We the members of the Republican Panthers from Maharashtra who were present in the Chandigarh conference are deeply pained to see the attribution of Anti-Ambedkar canard to Dr Anand Teltumbde in the Hastkshep blog and Bigul, the organ of the organizers' outfit. We feel that ignoring his spirited attack on the orthodox Marxists of their ilk and projecting him as anti-Ambedkar with stray sentences sans context is a deceitful action to malign his image not only among dalits but the radical communists.    

They have conveniently ignored the scathing attack Dr Teltumbde mounted on the orthodox position the conference organizers had taken in their approach paper. The approach paper, leaving apart the usual stuff, was completely disdainful of the entire struggle of the lower castes, particularly dalits, and more so of Babasaheb Ambedkar. Dr Teltumbde, who had declined their invitation initially because of his busy schedule, had accepted to come for a short time from Jalandhar, where he was invited as a chief guest in the foundation day programme of Samata Sainik Dal by none other than the respected senior Ambedkarite leader Mr L R Baley. He reached late in the evening of 13th and was expected to make a special speech in the conference. The next day, when he was called upon to make a speech he instead targeted the distortions indulged in the approach paper. He said that there was nothing new in the approach paper and rather the reiteration of the old orthodox position which he thought most Indian Marxists were apologetic about. For the paucity of time he just focused on the reference in the approach paper to him and explained how each and every word was a distortion. Since his opinions on the subject were known to the entire country, this distortion, he alleged was willful and deliberate and smacked of deep casteist prejudice. He said that firstly distorting the statement of a person and then celebrating its refutation was no Marxist method. 

The approach paper had taken an exception to his statement in the introduction he had written to the Annihilation of Caste published by the Students for Resistance in JNU, of course after distorting it, that he treated Ambedkar's Annihilation of caste to be as important as Marx's Communist Manifesto. Fortunately, Asit Das, the renowned civil rights activist had just before read out the actual statement, which was "What the Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world Annihilation of Caste is to the caste India", which itself has exposed the lie of the organizers. Dr Teltumbde explained how it smacked of the casteist prejudice of the organizers against Ambedkar and dalits. In course of his explanation he said that Babasaheb Ambedkar did not claim to have given any lasting theory of society beyond the expression of his conception of an ideal society. He basically followed progressive pragmatism inspired by his professor in Columbia, John Dewey, which relied on any theoretical postulate being tested in practice so as to make the latter enlightened. It intrinsically accepted failures in its methodology. Ambedkar's greatness lay in his focus of the unique disease of the subcontinent and sincerely struggling against it. Whether he was right or wrong therefore becomes irrelevant. It is an empirical fact that Ambedkar failed in most things he had tried. Initially, he imagined that the advanced elements of the caste Hindus would come forward to undertake certain reforms but soon in Mahad, he got disillusioned with them and turned towards political opportunities. He labouriously won the separate political identity for Dalits but could not use it as Gandhi's blackmail annulled it. He won political reservations but realized that they rather served the ruling class interests and demanded their withdrawal in 1953. Interestingly, he himself could never get elected on the reserved seats even against the political pigmies. Other reservations (jobs and education) operated over 60 years could barely uplift 10 percent of dalits; the balance 90 percent of Dalits being where they were in relation to others. He promoted higher education among Dalits but it also did not work and had to lament that the educated Dalits had cheated him. He wrote the Constitution with great hope but had to declare that it was no good for anyone and that he was used as a hack. He embraced 'radical' Buddhism and imagined that he would make entire India Buddhist but Buddhism today is confined to only his community and is reduced to an additional identity. One may thus easily recount his failures. But then every great man has failed in that sense. The entire world considers that Marx has failed. This failure is far more serious because unlike Ambedkar Marx had given a 'grand theory'. It is far more serious than any other failures in history. 

