[Reader-list] Fwd: Dr Anand Teltumbde mounted scathing attack on the so-called Marxists in Chandigarh Conference

Asit Das asit1917 at gmail.com
Wed Apr 10 04:46:08 CDT 2013


*Dr Anand Teltumbde mounted scathing attack on the so-called Marxists in
Chandigarh Conference*

22nd March, 2013

We the members of the Republican Panthers from Maharashtra who were present
in the Chandigarh conference <http://sanhati.com/event/6007/> 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 also
among 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 was completely disdainful of the entire struggle
of the lower castes, particularly dalits, and more so of Babasaheb
Ambedkar. Dr Teltumbde had initially declined their invitation because of
his previous commitment in Jalandhar, where he was invited as a chief guest
in the foundation day programme of Samata Sainik Dal by 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 the approach paper
was merely a 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.

In the course of his talk Teltumbde said that Babasaheb Ambedkar did not
claim he had a a grand theorization of society beyond the expression of his
conception of an ideal society. He followed the progressive pragmatism of
John Dewey, his professor at Columbia University. Ambedkar’s greatness lay
in his focus on the unique disease of the subcontinent (i.e. caste) 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 laboriously 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 warned the organizers that their attitude towards
Marx was no different from the attitude of Hindutvavadis who claim that
everything was discussed in the Vedas. He said that trashing all
non-Marxist struggles only revealed 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,
Dr. Teltumbde 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.

Dialectical materialism he said was the core tenet of Marxism. He cautioned
that capitalism has transformed since the days of Marx and Engels. that
might prompt a rethinking of Marxism, that orthodox Marxists do not
acknowledge. It was this ‘enthusiastic’ attitude that caused Marx to
declare that he was not a Marxist. He expressed concerns that a reductive
Marxian approach would limit the revolutionary potential of Marxism.

He said the early communists with their dogmatic and brahmanical attitude
simply borrowed western moulds for a class analysis in 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, thus declaring Ambedkar as irrelevant. 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 was left out of a class analysis, leaving
behind the idiotic duality of class and caste.

He repeated what he has been saying for many years that there can be no
revolution in India without the participation of Dalits and there can be no
emancipation of Dalits without a revolution. The approach paper would only
deepen the alienation of Dalits from revolutionary struggles and strengthen
reactionary politics. While this process has been shaped by many historical
elements, one cannot absolve communists of their role.

This is the truthful 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.

Sharad Gaikwad, Vira Sathidar, Uttam Jagirdar, Raju Kadam, Swati Birla,
Harish

Contact: 09702707583




note for abhinav sinhas reply to replubican panthers and anand teltumdes
response to abhinav sinha see www.sanhati.com


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