Ambedkar ‘insulted’ by Amit Shah: Did ‘BJP’s predecessors’ burn Babasaheb’s effigy, as Jairam Ramesh said?

Responding, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh tweeted, “…This shows that the BJP and RSS leaders have a lot of hatred for Baba Saheb Ambedkar. The hatred is such that they are even irritated by his name. These are the same people whose predecessors burnt the effigies of Baba Saheb, who talked about changing the Constitution given by Baba Saheb.”

Did the BJP’s “predecessors” ever burn Ambedkar’s effigies? What did the RSS say about Ambedkar and the Constitution?

Burning effigies of Ambedkar

Ambedkar’s effigy was indeed burnt by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers, on December 12, 1949. Along with Ambedkar, effigies of Jawaharlal Nehru were also burnt.

The RSS was bitterly opposed to the Hindu Code Bill, which aimed to reform matters related to aspects like marriage and succession, giving more rights to women.

Historian Ramachandra Guha in his book, India After Gandhi, writes: “On 11 December 1949, the RSS organised a public meeting at the Ram Lila grounds in Delhi, where speaker after speaker condemned the [Hindu Code] bill. One called it ‘an atom bomb on Hindu society’. Another likened it to the draconian Rowlatt Act introduced by the colonial state… he said, the struggle against this Bill would signal the downfall of Nehru’s government. The next day a group of RSS workers marched on the Assembly buildings, shouting ‘Down with Hindu code bill’ and ‘May Pandit Nehru perish’. The protesters burnt effigies of the prime minister and Dr Ambedkar, and then vandalised the car of Sheikh Abdullah.”

What RSS, Golwalkar said about Constitution

Among the reasons Ambedkar resigned as Law Minister was his frustration with Nehru on not getting the Hindu Code Bill passed soon enough, in the form Ambedkar wanted. Yet it was the right wing, including factions within the Congress, that had opposed the Bill tooth and nail.

Ambedkar had said about the Hindu Code Bill, “To leave inequality between class and class, between sex and sex which is the soul of Hindu society untouched and to go on passing legislation relating to economic problems is to make a farce of our Constitution and to build a palace on a dung heap.”

Guha wrote in an opinion piece for The Indian Express how the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, opposed this Bill. “An article in the Organiser, dated November 2, 1949, characterised the Hindu Code Bill “as a direct invasion on the faith of the Hindus”, remarking that “its provisions empowering women to divorce is revolting to the Hindu ideology”. An editorial published a month later (“The Hindu Code Bill”, the Organiser, December 7, 1949) led with this paragraph: “We oppose the Hindu Code Bill. We oppose it because it is a derogatory measure based on alien and immoral principles…” It then went on to state that “Rishi Ambedkar and Maharishi Nehru… would atomise society and infect every family with scandal, suspicion and vice.”

Sections of the right, including former Sarsanghchalak MS Golwalkar, were not particularly enthused by the Constitution. Criticising it for not being Indian-enough, Golwalkar wrote in his Bunch of Thoughts, “Our Constitution too is just a cumbersome and heterogeneous piecing together of various articles from various Constitutions of Western countries. It has absolutely nothing, which can be called our own. Is there a single word of reference in its guiding principles as to what our national mission is and what our keynote in life is? No! Some lame principles from the United Nations Charter or from the Charter of the now defunct League of Nations and some features from the American and British Constitutions have been just brought together in a mere hotchpotch.”