Dr Teltumbde repeatedly criticized the organizers that their attitude that Marx has said the last word smacked of Hindutva-vadis who consider that everything was given in Vedas. He explained that in the IIT where he currently teaches, such things are convincingly spoken that entire science and technology was born only in India and all others had stolen it from here. He compared the entire discourse of the organizers with it and cautioned that it cannot be taken as Marxist. He said that trashing the entire non-Marxist struggles only showed their casteist attitude. Ambedkar was no Marxist. He had serious reservations about Marxism. But still he was not disrespectful about it notwithstanding his casual remarks that it only considered material wellbeing and ignored the spiritual aspects of human life. He always used Marxism as a benchmark to assess his own decisions as clearly revealed by his last lecture in Kathmandu "Buddha or Karl Marx". Like many people of his times, including many self-appointed Marxists, his conception of Marxism was superficial and today we may not consider it as valid. But is it relevant in evaluating his contributions, he asked. He emphasized that the contribution of Ambedkar not only to dalit emancipation but to the democratization of Indian society is greater than that of all Marxists together.   

He said that his convictions have been Marxist since early childhood but he still would be scared to call himself Marxist because of such orthodox, dogmatic and brahmanic attitude of the Marxists. He explained that his Marxism is based on its core tenet of dialectical materialism. Rest everything being derivative is subject to review in light of historical experience, notwithstanding whether it is attempted by Marx, Engels, Lenin or anybody else. He cautioned that the world has changed beyond recognition since the days of Marx and Engels. He posed some problematics in terms of advent of modern technologies like information technology, bio technologies, nano technologies, etc.; burgeoning middle classes and said that he has a long list of such things that might prompt rethink of Marxism. But the orthodox Marxists would never acknowledge it. It was this 'enthusiastic' attitude of the Marxists that Marx himself had to declare that he was not Marxist. He expressed his pain that the organizers had pushed him to say such bitter things about Marx and Marxism, which he held so dear to him. He went beyond and stated that lately he came to think of these 'isms' also as identities. Like any other identities they only divide people and weaken their revolutionary potential. 

He accused the early communists of making Marxism into a dogma with their brahmanic attitude and committing the biggest historical sin in borrowing the western moulds for class analysis of India. Had they even internalized Lenin's definition of class, castes as the life world of people in the subcontinent could not have been excluded from the conception of classes. They had advanced tools of Marxism to dissect the concrete reality of India but they reduced them into a simplistic metaphor of base and superstructure. What they did belonged to the 'base' and others' to the unimportant superstructure. It is this way they kept ridiculing Ambedkar, who had tended to befriend them in 1930s. If they had followed Marxism, castes could have been embodied into classes making anti-caste struggle as an integral part of the class struggle. But because of their brahmanic folly, castes got left out of their analysis, leaving behind the idiotic duality of class and caste. After his spirited criticism of the position of the organizers and defence of the anti-caste struggles, some of the representatives of the latter made longish speeches in a tone of refuting him. When he was called upon to speak after them, he simply said that all that they did was indulging again in distortion. Trashing their lengthy speeches, he said that since he never said things that were labouriously refuted, there was no need for him to offer rejoinder. He rather accepted their philosophical elaboration of John Dewey, etc.

He repeated what he has been saying for many years that there is no revolution in India without participation of Dalits and there is no emancipation of Dalits without revolution. The approach paper purporting to picture reality as they see only helps alienating dalits further. He cautioned that this attitude has brought the things to such a fore that dalits can easily join any reactionary camp but would consider the communists as their biggest enemy. Although this unfortunate attitude is hardened by many a historical processes, the communists cannot be absolved of their role. Many dalit youth of late have begun to be attracted towards communists; thanks to the degeneration of the dalit movement, but such attitudes as in the approach paper will surely disturb and re-alienate them. He expressed his lament using Marx's word that the approach paper had just tried to present reality; his point was to change it. 

This is the ruthful gist of what Dr Teltumbde spoke there. To pick up stray sentences ignoring such a thick context is a dishonest way unbecoming of any Marxist. 

-Veera Sathidar. Raju Kadam. Sharad Gaikwad. Sweta Birla. Sumedh Jadhav.