Can B. R. Ambedkar be blamed for the reservations in India?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article is from a series of Questions asked by anti-reservationists and answered by Shekhar Bodhakar

Can Dr. B.R. Ambedkar be blamed for the reservations in India?

This may come as a surprise to you but Dr. Ambedkar did not want the reservation system but had to settle for it to save Mr Gandhi’s life at the request of Mrs Kasturba Gandhi.

Dr. Ambedkar did not create the caste based reservation as is commonly portrayed. He only wanted the then government to implement the legal communal award agreed by the then British prime minister Ramsay Mcdonald. This agreement provided the right of separate electorate for scheduled castes and tribes as a political protection against the Hindu majority government which was expected to come to power after independence. It was Mr Gandhi who opposed the award and went on a fast to pressurise (more like emotional blackmail) Dr. Ambedkar to accept reservation in lieu of separate electorate. Mr Gandhi did not oppose the seperate electorate demand that was granted to the Muslims, Sikhs and Anglo-Indians. He ONLY opposed it for the untouchables and tribals.

If anyone ruined the country by inventing a reservation system, they were the people who invented “jaati and “jaatism“ (commonly but inaccurately translated as “caste and casteism”).This created unimaginable hardships and cruelty against the marginalized communities of India in the name of Varnashrama Vaivastha. If it wasnt for that, there would have been no need for a separate electorate for the untouchables, Gandhi’s fast and therefore no constitutional reservations based on caste.

Reservation is provided in the constitution, not by Dr. Ambedkar alone, but by the then all India leaders who were the members of the constituent assembly.

Listen to the following BBC interview in which Dr Ambedkar talks about Mr Gandhi and the poona pact:

Merit is still an orphan in this country and it is not a monopoly of any particular caste. Only people who have a vested interest talk about merit. People tolerated for countless generations, caste based reservation in education for a particular caste and during that period nobody bothered about merit. Hundred percent of a particular caste cannot be meritorious and it was not questioned by anyone until it was time to create a new country based on liberty, equality, fraternity and social justice for all which is not possible in a society based on the jati system.

Reservation policy is a result of Poona Pact which only took place because Mr Gandhi went on an illegal fast in protest to the communal award which Dr Ambedkar legally won at the round table conferences.

Dr Ambedkar demanded (and won) communal award for those who had been suppressed and deprived of basic human rights for centuries, if not millennia. Mr Gandhi forced reservation in EXCHANGE. So stop blaming Dr Ambedkar for reservations unless you want to scrap the Poona Pact and agree to the original agreement of separate electorates.

CONCLUSION :

If there weren’t jaati identities or a jaati system, there would have been no need for Dr. Ambedkar’s demand of separate electorate.
If there was no demand of separate electorate for the untouchables as was granted to other communities, Mr M.K. Gandhi would not have gone for a “blackmailing fast”
If Mr Gandhi did not sit on a ‘fast unto death’, there would have been no “Poona Pact”
If there was no Poona Pact, there would not have been caste based reservations as you know it today
If there was no caste based reservation, you would not be asking this question

So who is to be blamed for reservations in India?

ALSO READ:

Author of this article Shekhar Bodhakar is a London based Anti-Caste activist. He is the Composer of Buddhatāla and has also worked as Head of Mathematics department in a London college in the past. You can reach him at: globalambedkarites@gmail.com