Abhinav Sinha

A year ago, I had read Anand Teltumbde’s book ‘Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt’. I found it to be a research work of the first degree and probably the best on the subject so far. Though the book never directly criticizes the Deweyan Pragmatism of Dr. Ambedkar, yet, through the comprehensive account of his political practice in the 1920s and early-1930s, the book reveals the extent of the impact of Deweyan Pragmatism on Ambedkar, especially for those who know what Deweyan Pragmatism is. For me, the book was extremely useful and I have prescribed the book in my talks and presentations throughout the country and outside the country as well. I considered it a commendable and rigorous fact-based research, despite the fact that the portion of historiography of caste was weak in the book. Therefore, when I came to know that Teltumbde has written the introduction of Dr. Ambedkar’s unfinished manuscript ‘India and Communism’, I bought it immediately in the hope that Teltumbde would have presented an objective account of Ambedkar’s relation with Marxist philosophy as well as Indian communists.

However, reading the introduction, which is named ‘Bridging the Unholy Rift’, came as a shocker to me, indeed a tragic one.

This ‘Introduction’ named ‘Bridging the Unholy Rift’ is not only full of factual and logical mistakes but also shows that Teltumbde understands the least about Marxism. He distorts facts about Ambedkar’s attitude towards communist philosophy, his attitude towards Indian communists (howsoever ideologically weak they were!) and makes a shame-faced attempt to make Ambedkar a sympathizer of Marxist philosophy. Anyone who has read Ambedkar knows that such a claim would be nothing less than a travesty of facts, a mockery of history. This attempt leads Teltumbde, first, to make a liberal appropriation of Marx, Engels and the entire Marxist philosophy and then show the vicinity of pragmatist liberalism of Ambedkar to Marxism as a science of revolution. Such wilful distortion of Marxism was not expected from Teltumbde. Also, he has revealed his “understanding” of Marx’s Capital as well as his stand towards the use of parliament and establishment of socialism, not to speak of Lenin’s theory of Imperialism and the strategy and general tactics proposed by Lenin in the imperialist stage.

In the present essay I will attempt to show these serious shortcomings of this ‘Introduction’ written by Anand Teltumbde, mostly in chronological order.

Hollow Claims, Shallow Arguments

The essay starts with the claim that Dr. Ambedkar was never against Communism and rebukes the middle class Dalit intelligentsia who has projected this anti-Communist image of Ambedkar due to their own vested interests; this is one of the consistent motif of the essay. In order to prove this hypothesis, Teltumbde has done the following: first, show that Ambedkar is sympathetic to Marxist philosophy and was against only the practice of Indian communists; second, since Marxist philosophy, as it is, cannot be made up into a close ally of Ambedkar’s Deweyan pragmatism and bourgeois liberalism, he attempts a bourgeois liberal appropriation of Marxism, Marx, Engels as well as Lenin (which is comparatively more difficult); finally, Teltumbde attempts to show that there is no big gap between Ambedkar and Marxist philosophy, in fact, they are natural allies.

In the present essay, I will demonstrate how all the above claims of Teltumbde are baseless and his understanding of Marxism itself is in want of a serious study of Marxist classics. We all acknowledge the contributions of Ambedkar to the anti-caste movement, especially, as someone who established a sense of self-dignity among the Dalits and who established the caste question on the agenda of the national movement. In order to comprehend and acknowledge these contributions, however, there is no need to first undertake a Marxist misappropriation of Ambedkar and then a liberal misappropriation of Marxism in order to what Teltumbde has called ‘bridging the unholy (?) rift.’ One can acknowledge the contributions made by Ambedkar to the anti-caste project without undertaking a Leftist appropriation of Ambedkar by showing him sympathetic to Marxism or making Marxism a left-liberal philosophy akin to some sort of Fabianism or Labour Party-brand Leftism or Kautsky-brand social democracy.

Teltumbde begins by claiming that certain Dalit intellectuals due to their vested interests have made Ambedkar ‘an enemy of communists’. This has thrown Ambedkar into the camp of exploiters and oppressors, according to Teltumbde. However, since Teltumbde by heart knows that Ambedkar, ideologically and philosophically speaking, has nothing in common with Marxism, he immediately, though not so skilfully, introduces a caveat. Let us see how, “They stretched this antipathy between Ambedkar and communists to such an extent that they would discard anything even remotely associated with Marxism.”(Teltumbde, 2017, Bridging the Unholy Rift, India and Communism, Leftword Books, New Delhi, p. 10, italics mine) As one can see the issue of rift now becomes an issue of “extent”. This is how shame-faced Teltumbde manoeuvres through in this essay.

Teltumbde also claims that Ambedkar makes the use of category of ‘class’, though not in the Marxian sense and yet it becomes a problem for the middle-class Dalit intelligentsia, that has become a beneficiary of the system. We will show later how the concept of class used by Ambedkar is not only not-Marxian, but is opposed to the Marxist idea of class and is akin to the pragmatist idea of class, which was introduced precisely for a shadow-boxing with Marxism. However, first we should say a few words on the trenchant attack of Teltumbde on the Dalit identitarian politics which has conjured up (according to Teltumbde!) the anti-Marxist image of Ambedkar.

Teltumbde shows how the RPI was divided between the Kamble-faction, which was against communism and agitational methods, and the Gaikwad-faction, which led agitations on the question of land. While it has a grain of truth that the Gaikwad-led faction led some protests on the question of land, it would be inappropriate to claim that Ambedkar was ever in support of agitational methods against the State for demands of working masses, including the Dalits. Christopher Jaffrelot in his book ‘Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability’, Eleanor Zelliot in her book ‘Ambedkar’s World’ and, interestingly enough, Anand Teltumbde himself in his book ‘Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt’ has shown with clear evidence, Ambedkar’s aversion to agitational methods. Whenever he experimented with agitational methods he took care to keep the movement within the limits of bourgeois legality most rigidly and in the strictest sense. Generally speaking, he always avoided any conflict with the government. The experience of Mahad Satyagraha and temple entry movements of the early-1930s had made it clear to him that agitational methods were to be avoided. Only under mass pressure he sometimes lent his support to mass demonstrations or agitations, but in all those cases, he was not the chief organizer or planner of the agitations, as Zelliot has shown (Zelliot, ‘Ambedkar’s World’, Navayana, p. 200-201). Therefore, it would be erroneous to claim that Ambedkar was a big supporter of agitational methods.

