His entry into the CA appears to have been related to Congress’s effort to give legitimacy to the establishment of a constitutional framework for free India
“I have fought the leaders of India for a generation,” Dr BR Ambedkar told the American writer James Michener in an interview in 1952. “Many of them hate me, and I despise some of them.” How did he then get into the Congress-dominated Constituent Assembly (CA) and become the chairman of its drafting committee?
In his earlier stint in New Delhi, as the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Southeast Asia during World War II, he came to know of Ambedkar as a “brave fighter”. (File Photo)
The story falls under two phases. In the first phase, lasting till around the end of 1946, Ambedkar was a sworn enemy of the Congress. But despite the party’s opposition, he got elected to the CA from the Bengal provincial assembly, due to efforts of the Scheduled Caste (SC) leader Jogendranath Mandal, who secured support for him from the Muslim League and some Congress SC members.
Ambedkar attended the first session of the CA, held from December 9-23, 1947, and in his first speech, made a stirring plea for national unity. Congressman NV Gadgil recalled that the speech was “greeted with a tremendous ovation.” Soon thereafter, Ambedkar was elected to the advisory committee of the CA.
Following the Partition of India, he lost his seat in the CA (the seat was in East Bengal, which became a part of Pakistan), but the Congress was keen to have him back. Vallabhbhai Patel told GV Mavalankar, the president (speaker) of the central legislative assembly that Ambedkar’s “attitude” had changed. A vacancy in the CA had to be filled from the Bombay assembly, and Patel asked BG Kher, then the chief minister of Bombay, to arrange for Ambedkar’s re-election.
President Rajendra Prasad also wrote to Kher saying that “apart from any other consideration,” the Congress had “found Dr Ambedkar’s work… to be of such an order as to require that we should not be deprived of his services.” With the Congress’s backing, Ambedkar re-entered the CA as a member from Bombay at the start of the assembly’s fourth session (July 14-31, 1947). He was one of 30-odd non-Congress members elected to the CA.
Around the end of July 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru invited Ambedkar to join the interim Union ministry that was to come into force on August 15, 1947. A few other non-Congressmen, including Syama Prasad Mookerjee who founded the Jan Sangh, were also invited.
Ambedkar’s entry into the CA and the Nehru ministry thus appears to have been related to the Congress’s effort to give legitimacy to the process of establishing a constitutional framework for free India. The concern for legitimacy would have been accentuated by the fact that the CA was not formed on the basis of universal adult franchise, because it was based on the elections in 1946. The bulk of the peasantry and people without minimum educational qualifications could not vote in the elections of 1946. Among the SCs, less than 10% enjoyed the right to vote in the Madras province; in the United Provinces, this number stood at 2.5%.
Interestingly, Ambedkar’s appointment was backed by Viceroy Louis Mountbatten, who was close to Nehru. In his earlier stint in New Delhi, as the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Southeast Asia during World War II, Mountbatten came to know of Ambedkar as a “brave fighter”. In July 1947, Mountbatten told Nehru that unless “a really sound Cabinet in which young, talented and keen members predominated” was formed, a “great opportunity of gripping the imagination of the country” would be lost. According to Mountbatten, Nehru then scrapped an “unimaginative” list of Cabinet ministers made by his colleagues, and prepared a new list, with Patel’s backing. Mountbatten perhaps did not have a role in finalising the list, but when he saw Ambedkar’s name, he felt “great satisfaction”, he told secretary of state William Hare on August 9, 1947.
Ambedkar had his reasons to join Nehru’s ministry, which he explained in a letter to the prime minister in April 1948. He told Nehru that he did not believe in “opposition for the sake of opposition”, and accepted the Congress’s offer as he could “serve the interests of the SCs better from within the government”.
However, as the tremendous work he put in as chairman of the drafting committee shows, his concern was not limited to SCs. Keeping aside ideological differences, he contributed to the construction of the edifice of what he called a political democracy in India. Liberal-democratic in essence, that edifice showed little trace of Gandhi’s ideas of Ram Rajya. On that score, despite their differences, Ambedkar and Nehru spoke the same language.
Ashok Gopal is the author of A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of BR Ambedkar
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