up of our nation. The quality of my performance as a Member of
the Cabinet and as Law Minister, I must leave it to others to judge.
I will now refer to
matters which have led me to sever my connection with my colleagues. The urge to go has been growing from long
past due to variety of reasons.
I will first refer to
matters purely of a personal character and which are the least of the grounds
which have led me to tender my resignation.
As a result of my being a Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, I
knew the Law Ministry to be administratively of no importance. It gave no opportunity for shaping the policy
of the Government of India. We used to
call it an empty soap box only good for old lawyers to play with. When the Prime Minister made me the offer, I
told him that besides being a lawyer by my education and experience, I was
competent to run any administrative Department and that in the old Viceroy’s
Executive Council, I held two administrative portfolios, that of Labour and
C.P.W.D., where a great deal of planning projects were dealt with by me
and would like to have some
administrative portfolio. The Prime Minister
agreed and said he would give me in addition to Law the Planning Department
which, he said, was intending to create.
Unfortunately the Planning Department came very late in the day and when
it did come, I was left out. During my
time, there have been many transfers of portfolios from one Minister to
another. I thought I might be considered
for any one of them. But I have always
been left out of consideration. Many
Ministers have been given two or three portfolios so that they have been
overburdened. Others like me have been
wanting more work. I have not even been considered
for holding a portfolio temporarily when a Minister in charge has gone abroad
for a few days. It is difficult to
understand what is the principle underlying the distribution of Government work
among Ministers which the Prime Minister follows. Is it capacity? Is it trust?
Is it friendship? Is it
pliability? I was not even appointed to
be a member of main Committees of the Cabinet such as Foreign Affairs
Committee, or the Defence Committee.
When the Economics Affairs Committee was formed, I expected, in view of the fact that I was primarily a
student of Economics and Finance, to be appointed to this Committee. But I was left out. I was appointed to it by the Cabinet, when
the Prime Minister had gone to England. But when he returned, in one of his many
essays in the reconstruction of the cabinet, he left me out. In a subsequent reconstruction my name was
added to the Committee, but that was as a result of my protest.
The Prime Minister,
I am sure, will agree that I have never complained to him in this connection. I
have never been a party to the game of power politics inside the cabinet or the
game of snatching portfolios which goes on when there is a vacancy. I believe in service, service in the post
which the Prime Minister, who as the head of the Cabinet, thought fit to assign
to me. It would have, however, been
quite unhuman for me not to have felt that a wrong was being done to me.
I will now refer to
another matter that had made me dissatisfied with the Government. It relates to the treatment accorded to the
Backward Classes and the Scheduled Castes.
I was very sorry that the Constitution did not embody any safeguards for
the Backward Classes. It was left to be
done by the Executive Government on the basis of the recommendations of a
Commission to be appointed by the President.
More than a year has elapsed since we passed the Constitution. But the Government has not even thought of
appointing the Commission. The year 1946
during which I was out of office, was a year of great anxiety to me, and to the
leading members of the Scheduled Castes.
The British had resiled from the commitments they had made in the matter
of constitutional safeguards for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Castes had
no knowing as to what the Constituent Assembly would do in that behalf. In this period of anxiety, I had prepared a
report* on the condition of the Scheduled Castes for submission to the United
Nations. But I did not submit it. I felt
that it would be better to wait until the Constituent Assembly and the future
Parliament was given a chance to deal with the matter. The provisions made in the Constitution for
safeguarding the position of the Scheduled Castes were not to my satisfaction. However, I accepted them for what they were
worth, hoping that Government will show some determination to make them
effective. What is the Scheduled Castes
today? So far as I see, it is the same
as before. The same old tyranny, the
same old oppression, the same old discrimination which existed before, exists
now, and perhaps in a worst form. I can
refer to hundred of cases where people from the Scheduled Casts round about
Delhi and adjoining places have come to me with their tales of woes against the
Caste Hindus and against the Police who have refused to register their
complaints and render them any
help. I have been wondering whether there is any other parallel in the world to
the condition of Scheduled Castes in India. I cannot find any. And yet why is no relief granted to the Scheduled
Castes? Compare the concern the
Government shows over safeguarding the Muslims.
The Prime Minister’s whole time and attention is devoted for the
protection of the Muslims. I yield to
none, not even to the Prime Minister, in my desire to give the Muslims of India
the utmost protection wherever and whenever they stand in need of it. But what I want to know is, are the Muslims
the only people who need protection? Are
the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Indian Christians not in need of
protection? What concern has he shown
for these communities? So far as I know,
none and yet these are the communities which need far more care and attention
than the Muslims.