Besides, to claim that Ambedkar, throughout his political life considered capitalism to be one of his enemies, is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. It was only the interregnum of the Independent Labour Party, which was nothing more than an electoral strategy as Teltumbde himself embarrassingly accepts, during which Ambedkar declared capitalism to be one of the enemies. Sometimes he has critiqued the vagaries of free-market private capitalism in the economic sense; however, this is not to be taken as a political criticism of capitalism. The reason for Ambedkar’s declaration during the ILP-period that capitalism is one of the enemies, was that under the political electoral conditions of reserved seats, the best strategy was to expand the political appeal by inducting workers into one’s political constituency and this could be done only by using an anti-capitalist rhetoric. But even in the documents of the ILP, capitalism is not criticized as the political rule of the bourgeoisie (an analysis which will automatically lead to the political conclusion/program of overthrow of the capitalist rule), but only the free market private capitalism has been criticized. That is why the panacea suggested by the ILP is state capitalism. However, except this period, neither before 1936 nor after 1941-42, we find capitalism as a declared enemy of Ambedkar. Speaking half-truths like Yudhhishthir (Ashwatthama hato naro vakunjaro- Ashvatthama died, but either human or animal) is essentially telling a lie. Teltumbde should have refrained from such Brahmanical practices.

Also, Teltumbde claims that Ambedkar was disappointed with his educated followers, whom he had hoped, would become ‘an armoured shelter above the Dalits’ (from Ambedkar’s Mahad Conference speech, quoted by Teltumbde himself in his last book ‘Mahad’!) but who ultimately ‘betrayed him’, as Ambedkar himself lamented towards the twilight of his political career. But Teltumbde did not answer why it happened, though I suspect that he knows that answer! The policy to create a class of middle class intelligentsia who would become ‘mamlatdars, magistrates, etc’ (from Ambedkar’s Mahad conference speech) and thus would enable the Dalits to become a ‘governing community’ (Narake Hari, ed, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, op. cit., vol17, part-3, p.332.), because it is the ‘government servants who are the mind of the government’ (from Ambedkar’s Mahad Conference speech), was bound to end up in a big disappointment. Ambedkar neither understood the dynamics of class nor did he understand the class nature of the state/government. His idea of class as well as state was totally a Deweyan pragmatist idea, as we will show later. Therefore, Teltumbde should also have answered why Dr. Ambedkar’s hopes were dashed regarding the role he thought the middle-class intelligentsia or the small elite within the Dalits would play. The reason was that the hope itself was unreasonable. The small elite created within the Dalits were bound to play the role, which first Ambedkar lamented and now Teltumbde is lamenting. It is the class nature of this small elite section, which obliges them to play the role that they are playing. Though Teltumbde understands it, but he hides the fact that Ambedkar failed to understand this fact.

Teltumbde discusses the splits within the RPI due to the influence of Kamble-faction and later splits in Dalit Panthers also for similar reasons. However, he fails or rather pretends to fail to capture the correct reason for these splits. He just wonders how Ambedkar, Ambedkarite path and Ambedkarism became the rhetoric by which different opportunists (like Kamble-faction of the RPI, or, the Buddhist faction of Dalit Panthers, etc. who were against Marxism and agitaitional methods) justified their opportunist stands. Question again may be asked: why did it happen? The reasons for the rise of these “opportunist” trends and the splits they caused must be mentioned. In my opinion, the truth that Teltumbde fears to utter, is that the reason for these trends (opportunistic or not) were present in the pragmatist politics of Ambedkar himself. In fact, in one sense, these Ambedkarites who opposed agitational methods and anti-establishment approach and method were closer to the political and ideological stand of Ambedkar. Despite the contributions of Dalit Panthers and the Gaikwad-faction for a brief period, these factions in fact were, in one sense, the ‘deviators’ from Ambedkarite praxis.

Dr. Ambedkar was firm throughout his life as an honest Deweyan pragmatist that State is the ‘Great Mediator’, ‘the most rational agent’ which brings the change in a gradual incremental process from above; change is always gradual in society as well as nature and any attempt to bring changes by leaps through collective effort ‘from below’ will involve the use of force, and will end in waste and destruction. That is why Mahad Satyagraha ended in an anti-climax, as Teltumbde himself had shown in his previous book, though he refrains from going to the philosophical roots of Ambedkar and show why Ambedkar withdrew the Satyagraha. He stops at naïve wondering! Teltumbde just wonders why the Satyagraha ended up as a non-starter! Here too, Teltumbde tries to hide the philosophical roots of Ambedkar by arguing that Ambedkar was in favour of anti-establishment politics or agitational methods. In fact, ample evidence can be produced (a lot from Teltumbde’s last book ‘Mahad’ itself!) which show that Ambedkar never wanted a confrontation with the government or State, due to his Deweyan pragmatist ideological prejudices. The truth is that the splits which took place in RPI and Dalit Panthers were not due to opportunism of certain individuals or factions. There were two co-ordinates of these splits: one co-ordinate was the pragmatist politics and ideology of Ambedkar himself and the other dimension was the assertion of the subaltern elements within these organizations, expressed in the desire to use radical agitational methods and take up the issue of caste oppression from a class standpoint, whatever were their weaknesses. The constant tension between the Ambedkarite ideological and political positions and the radical class assertions within these organizations ultimately led to these splits. These splits were bound to take place. Teltumbde condemns the opportunist middle-class and elite Dalit politicians claiming to be Ambedkarites in the following terms: “They wish to broker the interests of the Dalits to the ruling classes, who would do whatever it takes to thwart the germination of a radical consciousness among the Dalit masses.” (Teltumbde, 2017, p. 13) One is tempted to ask: Wasn’t Ambedkar doing to same, though without the individual degeneration of certain post-Ambedkar Amdedkarite organizations? When did Ambedkar go beyond brokering the interests of Dalits to the State? Whenever, the State took a confrontational stand to the agitations led by Ambedkar, did he not retreat? Politically speaking, when was a he radical, because radical means ‘going to the root of things’, being subversive? In the end of the present subhead of this lengthy essay, Teltumbde comments rhetorically, “…even if Ambedkar arrived today and took up cudgels for the Dalit masses, he would be condemned as anti-Ambedkar.” (ibid, p.13) Though it is true that the current Ambedkarite and identitarian organizations have descended to a level which makes even Ambedkar look like a radical, yet, Ambedkar himself, despite his genuine concerns for annihilation of caste, was never a radical in the political sense of the term. Secondly, what Ambedkar would do today had he been here can only hypothesized on the basis of what he actually did when he was alive. This is something that Teltumbde must understand, that in his imaginary world Ambedkar would not do what he (Teltumbde) as a self-refential radical wants, but would do what he (Ambedkar) as a pragmatist deems fit.

