Our position on Ambedkar, Phule and Ayyankali and their historical role and relevance to the anti-caste movement in the present times.

We came across an Instagram post about our position on Ambedkar, Phule and Ayyankali and their historical role and relevance to the anti-caste movement in the present times. This post has been posted by Rubin Matthias. The post is brief and yet full of misconceptions regarding the important questions of history as well as theory. Here is our brief rebuttal.
What people like Rubin do not understand is this:
1. In order to uphold the historical struggle of any revolutionary/radical reformer, a revolutionary communist cannot take as their yardstick the question whether they remained consistent in their opposition to the ruling class and state throughout their political life, unless we are talking about communist revolutionaries. Even in the context of Marxists, a mechanical approach cannot be applied. For instance, Marxists do recognize the path-breaking contributions of Kautsky in the field of agrarian question and theory of the party, or of Hilferding in the field of Marxist political economy, even though they became revisionists and reformists later. Similarly, in the context of non-Marxist or pre-Marxist revolutionaries or radicals, Marxists adopt a historical approach in appreciating their contributions. For instance, in appreciating the contributions of national liberation movements’ radical figures like Nasser, Nkrumah, Sukarno, etc., Marxists accept the radical character of their anti-colonial struggles, even though the limits of their radicality became apparent after a stage. Therefore, the debate whether Ayyankali remained consistent in his anti-establishment approach towards the end of his life, is immaterial. We assess his contributions historically and there is no debate regarding the anti-state militant mass character of movements led by Ayyankali in, at least, the first half of his political life. Even regarding the later phase, there is no consensus among scholars who have worked on Ayyankali. However, even if it is proven beyond doubt that Ayyankali lost that anti-state edge towards the end of his life, it does not take away anything from what we can still learn today from his revolutionary militant mass movements.

2. In this context, Ayyankali’s political life is marked by two things that all radicals have: first, his movements directly put the state and the ruling class, predominantly Brahmanical, in the dock; second, his insistence on ‘change from below by radically and militantly organizing the oppressed and the exploited into militant movements and organizations. Of course, Ayyankali was not a modern materialist and we have emphasized this even earlier. He had strong influence of spiritualism throughout his life. He was influenced by the likes of Narayan Guru. He was also inclined towards a radical reformation within Hinduism. All of these do not take away anything from Ayyankali. The MODERN ANTI-CASTE MOVEMENT MARRED BY PRAGMATISM, STATOLATRY AND REFORMISM CAN STILL LEARN THE MOST FROM AYYANKALI BECAUSE IT IS PRECISELY THE STRATEGY OF CONFRONTING THE STATE THAT THE PRESENT ANTI-CASTE MOVEMENT LACKS TODAY. Ambedkar’s political career, on the contrary, did not have any such phase of confronting the state. Why? Not because his commitment to the project of annihilation of caste was not genuine. Instead, because his strategy of putting the state out of the dock, in which Ambedkar was extraordinarily consistent, stemmed from a conscious ideological position of Ambedkar (his strict adherence to Deweyan Pragmatism), unlike Ayyankali, who did not have such a well-formed and conscious ideological ‘prejudice’. Ayyankali was more of a subaltern radical and militant anti-caste warrior. This is precisely what people like Rubin do not understand. They try, mechanically, to draw parallels, which is precisely “not understanding the complexity of the reality.”