I could not contain
within myself the indignation I have felt over the neglect of the Scheduled Castes
by the Government and on one occasion, I gave vent to my feelings at a public
meeting of the Scheduled Castes. A
question was asked, from the Hon’ble the Home Minister, whether my charge that
the Scheduled Castes had not benefited by the rule which guaranteed to them 12
½ per cent representation was true. In
answer to the question the Hon’ble the Home Minister was pleased to say that my
charge was baseless. Subsequently for
some reason – it may be for satisfying
the qualms of his conscience – he, I am informed, sent round a circular
to the various Departments of the Government of India asking them to report how
many Scheduled Caste candidates had been recently recruited in Government
service. I am informed that most
Departments in reply said “NIL’ or nearly nil.
If my information is correct, I need make no commentary on the answer
given by the Hon’ble the Home Minister.
From my yearly
childhood I have dedicated myself to the upliftment of the Scheduled Castes
among whom I was born. It is not that
there were no temptation in my way. If I
had considered my own interest I could have been anything I wanted to be and if
I had joined the Congress would have reached to the highest place in that
organization. But as I said, I had
dedicated myself to the upliftment of Scheduled Castes and I have followed the
adage that it is better to be narrow-minded if you wish to be enthusiastic
about a cause which you wish to accomplish.
You can therefore, well imagine what pain it has caused me to see that
the cause of the Scheduled Castes has been relegated to the limbo of
nothing.
The third matter
which has given me cause, not merely for dissatisfaction but for actual anxiety
and even worry, is the foreign policy of the country. Any one, who has followed the course of our
foreign policy and along with it the attitude of other countries towards India, could
not fail to realize the sudden change that has taken place in their attitude
towards us. On 15th of
August, 1947 when we began our life as an independent country, there was no
country which wished us ill. Every country in the world was our friend. Today, after four years, all our friends have
deserted us. We have no friends left. We have alienated ourselves. We are pursuing a lonely furrow with no one even to second
our resolutions in the U.N.O. When I
think of our foreign policy, I am reminded of what Bismark and Bernard Shaw
have said. Bismark has said that
“politics is not a game of realizing the ideal.
Politics is the game of the possible.”
Bernard Shaw not very long ago said that good ideals are good but one
must not forget that it is often dangerous to be too good. Our foreign policy is in complete opposition
to these words of wisdom uttered by two of the world’s greatest men.
How dangerous it has
been to us this policy of doing the impossible and of being too good is
illustrated by the great drain on our resources made by our military
expenditure, by the difficulty of getting food for our starving millions and by
difficulty of getting aid for the industrialization of our country.
Out of 350 crores
of rupees of revenue we raise annually, we spend about Rs. 180 crores of rupees
on the Army. It is a colossal
expenditure which has hardly any parallel.
This colossal expenditure is the direct result of our foreign
policy. We have to foot the whole of our
Bill for our defence ourselves because we have no friends on which we can
depend for help in any emergency that may arise. I have been wondering whether this is the
right sort of foreign policy.
Our quarrel with Pakistan is a
part of our foreign policy about which I feel deeply dissatisfied. There are two grounds which have disturbed
our relations with Pakistan
– one is Kashmir and the other is the condition of our people in East Bengal. I
felt that we should be more deeply concerned with East Bengal where the
condition of our people seems from all the newspapers intolerable than with Kashmir.
Notwithstanding this we have been staking our all on the Kashmir issue.
Even then I feel we have been fighting on an unreal issue. The issue on which we have been fighting most
of the time is, who is in the right and who is in the wrong. The real issue to my mind is not who is right
but what is right. Taking that to be the
main question, my view has always been that the right solution is to partition Kashmir. Give the
Hindu and Buddhist part to India
and the Muslim part to Pakistan
as we did in the case of India. We are really not concerned with the Muslim
part of Kashmir. It is a matter between the Muslims of Kashmir
and Pakistan. They may decide the issue as they like. Or if you like, divide into three parts; the
Cease fire zone, the Valley and the Jammu-Ladhak Region and have a plebiscite
only in the Valley. What I am afraid of
is that in the proposed plebiscite, which is to be an overall plebiscite, the
Hindus and Buddhists of Kashmir are likely to be dragged into Pakistan against their wishes and we may have to
face same problems as we are facing today in East Bengal.