Now we will present the critique of the rest of the essay by Teltumbde under the same subheads that he has used in order to show the factually and logically incorrect and misrepresentational character of his essay.

Ambedkar and Marx: or How Teltumbde Hides the Ignorance of Dr. Ambedkar Regarding Marxism – I

Teltumbde claims that Ambedkar’s relationship with Marxism was “enigmatic” (!) and he claimed that he was a socialist, though never a Marxist. Everybody knows how liberally this epithet ‘socialism’ has been used in the political history of the modern world since the time of post-Enlightenment utopian socialist thinkers, petty-bourgeois socialists, Fabians, Labour Party of Britain, syndicalist traditions of Europe as well as America, and in our country, from Nehru to Subhash Chandra Bose (both of whom had their own notions of “socialism”), from Lohia to Jai Prakash Narayan and from Madhu Limaye to Malayam and Lalu. We shall see shortly what “socialism” of Ambedkar was. Teltumbde claims, “Ambedkar was not unimpressed by the élan of the Marxist tradition.” (ibid, p. 14) However, he never presents a single quote where Ambedkar has expressed this impressed-ness. Agreeing with the ultimate aim of communism as a noble wish, but then discarding it as being ‘impractical’ and a fool’s paradise or ‘pig philosophy’ is certainly not a sign of being impressed! Secondly, this kind of agreement with the ‘ultimate aim as a noble wish’ is something that even the most reactionary bourgeois economists and thinkers have expressed. Even a Paul Samuelson or Nordhaus, or Mises could say that ‘the aim is noble, but cannot be achieved because it is impractical and opposed to the ‘human nature’ and ‘common sense’’. In fact, a number of bourgeois economists and political scientists have said such things.

Next, Teltumbde moves to the caste humiliations faced by Ambedkar and wonders what Ambedkar had felt about the epochal event of October Revolution in the context of the hardships that he faced as a Dalit. Teltumbde accepts that he does not find any reference in Ambedkar’s writings of this period about the October Revolution. The first reference to October Revolution is from 1929, when Ambedkar criticizes communists for trying to create a revolution in India “without worrying about the class consciousness of people.” This is a gross misrepresentation of facts. Teltumbde should have shown by evidence that Ambedkar was bothered about raising the class consciousness of the people. In fact, the one quote that he presents shows that Ambedkar was more disturbed by the fact that communists were trying to become the hegemonic force in the labour movement and the strikes organized by them led to adverse impact on workers’ conditions. Ambedkar himself writes: “The main aim behind the strike is not to improve the economic condition of the workers but to train them for revolution.” (quoted in Teltumbde, 2017, p. 14-15, Italics mine). Now, first of all, in this quote Ambedkar is not criticizing communists for not raising the class consciousness of the workers. Quite the contrary, he is opposed to communists’ efforts to raise the class consciousness. If by ‘class consciousness’, Teltumbde means the same thing that Marx and Lenin meant then it means progressing from trade union consciousness to what Lenin called ‘class political consciousness’, which simply means that even in economic struggles, exposing the limits of capitalism to the workers and preparing them for revolutionary political class consciousness. However, as we can see from the quote of Ambedkar himself, he is happy as long as the strike is limited to the economic demands of workers and does not transcend the trade unionist class consciousness. This is in congruence with the economism of the Fabianist and British Labour Party-style as well as Deweyan pragmatism: the question of the state should not be raised and the strikes should confine themselves for the economic betterment of the workers through collective bargaining by the media of trade unionist struggles. Economism is an important component of the concept of labour-capital relation advocated by the Fabians as well as pragmatists like Dewey. Ambedkar is simply reiterating that idea. He is not at all concerned with the efforts of communists to raise the class consciousness of workers to the level of class political consciousness; he is rather opposed to it. This is a different issue whether Indian communists succeeded in this endeavour or how far they were even serious about making this endeavour. In fact, more evidence can be produced that they themselves were prisoners of some sort of Left militant economism. However, to the extent that the communists tried to politicise the strikes, any such attempt on the part of communists is regarded as sacrificing the economic interests of the workers by all liberals. Therefore, the objection of Ambedkar was not simply to the practice or methods employed by communists to bring about revolution because the “majority of people were not ready for the ideal society the communists wanted to create” (ibid, p. 15) but the objection was the very ideal of such a society (Teltumbde is mistaken to think that communism is an ideal for communists; in fact, Marx clearly said that communism is not an ideal to be achieved but the real movement of history). Teltumbde himself quotes Ambedkar in a footnote on page 10, where Ambedkar talks about his concept of class but negates the rationale or necessity of ‘class conflict’. His idea of class was a Deweyan pragmatist idea, according to which society is a collection of disparate groups and these disparate groups do not have real contradictions but only perceived contradictions; these contradictions are to be resolved by the intervention of the ‘Great Mediator’, i.e., the government or the State. Raising class consciousness tantamount to the sharpening of class conflict, to which Ambedkar was categorically opposed. Therefore, Anand Teltumbde, in order to show that Ambedkar was only opposed to communist practice, not the communist ideal, creates a myth about Ambedkar.