3. Another point that the present pragmatists do not understand is this: for annihilation of caste, a mere social program is not enough; a mere ideological critique of Hindu scriptures is not enough either. What is required is a radical and revolutionary political program. The reason is simple: the varna-caste system has been sustained, underlined, shaped and reshaped, molded and remolded, structured and restructured by the political struggles of each period and in this the ruling class and its state have played a central role. Without the patronage of the state, the varna-caste system cannot reproduce itself in the same way as it has done till now. To put the state out of the dock, while talking about annihilation of caste and talk only about a ‘social program’ and ‘ideology critique’ of Hinduism by demonstrating the illogicality of its scriptures, misses the mark completely. It might give some illusory and unreal contentment and satisfaction to some people, but it would not have any major impact on the real political (or social for that matter) situation, unless and until, the anti-caste movement is also equipped with the understanding of the role of ruling class and state in sustaining, remolding, readjusting and restructuring the caste system through ages (all ruling classes and their state from ancient states of the 16 ancient republics of India to the British imperialists and their colonial state as well as the post-colonial bourgeois state which came into being in 1947). What is needed, vis-à-vis the anti-caste movement, is a radical political program that confronts the state directly and never absolves it. Ambedkar lacked precisely that, notwithstanding his other contributions, to which we shall come later. On the contrary, Ayyankali’s militant mass movements did precisely that. Ambedkar adopted that position because he believed this throughout his political career: “The government is the most important and powerful institution. The manner in which the government thinks, makes things happen” (presidential address during the first Mahad conference) and “My view is not to face a conflict with the government” (during the Nashik temple entry movement). Ayyankali did not have any such ideological conviction, rather, ideological prohibition. Becoming a legislator or, at some point, negotiating with the state does not make him a pragmatist who, as a matter of ideological prohibition, refrains from confronting the state.

4. There are a lot of identitarian scholars who try to portray Ayyankali as if he became communal. This is a cheap identitarian trick. Ayyankali was certainly not a modern materialist. He was a spiritualist. His ideological positions were mostly idealist. However, here, one is not being prompted to accept Ayyankali as an ideological teacher or guide. Of course, there is no such thing as “Ayyankalism”! What we have written about what could be learnt from Ayyankali is this: “Two elements were notable in the movement of Ayyankali: first, the clear anti-establishment character of his movement and his reliance on the power and agency of the people rather than just persuading the State through legal and social advocacy. It was clearly a radical progressive mass movement and the revolutionary anti-caste movements of present have a lot to learn from Ayyankali.” (Abhinav, ‘Caste Question, Marxism and the Political Legacy of B. R. Ambedkar’ in Subversive Interventions, Rahul Foundation, Lucknow). It was the political character of the radical mass movements led by Ayyankali that has something to teach us today, not his ideological idealism and spiritualism. If that is the precondition stubbornly put forth by someone, there will be nothing to learn from such subaltern revolutionary and radical figures who led various mass movements in pre-capitalist societies. Taiping Peasant Revolt of China which yearned for a “return” to the “heavenly kingdom”, the Stepan Razin’s peasant revolt in Russia and other such movements will become ahistorically negated for all revolutionaries of today. Such is the problem of present followers of pragmatism, identitarianism and liberalism. Then what should be the basic preconditions for contemporary radicals and revolutionaries to learn from past reformers/radicals/revolutionaries? It is precisely this: whether such figures put the state and the ruling classes in the dock or not and secondly, whether they believed in mass initiative as the principal agent of change, rather than the benevolence, acquiescence, empathy or “understanding” of the state and ruling classes. In the context of Ambedkar, too, it is primarily his politics, the Deweyan pragmatist and instrumentalist politics, which should be assessed that whether it bodes well for the present anti-caste movement or not. The fact is that it is today functioning as a barrier to the anti-caste movements from assuming a radical anti-state character. Instead of a radical transformation, the entire struggle has been limited to representation, accommodation and symbolism of the identitarian type. It is noteworthy here that this politics of Ambedkar stemmed directly from his conscious ideological positions rather than spontaneous or pathological ensemble of various (ruling class) ideologies that pervade the minds of many. And it is precisely due to this conscious ideological position that there is a remarkable consistency in Ambedkar’s political experiments and practice in general (contrary to the popular wisdom and contrary to what Ambedkar himself thought), which we cannot expect to find in the case of Ayyankali. Some people think that since Ambedkar shifted from one political strategy to another, he was not consistent. In fact, progressive experimentation without scientific summation of the past practice is one of the basic tenets of Deweyan pragmatism, to which Ambedkar always adhered. Therefore, in essence, Ambedkar was very consistent in: (a) progressively experimenting many political strategies throughout his political career (from the testimony to the Southborough Commission to his conversion to Buddhism); (b) NEVER putting the state in the dock and never adopting a strategy of militant confrontation, rather, negotiating with the state from the beginning till the end; (c) continuing his search for a religion that would work as an humanist ethical code facilitating social endosmosis (though after Moonje-Ambedkar Talks, Islam and Christianity were abandoned right at the doorstep, and the only option were religions which originated in the land between ‘Sindhu and Saptasindhu’, that is, first, Sikhism and finally Buddhism; this is what Ambedkar said while calling for conversion to Sikhism in the late-1920s: “to have some responsibility as for the future of the Hindu culture and civilization.” (quoted in Jaffrelot (2005) Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability p. 129)); (d) his aversion to all forms of radical militant mass politics; (e) his belief that societal changes always occur gradually and incrementally and ‘from above’ through the agency of the government/state.

