Ambedkar counterposed the concept of nation as against the concept of caste, which was the pre-eminent mode of social organisation in India. For him, the idea of a nation was not just political sovereignty. A nation was a people who were socially bound as one. India however was divided by caste groups and people were unable to think in any other terms except as caste groups or caste sub-groups.
“The Hindus often complain of the isolation and exclusiveness of a gang or a clique and blame them for anti-social spirit. But they conveniently forget that this anti-social spirit is the worst feature of their own Caste System. One caste enjoys singing a hymn of hate against another caste as much as the Germans did in singing their hymn of hate against the English during the last war. The literature of the Hindus is full of caste genealogies in which an attempt is made to give a noble origin to one caste and an ignoble origin to other castes. The Sahyadrikhand is a notorious instance of this class of literature. This anti-social spirit is not confined to caste alone. It has gone deeper and has poisoned the mutual relations of the sub-castes as well. In my province the Golak Brahmins, Deorukha Brahmins, Karada Brahmins, Palshe Brahmins and Chitpavan Brahmins, all claim to be subdivisions of the Brahmin Caste. But the anti-social spirit that prevails between them is quite as marked and quite as virulent as the anti-social spirit that prevails between them and other non-Brahmin castes. There is nothing strange in this. An antisocial spirit is found wherever one group has ‘interests of its own’ who shut it out from full interaction with other groups, so that its prevailing purpose is protection of what it has got. This antisocial spirit, this spirit of protecting its own interests is as much a marked feature of the different castes in their isolation from one another as it is of nations in their isolation. The Brahmin’s primary concern is to protect ‘his interest’ against those of the non-Brahmins and the non-Brahmin’s primary concern is to protect their interests against those of the Brahmins. The Hindus, therefore, are not merely an assortment of castes but they are so many warring groups each living for itself and for its selfish ideal. There is another feature of caste, which is deplorable. The ancestors of the present-day English fought on one side or the other in the war of the Roses and the Cromwellian War. But the descendants of those who fought on the one side do not bear any animosity— any grudge against the descendants of those who fought on the other side. The feud is forgotten. But the present-day non-Brahmins cannot forgive the present-day Brahmins for the insult their ancestors gave to Shivaji. The present-day Kayasthas will not forgive the present-day Brahmins for the infamy cast upon their forefathers by the forefathers of the latter. To what is this difference due? Obviously to the Caste System. The existence of Caste and Caste Consciousness has served to keep the memory of past feuds between castes green and has prevented solidarity.” [17]
Ambedkar devoted much effort to illustrate this in great detail. This is no surprise. Ambedkar was the chairman of the Drafting Committee of Constituent Assembly that drafted the Indian Constitution, which has lasted up to date with several amendments. He, like other leaders of the independence movement, was aware of the deep division within the Indian society. Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India was very much saddened by this historic reality. In the famous book -The Discovery of India- which he wrote from prison, where he was confined to by the British Raj, there are several references to this tragic historic reality. Mahatma Gandhi was deeply aware of the problem and knew that future of India would very much depend on this issue. In fact all the great thinkers, poets and writers of India have said something or other strongly on the issue. However, it fell on Ambedkar, the beloved leader of the Untouchables, who also belonged to this group, to analyse this problem in its full details and suggest a path to its solution. Ambedkar’s writings have now been brought out in fourteen thick volumes. All his writings directly or indirectly refer to the issue of caste and the nation.
Ambedkar demonstrated how the absence of solidarity led to the weakening of a people, making them indifferent and fear-ridden; as a result co-operation becomes impossible.
“Indifferentism is the worst kind of disease that can infect a people. Why is the Hindu so indifferent? In my opinion this indifferentism is the result of Caste System which has made Sanghatan and co-operation even for a good cause impossible” [ 18]
The notional foundation of Sanghatan and co-operation is at the heart of Ambedkar’s views on theconcept of the nation. He, as an eminent jurist, realised that this foundation cannot merely be a juridical one. The juridical conception of the nation are based on the theory of sovereignty which based on the classical legal theory of contract. However, Sanghatan and co-operation are social realities, not merely legal or political ones. Their existence or not is a ground reality. Thus the notions of Sanghatan and co-operation have to be derived from the ground reality of a given society at a given time. India as a legal entity, a colony under British Raj for most his lifetime and later an independent sovereignty with a constitutional framework, in the formulation of which he participated, was one thing. The ground reality of India as a society was quite another. A democratic constitution however liberal, could not create this ground reality. The ground reality was primarily a social issue and not a political or a juridical issue. Here, the notions must be derived from the ground reality and if different sets of notions were to be introduced it had to be done by a change in the ground reality, which would involves everyone in society. What then was at issue was not the contract, but consensus. The consensus is not an abstraction; it is a social reality.
In fact Ambedkar’s thought can be divided into two parts. Why he thought there was a fundamental impediment – caste – which prevented Indian people from reaching a consensus regarding any important aspect of their social life, and the solutions he proposed to get rid of this great impediment.