I will now refer to
the Fourth matter which has a good deal to do with my resignation. The Cabinet has become a merely recording and
registration office of decisions already arrived at by Committees. As I have said, the Cabinet now works by
Committees. There is a Defence Committee. There is a Foreign Committee. All important matters relating to Defence are
disposed of by the Defence
Committee. The same members of the
Cabinet are appointed by them. I am not
a member of either of these Committees.
They work behind an iron curtain.
Others who are not members have only to take joint responsibility
without any opportunity of taking part in the shaping of policy. This is an impossible position.
I will now deal
with a matter which has led me finally to come to the decision that I should
resign. It is the treatment which was
accorded to the Hindu Code. The Bill was
introduced in this House on the 11th April, 1947. After a life of four years, it was killed and
died unwept and unsung, after 4 clauses of it were passed. While it was before the House, it lived by
fits and starts. For full one year, the
Government did not feel it necessary to refer it to a Select Committee. It was referred to the Select Committee on 9th
April 1948. The Report was presented to
the House on 12th
August, 1948. The motion for the
consideration of the Report was made by me on 31st August
1948. It was merely for making the
motion that the Bill was kept on the Agenda.
The discussion of the motion was not allowed to take place until the
February Session of the year 1949. Even
then it was not allowed to have a continuous discussion. It was distributed over 10 months, 4 days in
February, 1 day in March and 2 days in April 1949. After this, one day was given to the Bill in
December, 1949, namely the 19th December, on which day the
House adopted my motion that the Bill as reported by the Select Committee be
taken into consideration. No time was
given to the Bill in the year 1950. Next
time the Bill came before the House was on 5th February, 1951
when the clause by clause consideration of the Bill was taken. Only three days 5th,
6th
and 7th
February were given to the Bill and left there to rot.
This being the last
sessions of the present Parliament, Cabinet had to consider whether Hindu Code
Bill should be got through before this Parliament ended or whether it should be
left over to the new Parliament. The
Cabinet unanimously decided that it should be put through in this Parliament. So the Bill was put on the Agenda and was
taken up on the 17th September 1951 for further clause by clause
consideration. As the discussion was
going on, the Prime Minister put forth a new proposal, namely, that the Bill as
a whole may not be got through within the time available and that it was
desirable to get a part of it enacted into law rather than allow the whole of
it to go to waste. It was a great
wrentch to me. But I agreed, for, as the
proverb says “it is better to save a part when the whole is likely to be
lost”. The Prime Minister suggested that
we should select the Marriage and Divorce part.
The Bill in its truncated form went on.
After two or three days of the discussion of the Bill the Prime Minister
came up with another proposal. This time
his proposal was to drop the whole Bill even the Marriage and Divorce
portion. This came to me as a great
shock – a bolt from the blue. I was
stunned and could not say anything. I am
not prepared to accept that the dropping of this truncated Bill was due to want
of time. I am sure that the truncated
bill was dropped because other and more powerful members of the Cabinet wanted
precedence for their Bills. I am unable
to understand how the Bananas and Aligarh University Bills, how the Press Bill could
have been given precedence over the Hindu Code even in its attenuated
form? It is not that there was no law on
the Statute Book to govern the Aligarh
University or the Benares University. It is not that these Universities would have
gone to wreck and ruins if the Bills had not been passed in this Session. It is not that the Press Bill was
urgent. There is already a law on the
Statute Book and the Bill could have waited.
I got the impress that the Prime Minister, although sincere, had not the
earnestness and determination required to get the Hindi Code Bill through.
In regard to this
Bill, I have been made to go through the greatest mental torture. The aid of Party Machinery was denied to
me. The Prime Minister gave freedom of
Vote, an unusual thing in the history of the Party. I did not mind it. But I expected two things. I expected a party whip as to time limit on
speeches and instruction to the Chief whip to move closure when sufficient
debate had taken place. A whip on time limit on speeches would have got the
Bill through. When freedom of voting was
given there could have been no objection to have given a whip for time limit on
speeches. But such a whip was never
issued. The conduct of the Minister for
Parliamentary Affairs, who is also the Chief Whip of the Party in connection
with the Hindu Code, to say the least, has been most extraordinary. He has been
the deadliest opponent of the Code and has never been present to aid me by
moving a closure motion. For days and
hours filibustering has gone on a single clause. But the Chief Whip, whose duty it is to
economise Government time and push on Government business, has been
systematically absent when the Hindu Code has been under consideration in the
House. I have never seen a case of a
Chief Whip so disloyal to the Prime Minister and a Prime Minister so loyal to a
disloyal Whip. Notwithstanding this
unconstitutional behaviour, the Chief Whip is really a darling of the Prime
Minister. For notwithstanding his
disloyalty he got a Promotion in the Party organization. It is impossible to carry on in such circumstances.
