Modi’s statement that 90 percent of Constituent Assembly members were Sanatanis and they supported B.R. Ambedkar in framing a great constitution offends Ambedkar’s legacy, writes S.N. Sahu.
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NO Prime Minister of our country has ever reduced 90 percent of the members of the Constituent Assembly to their immediate religious identity by saying that they professed a particular religion and on that very ground their support to Babasaheb Ambedkar, Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly, was a critical factor behind the framing of our Constitution which came into force on January 26, 1950.
Tragically, it has been done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 16, 2024, when in his election campaign speech in Gaya, he claimed, “Those who abuse Sanatan should listen carefully that 80–90 percent of the people in the Constituent Assembly that made the Constitution of India were Sanatanis and those Sanatanis supported Babasaheb Ambedkar in making such a great Constitution.”
Distortion of the character of the Constituent Assembly
A Prime Minister reducing the multiple identities of 90 percent of the members of the Constituent Assembly to only their religious identity, that too seventy-four years after the Constitution came into force, speaks volumes. This is a gross distortion of the character of the Constituent Assembly, which was never seen in terms of the religious creed of its members, maintaining its neutrality to religion and giving a framework of governance anchored in secularism.
Ambedkar’s indictment of Sanatan
Had Ambedkar been alive, Modi’s strange claim that 90 percent of the members of the Constituent Assembly supported Ambedkar in framing a great Constitution would have bewildered him.
He who outrightly rejected the idea of Sanatan must have found Prime Minister Modi (occupying a high constitutional post) completely subverting his vision.
Had Ambedkar been alive, Modi’s strange claim that 90 percent of the members of the Constituent Assembly supported Ambedkar in framing a great Constitution would have bewildered him.
Ambedkar, in his 1936 book, Annihilation of Caste, put the idea of Sanatan under the scanner and exhorted Hindus to “consider whether the time has not come for them to recognise that there is nothing fixed, nothing eternal, nothing sanatan”.
He asserted that the individual, society, polity and life itself is subject to the inevitable law of change. “In a changing society,” he forcefully remarked, “there must be a constant revolution of old values and the Hindus must realise that if there must be standards to measure the acts of men there must also be a readiness to revise those standards.”
Seven years later, on September 1, 1943, in a preface to the book Mr Gandhi and the Emancipation of Untouchables, Ambedkar made a scathing observation on Sanatan and what it stood for.
He wrote, “The Anti-semitism of the Nazis against the Jews is in no way different in ideology and in effect from the Sanatanism of the Hindus against the Untouchables.”
So the claim of Prime Minister Modi that 90 percent of the Constituent Assembly members were Sanatanis and they stood by Ambedkar for preparing a great Constitution for India goes against the very worldview of Ambedkar who wanted a religion based on liberty, equality and fraternity by rejecting a religion based on scriptures.
Issue of Sanatan in the Constituent Assembly
It is illuminating to note that in the Constituent Assembly, there were references made to Sanatan and Sanatanism on some occasions.
When Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected as the President of the Constituent Assembly, its distinguished member H.V. Kamath, on December 11, 1946, hailed him as someone who “embodied in himself the spirit of India, the spirit which has animated our sages and our rishis to preach the ancient gospel, the ancient but ever new— sanatano nityanutarih, the gospel of universalism.”
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Radhakrishnan, a renowned philosopher, while participating in the discussion on the national flag on July 22, 1947, said, “Our dharma is Sanatan, eternal, not in the sense that it is a fixed deposit but in the sense that it is perpetually changing.”
Adding further he said, “Its uninterrupted continuity is its Sanatan character.” He stressed, “So even with regard to our social conditions it is essential for us to move forward.”
Prior to saying so he did stress, “There are ever so many institutions which are worked into our social fabric like caste and Untouchability. Unless these things are scrapped we cannot say that we either seek truth or practise virtue.”
Ambedkar exhorted Hindus to “consider whether the time has not come for them to recognise that there is nothing fixed, nothing eternal, nothing sanatan”.
Prof. N.G. Ranga, in his speech in the Constituent Assembly on August 1, 1949, on the issue of the proposal for the second chamber in states, while agreeing that the second chamber should be a moderating chamber and a delaying chamber, cautioned that those often acted as centres of reaction.
He even went to the extent of saying that “even in this country it is intended that these second chambers should be citadels of reaction, of orthodoxy and Sanatanism”.
“I am opposed,” he forcefully stated, “to this orthodoxy, to this reaction or to this Sanatanism.
Ambedkar’s legacy devalued by PM’s statement
Such divergent views of the members of the Constituent Assembly on the issue of Sanatan clearly indicate that their vision was not determined by any one particular faith, least of all Sanatan dharma, while framing the Constitution.
Ambedkar wrote, “The Anti-semitism of the Nazis against the Jews is in no way different in ideology and in effect from the Sanatanism of the Hindus against the Untouchables.”
Prime Minister Modi, while making a preposterous claim that Sanatanis who constituted 90 percent of the Constituent Assembly stood behind Ambedkar in framing the Constitution should be mindful of Ambedkar’s views on Sanatan which he stated above, juxtaposed with the anti-semitism of the Nazis against the Jews.
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Modi, who falsely claims that Congress did nothing to honour Ambedkar and he and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is in the forefront to accord due respect to Ambedkar’s legacy is, in fact, tarnishing Ambedkar’s name by saying that 90 percent of Constituent Assembly members professing Sanatan faith supported Ambedkar to give our country a great Constitution.
Ambedkar can be justly honoured and his glorious legacy upheld not by invoking Sanatana dharma but by imbibing constitutional morality which is facing mortal danger from those wielding power and controlling the State apparatus at the Union level