The concept of power involved in this discourse
The concept of power that Ambedkar had to discuss in dealing with the above mentioned two issues were not juridical notions of sovereignty and of the sovereign individual who passed his power to the state, but the issue of social power as actually found in the existing Indian society. He clearly saw the illusion of political power, when divorced from the social bases of power, when such great leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru were unable to achieve any of the fundamental ambitions they had set out to achieve, on the use of Indian independence for altering the nature of Indian society.
Ambedkar engaged in many debates with both the Socialists and people who held right wing views, as well as those who held the view that economic development was the solution to the social division of castes.
“One may contend that economic motive is not the only motive by which man is actuated. That economic power is the only kind of power no student of human society can accept. That the social status of an individual by itself often becomes a source of power and authority is made clear by the sway, which the Mahatmas have held over the common man. Why do a millionaire in India obey penniless Sadhus and Fakirs? Why do millions of paupers in India sell their trifling thickets, which constitute their only wealth and go to Benares and Mecca? That, religion is the source of power is illustrated by the history of India where the priest holds a sway over the common man often greater than the magistrate and where everything, even such things as strikes and elections, so easily take a religious turn and can so easily be given a religious twist. Take the case of the Plebeian of Rome as a further illustration of the power of religion over man. It throws great light on this point. The Plebs had fought for a share in the supreme executive under the Roman Republic and had secured the appointment of a Plebeian Consul elected by a separate electorate constituted by the Commitia Centuriata, which was an assembly of Plebeian. They wanted a Consul of their own because they felt that the Patrician Consuls used to discriminate against the Plebeian in carrying on the administration. They had apparently obtained a great gain because under the Republican Constitution of Rome one Consul had the power of vetoing an act of the other Consul. But did they in fact gain anything? The answer to this question must be in the negative. The Plebeian never could get a Plebeian Consul who could be said to be a strong man and who could act independently of the Patrician Consul. In the ordinary course of things the Plebeian should have got a strong Plebeian Consul in view of the fact that his election was to be by a separate electorate of Plebeian. The question is why did they fail in getting a strong Plebeian to officiate as their Consul? The answer to this question reveals the dominion which religion exercises over the minds of men. It was an accepted creed of the whole Roman populous that no official could enter upon the duties of big office unless the Oracle of Delphi declared that he was acceptable to the Goddess. The priests who were in-charge of the temple of the Goddess of Delphi were all Patricians. Whenever therefore the Plebeian elected a Consul who was known to be a strong party man opposed to the Patricians or ‘communal’ to use the term that is current in India, the Oracle invariably declared that he was not acceptable to the Goddess. This is how the Plebeian were cheated out of their rights. But what is worthy of note is that the Plebeian permitted themselves to be thus cheated because they too like the Patricians, held firmly the belief that the approval of the Goddess was a condition precedent to the taking charge by an official of his duties and that election by the people was not enough. If the Plebeian had contended that election was enough and that the approval by the Goddess was not necessary they would have derived the fullest benefit from the political right which they had obtained. But they did not. They agreed to elect another, less suitable to themselves but more suitable to the Goddess which in fact meant more amenable to the Patricians. Rather than give up religion, the Plebeian give up material gain for which they had fought so hard. Does this not show that religion can be a source of power as great as money if not greater?” He goes on to say,
“Religion, social status and property are all sources of power and authority, which one man has, to control the liberty of another. One is predominant at one stage, the other is predominant at another stage. That is the only difference. If liberty is the ideal, if liberty means the destruction of the dominion which one man holds over another then obviously it cannot be insisted upon that economic reform must be the one kind of reform worthy of pursuit. If the source of power and dominion is at any given time or in any given society social and religious, then social reform and religious reform must be accepted as the necessary sort of reform.
One can thus attack the doctrine of Economic Interpretation of History adopted by the Socialists of India. But I recognise that economic interpretation of history is not necessary for the validity of the Socialist contention that equalisation of property is the only real reform and that it must precede everything else. However, what I like to ask the Socialists is this: Can you have economic reform without first bringing about a reform of the social order?”
In this aspect of economic interpretation of power, Ambedkar’s views expressed in the text published in 1937 and many other texts, which are a very integral to his analysis of caste, bear similar perspectives as the views of Foucault expressed in his lectures in 1971, on Truth and Power.