It has been said
that the Bill had to be dropped because the Opposition was strong. How strong was the Opposition? This Bill has been discussed several times in
the Party and was carried to division by the opponents. Every time the opponents were routed. The last time when the Bill was taken up in
the Party Meeting out of 120 only 20 were found to be against it. When the Bill was taken in the Party for
discussion, 44 clauses were passed in about 3 ½ hours time. This shows how much opposition there was to
the Bill within the Party. In the House
itself, there have been divisions on three clauses of the Bill – 2, 3 and
5. Every time there has been an
overwhelming majority in favour even on clause 4 which is the soul of the Hindu
Code.
I was, therefore,
quite unable to accept the Prime Minister’s decision to abandon the Bill on the
ground of time. I have been obliged to
give this elaborate explanation for my resignation because some people have
suggested that I am going because of my illness. I wish to repudiate any such
suggestion. I am the last man to abandon
my duty because of illness.
It may be said that
my resignation is out of time and that if I was dissatisfied with the Foreign
Policy of the Government and the treatment accorded to Backward Classes and the
Scheduled Castes I should have gone earlier.
The charge may sound as true. But
I had reasons which held me back. In the
first place, most of the time I have been a Member of the Cabinet, I have been
busy with the framing of the Constitution. It absorbed all my attention till 26th
January 1950 and thereafter I was concerned with the People’s Representation
Bill and the Delimitation Orders. I had
hardly any time to attend to our Foreign Affairs. I did not think it right to go away leaving
this work unfinished.
In the second
place, I thought it necessary to stay on, for the sake of the Hindu Code. In the opinion of some, it may be wrong for
me to have held on for the sake of the Hindu Code. I took a different view. The Hindu Code was the greatest social reform
measure ever undertaken by the legislature in this country. No law passed by
the Indian Legislature in the past or likely to be passed in the future can be
compared to it in point of its significance.
To leave inequality
between class and class, between sex and sex, which is the soul of Hindu
Society untouched and to go on passing legislation relating to economic
problems is to make a farce of our Constitution and to build a palace on a dung
heap. This is the significance I
attached to the Hindu Code. It is for
its sake that I stayed on notwithstanding my differences. So if I have committed a wrong, it is in the
hope of doing some good. Had I no ground
for such a hope, for overcoming the obstructionist tactics of the
opponents? I would like in this
connection to refer only to three of the statements made by the Prime Minister
on the floor of the House.
On 28th
November, 1949, the Prime Minister gave the following assurance. He said:
“What is more, the
Government is committed to this thing (Hindu Code). It is going through with it.”
“Government would
proceed with that. It is for this House
to accept a measure, but if a Government takes an important measure, and the
House rejects it, the House rejects that Government and the Government goes and
another Government comes in its place.
It should be clearly understood that this is one of the important
measures to which the Government attaches importance and on which it will stand
or fall.”
Again on 19th
December, 1949, the Prime Minister said:
“I do not wish the
House to think in the slightest degree that we consider that this Hindu Code
Bill is not of importance, because we do attach the greatest important to it,
as I said, not because of any particular clause or anything, but because of the
basic approach to this vast problem in problems, economic and social. We have achieved political freedom in this country, political
independence. That is a stage in the
journey, and there are other stages, economic, social and other and if society
is to advance, there must be this integrated advance on all fronts.”
On the 26th
September, 1951, the Prime Minister said:
“It is not
necessary for me to assure the House of the desire of Government to proceed
with this measure in so far as we can proceed with it within possibilities, and
so far as we are concerned we consider this matter as adjourned till such time
as the next opportunity – I hope it will be in this Parliament - offers itself.”
This was after the
Prime Minister had announced the dropping of the Bill. Who cold not have believed in these
pronouncements of the Prime Minister? If
I did not think that there could be a difference between the promises and
performances of the Prime Minister the
fault is certainly not mine. My exit
from the Cabinet may not be a matter of much concern to anybody in this
Country. But I must be true to myself
and that can be only by going out. Before I do so, I wish to thank my
colleagues for the kindness and courtesy they have shown to me during my
membership of the Cabinet. While I am
not resigning from my membership of Parliament, I also wish to express my
gratitude to Members of Parliament for having shown great tolerance towards me.
New Delhi
10th
October 1951 B. R. Ambedkar