Teltumbde claims that Ambedkar opposed the communists because the communists attacked Ambedkar for collaborating with the Simon Commission and also advising the Dalit workers to break the strike in 1929. On both these accounts, Teltumbde defends Ambedkar’s position. Let us take both these questions separately.

On the question of separate electorate and communal award, Teltumbde claims that Ambedkar was fighting for ‘autonomous’ Dalit voice. We will come to Teltumbde’s support to ‘autonomous voice’-theory later. First look at the support and opposition to separate electorates from different quarters. The Congress and mainly Gandhi, obviously opposed the separate electorate for all the wrong reasons, the most important being Gandhi’s concern with the ‘unity of the Hindu society’. However, just because Gandhi and the Congress opposed separate electorate for wrong reasons does not make this demand a correct one. Moreover, the communists were least bothered by the unity of the Hindu society, but opposed it for their concern with the unity of the working class (which is not out there, but has to be constituted through constant political class struggles; however, the separate electorates would have closed any such window). Bhagat Singh and his comrades also opposed communal award and separate electorate as a device used by the British to ‘divide and rule’. Teltumbde should also have criticized Bhagat Singh and his comrades for this. However, for Left Ambedkarites like Teltumbde, it is the communists who are always the punching bag and soft target.

There is no doubt about the fact that this intention of ‘divide and rule’ precisely was the motive of the British colonial state. (See, Sumit Sarkar, Modern India) On the one hand, Teltumbde opposes the identitarian politics and at the same time, in the same breath, supports Ambedkar’s demand for separate electorate, which shows his lack of understanding of this whole issue. Separate electorates definitely would have broken the potential unity of the working class (though there was no by-default unity of the working class). Every Marxist knows that class unity is not something which is out there, a given, but has to be constituted by constant political struggles. It is true that the CPI could not understand the caste question in its historicity as well as in its contemporaneity. However, this was part of a broader failure. The CPI since its foundation did not have a program of Indian Revolution till 1951. In 1920 formal declaration of foundation was announced in Tashkent, its first All India Conference took place in 1925 in Kanpur. However, both of these events do not qualify to be regarded as the formation of the party. The first real milestone of formation of the party was 1933 when following the letters from CPs of Germany, Britain and China, a provisional nucleus of the central committee was formed; the next milestone was 1936 when this body assumed the shape of central committee and P. C. Joshi was elected the first secretary of the party and the most important and third milestone was 1943 when the first Congress of the party was held. However, even then a systematic program of Indian Revolution was not adopted. Only in 1951, a program was adopted, following the visit of a delegation of the CPI to Moscow which met with Stalin and Molotov. Howver, by the time, the CPI adopted a program of Indian revolution, it had progressed on the path of becoming revisionist parliamentary Left party, so that the program was good only for cold storage. The program of revolution is the document based on the concrete analysis of concrete conditions in a country and identifies the enemy classes and the friend classes, that is, the basic question of revolution in any country and the strategy and general tactics of revolution, including the path of revolution. Had the communists taken up this task, the question of caste also would have been understood historically as well as politically. However, since the CPI failed to work out the program of Indian revolution till 1951, its struggle against caste was at best empirical and positivist. We will come to the question of the failure of communist movement later in detail.

However, this much is certain that opposing Simon Commission and separate electorate was not among the numerous failures of the communist movement in India. On one instance, in the early-1940s, they supported the creation of Pakistan on the basis of a false understanding of nationhood based on religion. From the Marxist-Leninist theory of nation (not ‘nationalism’ as Teltumbde thinks), religion is not one of the basis of constitution of a nation. However, the mistake was so glaring that it was corrected within a couple of years. This only shows the poor foundations of the Marxist understanding of the CPI. Still, opposing Simon Commission by the CPI on the one hand and Bhagat Singh and his comrades on the other, was not at all an incorrect political position. One can oppose Simon Commission not only from the caste Hindu concerns of Gandhi, but also from the class stand point of Bhagat Singh. However, Teltumbde vindicates the position of Ambedkar in an erroneous fashion and calls it an attempt to build ‘autonomous voice’ of the Dalits. The question that can be asked is: autonomous from what? As we remarked above, we will come to this question in detail later in this essay.

Now a few words on the Textile mill strike of the late-1920s. The strike had started on the issue of introduction of a machine by mill owners which would lead to retrenchment of workers. Ambedkar did not get involved on his own initiative, but was invited by the owner of E.D. Sassoon Mill, Frederick Stones, as Teltumbde himself has mentioned. If he had his main concern towards the discrimination against the Dalit workers, he should have gone to the striking workers and their leadership on his own, rather than on the invitation of a mill-owner. Secondly, the way to introduce and fight for the demands of the Dalit workers was definitely not by advising the Dalit workers to stay away from the strike and break the strike, but rather to struggle to introduce these issues in the charter of demands of the strike and also struggle against the caste prejudices of caste Hindu workers. Did breaking the strike help in doing away with the caste prejudices of caste Hindu workers? It is highly unlikely. Rather, by making a contradiction among the masses (non-antagonistic contradiction) as the contradiction between enemies (antagonistic contradiction), Ambedkar’s strategy only helped the owners. Teltumbde claims that at the insistence of Ambedkar, the communists-led trade union included the demand of Dalit workers into the charter, unwillingly (though no evidence is provided of this unwillingness). To this the mill-owners “rightly responded” according to Teltumbde that they do not have any responsibility in this discrimination. However, since the union had included this demand in the charter and expressed the willingness to fight to do away with this discrimination, Ambedkar should have supported the further strikes. Yet he actively campaigned against the strike when it broke out again. Such kind of ‘autonomous voice’ did not actually give any autonomy to the Dalit workers, as history showed. The best way to fight against the caste prejudices of the non-Dalit working class is in the thick of the struggles. Only in the process of class struggle, can the working class fight against casteism and patriarchy prevalent among themselves. The separation of Dalits from the general class struggle of the working class is no way to resolve this question. This is a different issue altogether whether the communists, given their ideological weaknesses, would have been able to wage a political and ideological struggle against caste prejudices within the working class movement or not. The empirical evidence shows that their struggle against caste never went beyond empirical struggle due to complete lack of a theoretical understanding of the issue at stake. Nevertheless, breaking the working class movement by separating the Dalits was definitely not the way. Given the fact that objectively Ambedkar did play the role of strike-breaker, it was not unjustified to criticize him for it. It must be understood that Ambedkar was firmly opposed to communism. He believed that strikes and communism are “inseparable twins” and communists “use” strikes for their “political aims” (which is true and there is nothing to be apologetic about it!). Secondly, as Gail Omvedt has argued in ‘Dalits and Democratic Revolution’ that Ambedkar was not opposed to strikes as long as they were not led by communists.