“What is at stake in all these genealogies is the nature of this power which has surged into view in all its violence, aggression and absurdity in the course of the last forty years, contemporaneously, that is, with the collapse of Fascism and the decline of Stalinism. What, we must ask, is this power – or rather, since that is to give a formulation to the question that invites the kind of theoretical coronation of the whole which I am so keen to avoid – what are these various contrivances of power, whose operations extend to such differing levels and sectors of society and are possessed of such manifold ramifications? What are their mechanisms, their effects and their relations? The issue here can, I believe, be crystallized essentially in the following question: is the analysis of power or of powers to be deduced in one way or another from the economy? Let me make this question and my reasons for posing it somewhat clearer. It is not at all my intention to abstract from what are innumerable and enormous differences; yet despite, and even because of these differences, I consider there to be a certain point in common between the juridical, and let us call it, liberal, conception of political power (found in the philosopher of the eighteenth century) and the Marxist conception, or at any rate a certain conception currently held to be Marxist. I would call this common point economism in the theory of power. By that I mean that in the case of the classic, juridical theory, power is taken to be a right, which one is able to possess like a commodity, and which one can in consequence transfer or alienate, either wholly or partially, through a legal act or through some act that establishes a right, such as takes place through cession or contract. Power is that concrete power which every individual holds, and whose partial or total cession enables political power or sovereignty to be established. This theoretical construction is essentially based on the idea that the constitution of political power obeys the model of a legal transaction involving a contractual type of exchange (hence the clear analogy that runs through all these theories between power and commodities, power and wealth). In the other case – I am thinking here of the general Marxist conception of power – one finds none of all that. Nonetheless, there is something else inherent in this latter conception, something which one might term an economic functionality of power. This economic functionality is present to the extent that power is conceived primarily in terms of the role it plays in the maintenance simultaneously of the relations of production and of class domination which the development and specific forms of the forces of production have rendered possible. On this view, then, the historical raison d’�tre of political power is to be found in the economy. Broadly speaking, in the first case we have a political power whose formal model is discoverable in the process of exchange, the economic circulation of commodities; in the second case, the historical raison d’�tre of political power and the principle of its concrete forms and actual functioning, is located in the economy. Well then, the problem involved in the researches to which I refer can, I believe, be broken down in the following manner: in the first place, is power always in a subordinate position relative to the economy? Is it always in the service of, and ultimately answerable to, the economy? Is its essential end and purpose to serve the economy? Is it destined to realize, consolidate, maintain and reproduce the relations appropriate to the economy and essential to its functioning? In the second place, is power modeled upon the commodity? Is it something that one possesses, acquires, cedes through force or contract, that one alienates or recovers, that circulates, that voids this or that region? Or, on the contrary, do we need to employ varying tools in its analysis – even, that is, when we allow that it effectively remains the case that the relations of power do indeed remain profoundly enmeshed in and with economic relations and participate with them in a common circuit? If that is the case, it is not the models of functional subordination or formal isomorphism that will characterize the interconnection between politics and the economy. Their indissolubility will be of a different order, one that it will be our task to determine.” [19]
In fact the whole study of caste by Ambedkar, which takes many volumes to fully study, falls under what Foucault describes as genealogy. Forced by the need to explain the theory and practice of caste, which could not be explained in terms of the usual economic and social theories, Ambedkar was forced to explain them in other ways. The learned jurist who had obtained many degrees from several western universities, was not able to rely on any of the theories he learned to explain the Indian caste system. What he wrote might fall under what Foucault later called subjugated knowledge.
“On the other hand, I believe that by subjugated knowledge one should understand something else, something which in a sense is altogether different, namely, a whole set of knowledge that have been as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledge, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity. I also believe that it is through the re-emergence of these low-ranking knowledge, these unqualified, even directly disqualified knowledge (such as that of the psychiatric patient, of the ill person, of the nurse, of the doctor – parallel and marginal as they are to the knowledge of medicine – that of the delinquent etc.), and which involve what I would call a popular knowledge (le savoir des gens) though it is far from being a general commonsense knowledge, but is on the contrary a particular, local, regional knowledge, a differential knowledge incapable of unanimity and which owes its force only to the harshness with which it is opposed by everything -surrounding it- that it is through the re-appearance of this knowledge, of these local popular knowledge, these disqualified knowledge, that criticism performs its work.”
He further goes on to say, “What emerges out of this is something one might call a genealogy, or rather a multiplicity of genealogical researches, a painstaking rediscovery of struggles together with the rude memory of their conflicts. And these genealogies, that are the combined product of an erudite knowledge and a popular knowledge, were not possible and could not even have been attempted except on one condition, namely that the tyranny of globalising discourses with their hierarchy and all their privileges of a theoretical avant-garde was eliminated.
Let us give the term genealogy to the union of erudite knowledge and local memories, which allows us to establish a historical knowledge of struggles and to make use of this knowledge tactically today. This then will be a provisional definition of the genealogies which I have attempted to compile with you over the last few years.” [20]
In fact, the work of both Ambedkar and Grundtvig, are works that of genealogies, though they did not think of their work in that way. It is important to note this aspect when considering the contributions made to education within the context of discourse on power. Grundtvig beautifully combines erudite knowledge with folk memories. Folk School was a meeting place where erudite knowledge and folk thinking were to mix and merge, where academic and popular forms of thinking were to be fused. That was the living dialogue, and the genuine enlightenment.
[17] B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, 1937 [back to text]
[18] ibid [back to text]
[19] Foucault- Power and Knowledge, Pantheon Books London 1972 [back to text]
[20] ibid [back to text]
