Ambedkar on Islam

In this article, Dr Koenraad Elst analyzes the least talked about aspect of Ambedkar’s writings, and this is his views on Islam, Muslims and Pakistan. He had made as scathing a critique of Islam, as that of Hinduism and advocated a complete population transfer between India and Pakistan, believing that Hindus and Muslims would never be able to live with each other. These are the views of Ambedkar that liberals try hard to hide. Dr Elst, in this excerpt from ‘Agastya to Ambedkar’, brings you these views particularly.

Unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, who was full of blind praise for anti-national forces, Dr Ambedkar did retain the capacity to take a cool and hard look at the enemies of Hindu society, even while being bitterly critical of the same, and having been much less pampered by it than Nehru. About Islam, he was particularly outspoken, especially in his book Pakistan or the Partition of India. According to his biographer Dhananjay Keer, “Some penetrating and caustic paragraphs were deleted, it is said, at the instance of Ambedkar’s close admirers” for the sake of his own safety, but what remains is still impressive.

For instance, he utterly rejected the notion, now spread by ‘Ambedkarites’ like VT Rajshekar, that Islamic society is more egalitarian or in other ways better than Hindu society. After giving Ms Mayo’s book of anti-Hindu vilification, Mother India, the credit for ‘exposing the evils [of Hindu Society]’, he observes that ‘it created the unfortunate impression throughout the world that while the Hindus were groveling in the mud of these social evils and were conservative, the Muslims were free from them, and as compared to the Hindus were a progressive people’. And then he enumerates all the social evils in Hindu society, and finds that they are generally also present in Muslim society, sometimes to a worse extent : Child marriage, several forms of oppression of women, several forms of social inequality.

Islam also has its own caste system. Dr Ambedkar quotes the Superintendent of the 1901 Census with approval : “The Mohammedans themselves recognize two main social divisions – 1. Ashraf or Sharaf and 2. Ajlaf. Ashraf means ‘noble’ and includes all undoubted descendants of foreigners and converts from high caste Hindus. All other Mohammedans, including all occupational groups and all converts of lower ranks are known by the contemptuous term Ajlaf, ‘wretches’ or ‘mean people’… In some places a third class, called Arzalor – lowest of all – is added. With them no other Mohammedan would associate, and they are forbidden to enter the mosque [and] to use the public burial ground. Within these groups there are castes with social precedence of exactly the same nature as one finds among the Hindus.”

Worse than the existence of social evils among the Muslims is, in Dr Ambedkar’s diagnosis, the lack of any attempt, even any intention, to reform their society : “The Hindus have their social evils. But there is one relieving feature about them – namely that some of them are conscious of their existence and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. The Muslims, on the other hand, do not realize that they are evils and consequently do not agitate for their removal.”

Dr Ambedkar also addresses the question why the Muslims are opposed to reform : “The usual answer given is that the Muslims all over the world are an unprogressive people. This view no doubt accords with the facts of history. After the first spurts of their activity… the Muslims suddenly fell into a strange condition of torpor, from which they never seem to have become awake. The cause assigned for this torpor … is said to be the fundamental assumption made by all Muslims that Islam is a world religion, suitable for all people, for all times and all conditions.”

Dr Ambedkar goes on to develop the argument that the minority position of the Muslims in India is a factor in making them defensive and unwilling to reform : “Their energies are directed to maintaining a constant struggle against the Hindus for seats and posts, in which there is no time, no thought and no room for questions relating to social reform.” Of course, that is correct, though it can by no means neutralize the more fundamental reason for Islam’s opposition to change in its God-given laws and customs.

Today, we know that Pakistan, where Muslims are not in a minority, has even more retrograde laws than the Indian Muslims have ever demanded. So, the Muslims’ minority position can only have been a factor of secondary importance.

This then is Dr Ambedkar’s conclusion about the reason for Muslim unwillingness to reform : “The Muslims think that the Hindus and Muslims must perpetually struggle … that in this struggle the strong will win, and that to ensure strength they must suppress or put in cold storage everything which causes dissension in their ranks.”

Dr Ambedkar distinguishes three forms of ‘political aggression of the Muslims’

“The ever-growing catalogue of the Muslims’ political demands”. Follows a list of demands followed by agreements followed by increased demands, from 1892 till 1932.