Teltumbde claims that the Indian communists were too enthusiastic about the prospects of Indian Revolution and believed that India is past the stage of feudalism through a non-revolutionary path and the main task was to organize industrial workers. This, according to Teltumbde, led the communists to ignore the land question and caste question in the villages. The sole evidence for the communists holding this line is M. N. Roy and his thesis presented in the book India in Transition. However, it seems that Teltumbde has not read the history of communist movement in India and the statements regarding program that CPI adopted. The CPI never adopted the thesis of M. N. Roy and later expelled Roy. Secondly, he also seems to be unaware of the radical agrarian struggles for land led by the communists in the colonial India. Let me draw readers’ attention to this history very briefly.

It is true that before 1951, the Communist Party of India failed to draft the program of Indian revolution and consequently also the agrarian program, which constitutes one of the most important parts of the program of democratic revolution. However, it would be a mistake to think that before 1951, the CPI had adopted the program of a socialist revolution. On the basis of the line of Comintern, the Indian communists had accepted the task of National Democratic Revolution to be the principal task, though no creative independent study of Indian concrete conditions was carried out. Mostly, there were some articles, essays and statements which talked about the line of National Democratic Revolution, based mostly on the cut-copy-paste of Comintern positions and documents. Therefore, first thing to be made clear is that the CPI accepted a program of anti-colonial anti-feudal National Democratic Revolution, though it failed to undertake a serious creative Marxist analysis of the agrarian question and program of revolution in India, which also led them to the failure in understanding the caste question and its articulation with class struggle in India. Secondly, it is sheer ignorance on the part of Teltumbde to claim that the communists did not organize peasantry and focused on industrial labour only. Empirically, they did. M.A. Rasul, a veteran communist leader and a prominent figure in the peasant movement has written about the early attempts as well as later attempts of the communists to organize peasantry on the land question. Rasul in his book ‘A History of the All India Kisan Sabha’ has shown that the first attempts to study the agrarian question and organize peasants were made in the late-1920s itself in Punjab, Malabar, Andhra, Bengal, and United Provinces, i.e., a couple of years after the First All India Conference of the CPI in 1925. Some movements and organizations were organized. After the breaking out of the Great Depression, the economic impact on the peasantry was noticed by the communists. Communists working within and outside the Congress felt the need for an all India peasant organization at this point. In October 1935, the South Indian Federation of Peasants and Workers called an all-India peasants’ and workers’ conference. The Congress thoroughly opposed the idea of an All India peasant organization as it could lead to the radicalization of the peasantry. In fact, Sardar Patel ridiculed and attacked the idea of such an organization sharply. Nevertheless, in April 1936, the first All India Kisan Congress was held in Lucknow, which was presided over by Bihar peasant leader Sahajanand Saraswati. The communists under the leadership of P.C. Joshi persuaded the Congress to give recognition to AIKC and AITUC. This was the period of ‘popular front’ line to oppose bourgeois reaction as well as forming alliance with representatives of bourgeoisie, so long as they show their anti-colonial and anti-feudal credentials. Now, it is a different matter whether this mechanical implementation of the line of ‘popular front’ was correct in the Indian conditions by the CPI or not. This much, nonetheless, is certain that CPI was a strong force within the peasant movement. An intelligence report of the British colonial government from 1937, says, “the communist leaders are developing a stranglehold upon any future agrarian movement as well as inspiring this with their special methods and outlook, of which by no means the least is the belief in mass violence and the violent overthrow of the British rule.” (Quoted in H. Surjeet, 1986, ‘What AIKS stands for’, NBA, Calcutta, p.8)

The years from 1937 to 1939 saw a string of peasant movements in different parts of country, often under communist leadership. The period between 1945 and 1947 saw Telangana peasant revolt, the Tebhaga movement and Punappra-Vylar peasant uprising and many other peasant movements. All of them were either under the leadership of communists or were under influence of communists. In nutshell, from the late-1920s itself, the communists had become active in the peasant movement. From AIKS to Telangana, the communists did participate in the peasant movements, often in the leadership capacity, though they did not have a clear program of agrarian revolution and committed blunders in the 1930s as well as in the period from 1942 to 1947 due to the lack of a program of Indian revolution, including the agrarian program, a program on annihilation of caste, and other particular questions. This does not mean that they did not participate in or led the struggles of peasants and landless Dalits. This is what I have called empirical involvement in all these struggles by the communists, despite the lack of a positive program based on the concrete analysis of concrete conditions of India. However, to claim that the CPI ignored peasantry and focused only on industrial workers is gross misrepresentation of facts on the part of Anand Teltumbde and that too in order to prove that the critique of CPI by Ambedkar was correct! Ambedkar had no concern whatsoever whether the CPI is raising the class consciousness of Indian people before becoming over-optimistic about Indian revolution. Making such a claim is not only a gross distortion of history but also politically outrageous. Even Teltumbde seems to be a bit aware about it and therefore in passing he comments, “However, his (Ambedkar’s) use of a moral scale for judging the Marxist methods smacks of his liberal obsession and lack of appreciation for the alternate epistemology of Marxism.” However, in the end, Teltumbde makes a shame-faced attempt to give some validity to Ambedkar’s attitude to communists.