Ayyankali never had any consistent and conscious ideological position informed by any modern theory (pragmatism, Marxism, etc.). He was a truly subaltern mass radical reformer and revolutionary, notwithstanding his spiritualism. Today, to portray Ayyankali as someone who was communal or discriminatory towards non-Hindus, would tantamount to ahistoricism of the worst kind, namely, the identitarian kind. Let us see what Anand Teltumbde has to say about Ayyankali, as we assume that Rubin Matthias would not consider Anand Teltumbde to be Brahmanical or anything: “Although Ayyankali was uneducated, he was sensitive enough to note these unjust customs imposed by the upper castes. He decided to challenge them. In 1893, he bought two white bullocks and a cart; tied big brass bells around the animals’ neck, wore a dhoti, wrapped angavasthram around his shoulders and tied a thalppavu (turban of sorts) and drove the cart up and down the small market. When stopped by the upper caste people, he pulled out a long dagger and jumped off the cart and scared them away. Though he could ride in a cart through the streets unobstructed thereafter, the other Pulayars were not allowed to even walk there. So he led a ‘walk for freedom’ of Pulayars to Puthen Market. An upper caste mob prevented them. A riot broke out in which both the parties drew blood in what should be called the first armed rebellion of Dalits. Inspired by this Chaliyar Riot, the Pulayars in the surrounding areas came out in defiance to ask for other freedoms and rights which were customarily denied to them. This movement won them the right to walk along public roads in 1900 and to admit their children into public schools in 1907 in Travancore.
“Ayyankali, also pioneered a movement for the rights of workers. He, later, established Sadhu Jana Paripalana Sangham (Association for the Protection of the Poor) to help the Dalits by providing them education, finance and legal support, and gave a slogan ‘Progress through education and organization’. When his attempt to enroll a Pulayar girl in a government school met with violent resistance by the upper castes, he organized what may have been the first strike by agricultural workers, who withdrew their labour from the fields owned by the upper castes until the government acceded to a complete removal of restrictions on education. This daring son of Kerala breathed his last on 18 June 1941.”
This is Anand Teltumbde’s assessment of Ayyankali. Abhimanyu C. and many others have argued about the later phase of his political life that his radical edge was blunted. There is a controversy regarding this. We cannot and need not go into that, as a lot is being researched as we write this piece and it causes no change in our assessment of the radical militant mass movements led by Ayyankali. Even if that is the case (what the likes of Abhimanyu C and Kandasamy argue), one cannot take anything away from his radical politics of militant anti-establishment mass movements.