“The spirit of exploiting the weaknesses of the Hindus”. This means that if the Hindus object to anything, the Muslim policy seems to be to insist upon it and give it up only when the Hindus show themselves ready to offer a price for it by giving the Muslims some other concessions.

“The adoption by the Muslims of the gangster’s method in politics”. Dr Ambedkar explains : “The riots are a sufficient indication that gangsterism has become a settled part of their strategy in politics. They seem to be consciously and deliberately imitating the Sudeten Germans in the means employed by them against the Czechs”.

Dr Ambedkar describes how the Muslims had been showered with concessions at the Round Table Conference in 1932, and how that was only the starting-point of a series of demands, such as the choice of Urdu as sole official language, the unlimited freedom to perform cow-slaughter, recognition of the Muslim League as sole representative of the Muslims, inducement of the Muslim league in all the provincial Governments, constitutional imposition of more than proportional job reservations for the Muslims in army and administration, Muslim representation at all levels through separate electorates, and finally ‘a 50% share in everything’.

Dr Ambedkar comments : “In this catalogue of new demands, there are some which on the face of them are extravagant and impossible, if not irresponsible. As an instance, one may refer to the demand for fifty-fifty… In 1929 the Muslims insisted [in the context of Bengal and Punjab] that in allotting seats in Legislatures, a majority shall not be reduced to a minority or equality. This principle, enunciated by themselves, it is now demanded, shall be abandoned and a majority shall be reduced to equality… with this new demand, the Muslims are not only seeking to reduce the Hindu majority to a minority, but they are also cutting into political rights of the other minorities. The Muslims are now speaking the language of Hitler had been doing for Germany. For their demand of 50% is nothing but a counterpart of the German claims for Deutschland uber Alles and Lebensraum for themselves…

Dr Ambedkar quotes an editorial of the Congress paper ‘Hindustan’, which draws some lessons from the unrelenting communal violence. “To talk about Hindu-Muslim unity from a thousand platforms or to give it blazoning headlines is to perpetrate an illusion whose cloudy structure dissolves itself at the exchange of brickbats and the desecration of tombs and temples.” And he comments : “Nothing I could say can so well show the futility of Hindu-Muslim unity. Hindu-Muslim unity up to now was at least in sight although it was like a mirage. Today, it is out of sight and also out of mind.”

Dr Ambedkar quotes a number of statements by Muslim political and religious leaders showing that Hindu-Muslim co-existence in one independent state is impossible because the Muslims will settle for nothing less than to be the rulers. For instance, Maulana Azad Sobhani is quoted as saying, with a typical Pan-Islamic outlook : “Our big fight is with the 22 crores of our Hindu enemies, who constitute the majority… if they become powerful, then these Hindus will swallow Muslim India and gradually even Egypt, Turkey, Kabul, Mecca… So it is the essential duty of every devout Muslim to fight on by joining the Muslim League so that the Hindus may not be established here and a Muslim rule may be established in India as soon as the English depart.”

Among the non-Muslim leaders, Dr Ambedkar was probably the only one who accepted the Partition of India before the power shift (to the League’s advantage) and the bloody events of the 1940s nearly forced the acceptance of Partition on India’s political class. The Hindu Mahasabha equally accepted a version of the two-Nation theory, but nonetheless insisted on maintaining the unity of India. The Indian National Congress rejected the two-Nation theory and built its demand for a United India on the Vanishing dream of Hindu-Muslim unity.

Short, the pro-Islamic orientation which agitators like VT Rajshekar want to give to the Ambedkarite movement, is not at all in consonance with Dr Ambedkar’s own view of Islam. In fact, many of Dr Ambedkar’s observations on Islam would now be branded as ‘Hindu communalist’ by the very people who claim his heritage.

– Dr Koenraad Elst (Excerpts from an article under the same title, courtesy : cisindus.org, 10.8.2020)

(Dr Elst is a Belgian orientalist and Indologist known for his writings on comparative religion, Hindu-Muslim relations and Indian history.)

Ambedkar’s observations on Islam would be branded ‘Hindu communalist’ by the very people who claim his heritage !