Teltumbde claims that Ambedkar was only antagonistic towards the practice of Indian communists and not Marxism itself. Later, I will show that this too is a gross distortion of history. It will be shown in this essay that Ambedkar as a consistent Deweyan Pragmatist had a natural anathema to Marxist philosophy itself. There should be no attempt to make this ill-fated bridge between Ambedkar’s political thought and Marxism, philosophically speaking. Needless to say, that the revolutionary Left and the genuine Ambedkarite organizations should make joint-fronts and alliances on the basis of the pertinent issues of anti-Dalit atrocities and other important anti-Dalit measures of the State. However, to talk about philosophical vicinity of Ambedkar’s Deweyan Pragmatism and Marxism would be a travesty of science and history.

Next, Teltumbde embarks upon his project to prove that Ambedkar not only believed in the concept of class, he employed it in his political and historical analysis, though later like an act of intellectual burglary Teltumbde accepts that through a continuum Ambedkar’s notion of class was closer to Weber’s than Marx’s! Though this statement too is inaccurate, because there can be no continuum, stretching from Marx’s notion of class to Weberian notion of class, as the two concepts are fundamentally opposed and their theoretical basis is completely different. A continuum can be made between concepts of the same genus. Still, Teltumbde is forced to concede in an intellectual sleight of hand, that Ambedkar’s concept of class was not a Marxist one. And yet, he persists in his endeavour to prove Ambedkar’s belief in the concept of class as opposed to liberal bourgeois emphasis on individual. It must be reminded here that liberal bourgeois philosophy has its own notion of class and it had this notion much before Marx and Marxism. To claim that liberalism does not have a concept of class and only a concept of individual, and how Ambedkar, by having a concept of class and going against liberalism, drew closer to Marxism is a shameful attempt of Teltumbde to fool his readers. Different bourgeois liberal ideologies have different notions of class. Moreover, the trend of British political economy even developed an economic notion of class which was critiqued and sublated by Marx to develop the dialectical materialist notions of class. In fact, Marx categorically said:

“… And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Production), (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society .

“Ignorant louts like Heinzen, who deny not merely the class struggle but even the existence of classes, only prove that, despite all their blood-curdling yelps and the humanitarian airs they give themselves, they regard the social conditions under which the bourgeoisie rules as the final product, the non plus ultra [highest point attainable] of history, and that they are only the servants of the bourgeoisie. And the less these louts realize the greatness and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself the more disgusting is their servitude….” (Marx to J. Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852)

In the above quote, Marx has also expressed his disdain for people who do not acknowledge the existence of class struggle.

Firstly, the claim that Ambedkar, by emphasizing the notion of ‘class’ and by undermining the bourgeois liberal notion of society as collection of ‘atomistic individuals’, moved closer to Marxist position is wrong because (1) liberalism does have a concept of class, though it is a purely sociological categorization which has nothing to do with production relations; this categorization varies according to the different schools of liberal bourgeois philosophy from occupation and income to intellectual categories; (2) Ambedkar still believed in the primacy of individual over society, though he accepted the existence of different groups of individuals existing in the society and stressed upon the need of internal communication (Deweyan idea of social endosmosis) between them; (3) Ambedkar’s concept of ‘class’ is akin to the Deweyan concept of society as a collection of ‘disparate groups’, a concept which has not only nothing to do with Marxism, but in fact, was invented to do ‘shadow-boxing’ with Marxism; according to this concept there are no real contradictions between these groups but only perceived contradictions and it is the duty of the ‘great mediator’, i.e., the State, to resolve these perceived contradictions by intervention from above. Ambedkar always clung to this idea. If you read ‘Annihilation of Caste’, you will find that Ambedkar paraphrases this Deweyan idea of society as a collection of disparate groups: “nowhere is human society one single whole. It is always plural. In the world of action, the individual is one limit and society the other. Between them lie all sorts of associative arrangements of lesser and larger scope—families, friendships, co-operative associations, business combines, political parties, bands of thieves and robbers.” (Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste) As one can see, this idea of class/social group has nothing to do with Marxist notion of class.

The quote that Teltumbde presents as the proof of Ambedkar’s belief in the category of class clearly shows that Ambedkar uses ‘class’ as a generic term which might be formed on the basis of “economic or intellectual or social.” In this quote from his famous paper from Columbia University, Ambedkar makes it clear at the very outset that he considers the theory of class conflict to be an exaggeration. This once again makes it clear as day-light that Ambedkar not only has nothing to do with Marxian concept of class but is actually opposed to it because according to Marx, classes came into existence precisely due to contradiction and conflict of interests between the groups of people, based on production relations, that is, relations of ownership, relations of distribution and relations of labour division. It is not as if classes first came into existence and then class contradiction developed. Just the contrary, it is contradiction inherent in the process of production and reproduction of life, which leads to the emergence of classes. Therefore, if we accept the Marxian concept of class, or even if go near to the Marxian concept of class, we will be obliged also to accept class struggle because it is contradiction itself that leads to the formation of classes. This clearly shows that Ambedkar’s use of the term ‘class’ had nothing whatsoever to do with Marxist notion of class and rather it was diametrically opposed to it, as an incorrigible pragmatist liberal idea.

Further.