5. Regarding Jotiba Phule: We have written several times before that what distinguishes Phule from Ambedkar is totally different trajectories of political evolution. Phule, like many anti-caste reformers of his time, began as an admirer of the British whom he saw as the bearers of the Enlightenment reason and modernity and the slogan of ‘freedom, equality and fraternity’ and consequently assumed them to be the liberators of the so-called low castes and Dalits. However, in the course of his actual political practice, Phule slowly realized that political exigencies of the British for imperialist loot and plunder of India, especially its Dalit and Shudra landless and peasants, and for colonial rule, trumped their ideological pretensions of the Enlightenment and modernity! As a consequence, Phule became increasingly critical of the British colonialism. It is especially evident in his testimony to the Hunter Commission and his work The Cultivator’s Whipcord. The last three chapters of this book were removed by Phule’s disciple Lokhande because the latter thought that it was too critical of the British and this had led to a dispute between the teacher and the pupil.

In contrast, Ambedkar’s pragmatist adherence to the principle of ‘state as the great mediator and most rational actor’ only increased and intensified with time. Besides, Phule also believed in mass action from below as one of the principal political weapons for the struggle for the demands of the oppressed masses. He consistently implemented a mass-line, rather than limiting the political action to negotiations, pleadings, submission of memoranda, etc. to the state. On the contrary, Ambedkar was not inclined to these forms of mass action and got engaged with them only when there was a mass pressure from below (Teltumbde has shown this fact beyond suspicion in his commendable work Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt) and with the proviso that the movement must not confront and antagonize the state. Phule, on the contrary, had been developing and evolving in a totally different direction in terms of approach and method. Whether he reached a radical militant political program is immaterial, as life has a physical limit. What matters is the orientation of development.

That is why, Phule and Ayyankali, indeed stand in contrast to Dr. Ambedkar in two respects: one, approach towards the state and two, belief in the mass initiative and action from below as the principal and primary methods/forms of struggle. This does not mean that we reject the contributions of Ambedkar. This is what we have written: “We must start this discussion with the contributions of Ambedkar. As far as the contributions of Ambedkar are concerned, we can mainly talk about two contributions. First, Ambedkar contributed immensely in creating a sense of dignity and self-respect among the Dalit population. No doubt, in this, Periyar, Phule, Ayyankali as well as the Communists also had made vital contributions. However, the particularity with which Ambedkar raised the question of the human dignity, civil and democratic rights of Dalits and the respect that he commanded as a highly educated and knowledgeable figure which also helped him in emphasizing the question with such effectivity, was unique. The second contribution of Ambedkar was that he established the question of caste on the agenda of the national politics of that period in an unprecedented way.” (Abhinav, op.cit.)

Lastly, let us dwell a bit on the questions of icons of contemporary anti-caste movement. We DO give primacy to anti-establishment and anti-state radical and militant character of anti-caste movement and this, we believe, precisely, is the lacuna of majority of anti-caste movements today which are imprisoned in two cages: pragmatism and identitarianism; representation and accommodation within the system, rather than overthrowing the casteist and Brahmanical system, has become the conditio sine qua non of such movements. However, the project of annihilation of caste goes nowhere with such a program. The only militancy of such movements is apparent in their ‘social program’ and ‘ideology critique’ of Hindu scriptures, whereas the political question, that is, the question of the state and the ruling class, is rejected at the doorstep! From this perspective, we DO believe the Ayyankali and Phule have a lot more to teach to the anti-caste movement because the yardstick to measure the subversive character of a movement is precisely the extent to which a movement against any form of social oppression puts the state in the dock and assumes an anti-establishment stance, because we must not forget that all forms of social oppression come into existence in the moment and framework of class and the state and the ruling classes maintain, sustain and nourish all forms of social oppression, while at the same time remolding, restructuring and readjusting these forms according to the particular needs of their exploitative mode of production.
Therefore, it is not about having any allergy to Ambedkarite political thought; instead, it is a question of history and science. On the basis of the latter, we iterate and reiterate that that without the anti-establishment and anti-state character of a movement against any form of social oppression, any such movement would, advertently or inadvertently, become a part of the mechanism of hegemony of the same exploitative and oppressive system that oppresses Dalits, women, religious minorities, tribals, homosexuals, transgenders, and all other socially oppressed sections of the masses. We hope that Mr. Matthias would be kind enough to take these concerns into consideration before staging a summary trial of our position.