Why Ambedkar's 'Grammar of Anarchy' speech resonates even in today's India
At 10am on a wintery New Delhi morning of November 25, 1949, 66 years back from this day, the Constituent Assembly of India met in the Constitution Hall of Parliament to have a final debate on the new Constitution, which was drafted in 141 days. Following intense argument, Dr BR Ambedkar, chairman of the drafting committee, delivered the closing speech, which in the annals of history is known as the "Grammar of Anarchy" speech, and has become a reference point in Indian democracy. The following day, on November 26, the Constitution of India was adopted.
In his speech, Babasaheb rebutted points condemning the Constitution, raised concerns about sustenance of the new found independence, articulated on the idea of India a "nation", and importantly ideals of democracy, which the Constitution of India, lengthy even at that time at 395 Articles, enshrined. Democracy, Dr Ambedkar recounted, was not alien to olden days India but cast aspersion on its maintenance in independent India. He went on to deliver three suggestions to keep democracy intact in both form and fact.
Have the apprehensions of the framer of Constitution been allayed in all these decades? How has India fared based on those tenets? Does the ideals find resonance in the present day? If "Grammar of Anarchy" were to be reiterated today, would it be relevant?
"The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the grammar of anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us."
The history of independent India is mired in various "bloody methods of revolution". Secessionism has been the poster boy of such revolutions in the Bodo, Tamil, Sikh and Kashmiri movements. By official accounts, nearly 50,000 lives have been lost and tens of thousands missing in more than 25 years of militancy in Kashmir alone. The economic, social and political implications of all these struggles are humongous. India has always dealt with these as a traditional modern state and less like a mature democracy and an emerging superpower. However, currently Indian polity does not face an imminent threat from regionalism or nationhood claims.
The other variety of "grammar of anarchy" that the country has been seeing are the ones that happen almost every day, at some or the other place in the country. Disobedience, in form of bandhs which many a times border on hooliganism, televised fast-unto-death threats with desired theatrics, often a tool of great allure to the political economy, has huge economic implications and causes hardships to the public. As recently as on September 2, a Bharat bandh by labour unions crippled parts of the country. The courts have sadly not been able to strike a balance between freedom guaranteed by Constitution and degree of permissible social control.
"As has been well said by the Irish patriot Daniel O'Connel, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, bhakti, or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, bhakti or hero worship is a sure shot road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship."
It would almost sound as if Ambedkar is speaking these lines in the current context of highly polarised debates. The second suggestion Ambedkar proposed in the 1949 speech was of not falling for hero-worship, a distorted and convoluted form of "bhakti". The bhakt culture is not new to Indian politics. It is the nomenclature that has caught public imagination in recent times, in part thanks to wider penetration of media, but it resonates in all eras and all divisions of Indian politics.
Perhaps Babasaheb did not exaggerate when he said political bhakti "plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude of any other country in the world". This kind of bhakti often leads to political narcissism and with sycophant coteries turning public opinion as tool of authority creates a heady mix for undermining democracy. The case of Indira Gandhi stands as an example of such. The culture of political bhakti needs to be checked at the face of militant hypernationalism, sledge hammering majoritarianism for it does not augur well for our political society and diversity of social fabric.
"Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things".
One of the concerns of the framers of Constitution, other than national unity and India's foreign policy, was the social uplift that the state needed to do. Illiteracy, destitution, poverty and social evils plagued the newly formed country then. Liberty, equality and fraternity formed the trinity which was the bedrock of social democracy. However 66 years after it was envisaged, 90 per cent of Indians own less than 25 per cent of its wealth. This economic inequality manifests in health, class, caste, religion, literacy and many other indices.
Liberalism which has been a dominant narrative in framing of Indian Constitution. Indian liberalism perhaps has taken a turn that Ambedkar warned against. At the face of dire inequalities it has become elitist, married with capitalism. An electoral democracy being preferred by the majority instead of liberal democracy in the absence of desired social cleavages have added to a convoluted liberalism. It is thus imperative that India holds on to the trinity that Babasaheb spoke about.
"The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the Constitution. The Constitution can provide only the organs of State such as the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the State depend are the people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics. Who can say how the people of India and their parties will behave? Will they uphold constitutional methods of achieving their purposes or will they prefer revolutionary methods of achieving them?"
A Constitution, as Uday Mehta writes are "scripts in which a people inscribe the text of their professed collective destiny". The Indian Constitution was not framed on a clean slate but one that was majorly a continuation of the Government of India Act, 1935 framed by the British. One fundamental tenet that the Constitution held and the people sealed it in their destiny was that of democracy. Various facets of democracy have unfolded and with newer generations, the interpretations and aspirations are changing. However Dr BR Ambedkar's historic "Grammar of Anarchy" speech, which resonates even today and which finds relevance six decades later, delineates the pillars on which a sound democratic structure would stand. Modern India would do well to strengthen those pillars.