Teltumbde argues that Ambedkar had no guiding philosophy or ideological frame of reference to fight against caste when he entered public life. This too is incorrect. By the time Ambedkar returned from Columbia University, he had begun his philosophical journey as a Deweyan pragmatist. In fact, a number of scholars have shown that John Dewey was an overriding philosophical and political influence on Ambedkar right since his days in Columbia University. Teltumbde claims that the only point of reference that Ambedkar had was Jyotiba Phule’s writings and fight against caste. In this process, Teltumbde makes a claim that is, if not wrong, is certainly inaccurate, namely, that Phule saw the British rule as a boon for the lower castes; while it is true that Phule began his political-philosophical career with this idea, we must realize that Phule’s political life had a trajectory which shows that he was becoming increasingly critical of the British towards the end of his life. His Cultivator’s Whipcord is the best example of this trajectory. In fact, Phule’s disciple Lokhande had edited the last few chapters of Cultivator’s Whipcord, because he thought Phule had become too critical of the British in these sections of the book. Phule was extremely irked with Lokhande for this unsolicited editing job. Later, the book was published in its full form. Coming back to Ambedkar’s philosophical frame of reference, whatever the case may be, this fact is irrefutable that after his stint at Columbia University, it was only through the glass of Deweyan Pragmatism that Ambedkar saw everything, including Phule, the British colonial state, the communists, role of intellectuals and role of education. It can be proven with fairly conclusive evidence that in his writings on all these issues, Ambedkar shows strong shadow of Dewey, even when he does not quote Dewey by name. Teltumbde wants to project the image that when Ambedkar entered public life, he was in want of a worldview and was at loss to analyse caste. This is factually incorrect and the real intention here is to show that communists were at a vantage point, politically and philosophically, as compared to Dr. Ambedkar because they had the most developed analytical tools in the shape of Marxism. I do not think that even Dr. Ambedkar would agree to such a preposterous claim! Ambedkar certainly had a method and approach when he entered political life with his testimony to the Southborough Committee.

About Marx and Marxism, Teltumbde has made a number of incorrect and inaccurate, if not totally ignorant claims, to which I will later come. However, here it must be pointed out that the claim that Marx thought that development of railways and limited industrialization would lead to the collapse of the Asiatic mode of production, the village community and with it, the caste system is wrong. Marx talked about the hereditary labour division, which would slowly be broken with capitalist development and railways, not the caste system itself. He did not say anything about the fate of caste system in its totality in event of industrialization and development of railways. Moreover, Marx’s views about Asiatic mode of production, its internal stagnation and the presumed need of an external force to break it had changed towards the end of 1870s itself. Marx acknowledges that the village community and its institutions were breaking from inside and class differentiation had set in. Those who are interested in Marx’s changing views on village community and caste system might look at the notes of Marx from his reading of the Kovalevsky’s book Communal Landholding and his notes from his reading of Elphinstone’s book History of India. One can also read Shlomo Avineri’s book Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization and Irfan Habib’s introduction to the anthology Karl Marx on India published by Tulika Books. However, Teltumbde glosses over these details about changing views of Marx regarding Indian social formation, village economy and caste system and makes a sweeping generalization. More on Ambedkar’s and Teltumbde’s views on Marxism later.

Further, Teltumbde claims that Ambedkar, though not aware of Marx’s views on caste (Ambedkar was not aware of Marx’s views about anything from primary sources, that is the writings of Marx and Engels, as we will show later), nonetheless believed in struggle against caste as class struggle, though his idea of class was not Marxist. This is a strange argument. If he does not believe in the Marxist idea of class then how come he believed in class struggle? Moreover, Ambedkar clearly rejects the very notion of ‘class conflict’ categorically, while accepting a generic liberal bourgeois notion of ‘class’, as shown clearly by the quote of Ambedkar that Teltumbde himself has used. Still claiming that Ambedkar saw struggle against caste as class struggle is gross misrepresentation of Ambedkar and also a serious distortion of history by Teltumbde. In fact, Ambedkar clearly believed that caste is the appropriate category to analyse Indian society as opposed to class. Clearly enough, Ambedkar saw an anti-thesis between the caste and Marxist notion of class. Even in the period of Independent Labour Party, when according to claims of many, including Teltumbde, Ambedkar was drifting towards class politics, he categorically rejected such an illusion. Christopher Jaffrelot in his pioneering study Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability has shown beyond doubt that even in the period of ILP, Ambedkar categorically rejected Marxist notion of class as a useful category in the context of India and emphasized that caste as such has nothing to do with the access to the economic resources (see Jaffrelot, 2005, ‘Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability’, Permanent Black, Delhi, p. 75-77). Therefore, Ambedkar without using the Marxist terminology argued that caste belongs to ideological superstructure!

In fact, the argument of Ambedkar against socialists in his ‘Annihilation of Caste’ clearly shows how less he understood of socialism. For example, at one place he argues that individuals will join a revolution for ‘equalization of property’, only when they are assured that they would not be discriminated against on the basis of caste or creed: “Men will not join in a revolution for the equalisation of property unless they know that after the revolution is achieved they will be treated equally, and that there will be no discrimination of caste and creed.” (Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste) Ambedkar argues at three places in this essay that socialists fight for ‘equalization of property’! Teltumbde cannot say that he is talking about non-Marxian socialists. Ambedkar is clearly referring to Marxists here. Evidently, he did not understand what Marxists fought for. First of all, socialists do not fight for ‘equalization of property’, but the common ownership of everything and eventual withering away of property, class and state. Slogans of property or wage equalization have nothing to do with Marxism, which Ambedkar utterly failed to understand. Such claims are nearer to different forms of petty-bourgeois socialism, including Proudhonist idea of socialism. Even a XIIth standard humanities student knows it today that Marxism gives no such ridiculous slogan! Secondly, Ambedkar’s claim (that he makes in his ‘Annihilation of Caste’ for which he even invokes the authority of Lasalle, a close associate of Marx; however, if you read the quote of Lasalle that Ambedkar uses, you realize that Ambedkar had totally misunderstood it and quoted him out of context to prove his point) that religious and social revolutions always preceded political revolutions is a faulty one (which Teltumbde quotes in approval). The revolutions that Ambedkar calls ‘religious revolutions’, for instance, the Reformation, Mohammed’s revolution in Middle-East, or the Sikh movement led by Guru Nanak, were not simply religious and social revolutions, but thoroughly political movements or revolutions. If one reads the works of Christopher Hill on Reformation and Puritanism, of Hodgeson and Rodinson on the advent of Islam under Mohammed or the works of J. S. Grewal on Sikh movement, it becomes clear that it was not the emergence of an idea that led to material historical change, but it was the movement of real contradictions within the relations of production and reproduction that led to the rise of certain ideas at certain conjunctures of history. Otherwise, one would not be able to tell why a certain social or religious movement or idea emerged at a particular moment in history. It would become completely an issue of chance based on the emergence of certain individuals. Evidently enough, Ambedkar could not understand the political essence of such movements and saw them as simply social or religious movements, whereas these movements were primarily and predominantly political movements representing definite political class interests and they had their own definite socio-religious dimensions and articulations.

Subsequently, Teltumbde showers curse on Ambedkarites who “have vehemently rejected class politics in their antipathy to Marxism.” According to Teltumbde, they need to be reminded (a duty that Teltumbde has taken upon himself!) that Ambedkar interpreted castes essentially in class terms! To save humiliation, Teltumbde accepts a few sentences later the Ambedkar’s concept of class was nearer to Weber’s notion as compared to Marx’s “on a continuum”. This too reveals that Teltumbde neither understands Marx’s notion nor Weber’s notion of ‘class’ because there can be no continuum between the two as we pointed out earlier. Marx’s notion of ‘class’ is based on exploitation and relations of production, whereas Weber’s notion of class is based on what he calls ‘life chances’. We cannot go in the details here but can refer readers to writings of Erik Olin Wright, Henryk Grossman, and other Marxist critiques of Weber’s notion of class, which is a part of his tripartite theory of stratification based on class, status and party. This much is certain that there can be no bridge between the two notions and therefore no continuum. Secondly, the “sin” for which Teltumbde rebukes the Ambedkarites equally applies to Ambedkar himself and the contrast between Ambedkar and Ambedkarites in the context of acceptance or rejection of ‘class analysis’, that Teltumbde wants to conjure up, can safely be called a figment of his imagination. Ambedkar clearly rejected Marxist class analysis and class politics in the communist sense (objectively, every politics is a class politics in so far as it serves certain class/es) and, as we will show later with evidence, he had a clear antipathy to Marxism (not simply Indian communists!). We will return to the theme of Ambedkar’s views about Marxism and Communism later in the second part of this subhead, where we will show with quotations from Ambedkar’s work that he not only did not understand Marxism and did not read any Marxist classic, but also that his Deweyan pragmatist prejudice led him to oppose and detest Marxism, without even knowing it properly.

Ambedkar’s Strategies of Conversion and Electoral Politics: The Selective Narrative of Teltumbde

Teltumbde also presents the history selectively regarding evolution of Ambedkar’s views in relation to conversion as an emancipatory strategy. Let us see, in brief, how the views of Ambedkar regarding conversion evolved.

First reference by Ambedkar to conversion comes in Jalgaon Depressed Classes Conference in 1927 where Ambedkar says that if the untouchables cannot get rid of the injustice within the fold of Hinduism, they would not lose anything by abandoning this identity. After this proclamation a few Dalits converted to Islam. This scared the Brahminical orthodoxy and in some villages they opened up the wells for Dalits, as Christopher Jaffrelot has shown in his book Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability. Consequently, he gave a number of allusions to his strategy of conversion. Jaffrelot also shows that Ambedkar had told G. A. Gavai, with whom he had represented the Untouchables at the third Round Table Conference, that he wanted to leave the fold of Hinduism but Islam repelled him. In an open letter of 1936, Ambedkar compared Islam, Christianity and Sikhism and argued that by converting to Sikhism the Dalits would not ‘denationalize’ and will continue to be the part of the Indian nation! This is what Ambedkar wrote, “What the consequences of conversion will be to the country as a whole is well worth bearing in mind. Conversion to Islam or Chritianity will denationaise the Depressed Classes. If they go to Islam the number of Muslims will be doubled and the danger of Muslim domination also becomes real. If they go to Christianity, the numerical strength of Christians becomes 5 to 6 crores. It will help to strengthen the hold of the British on this country. On the other, if they embrace Sikhism they will not only not harm the destiny of the country, but they will help the destiny of the country. They will not be denationalised.” (quoted in Jaffrelot, 2005, p. 122) In the course of the year 1936, a galvanization was taking place on the question of mass conversion of the Dalits.

Why Ambedkar chose Sikhism has an interesting story behind it, which Anand Teltumbde does not tell and I suspect that it is out of sheer innocence. Moonje, a leader of Hindu Mahasabha had a three day-secret talks with Ambedkar in which J. K. Birla, brother of G. D. Birla also participated. Moonje persuaded Ambedkar to convert to Sikhism because by this the Dalits will only leave Hindu religion but not Hindu culture and civilization. This idea was given weight by Shankaracharya of Karweer Peeth who supported this idea and thought that Sikhism is part of Hinduism as one of its protestant sects. It is noteworthy that Ambedkar accepted the advice of Moonje and expressed his choice of Sikhism and even explained it to the Dalits: “to have some responsibility as for the future of the Hindu culture and civilization.” (quoted in Jaffrelot, 2005, p. 129). It was only when it became clear that the benefits of minority would not be granted to the the Dalits converted into Sikhism, the evidence of anti-Dalit atrocities by Jatts within the fold of Sikhism and the resistance of the leader of Sikhs, Master Tara Singh, that Ambedkar slowly dropped this idea. The next time this idea emerged in Ambedkar’s discourse was the late-1940s and then came the manifest idea of choice of Buddhism in the 1950s. However, Teltumbde smoothly slides over all this important history which only reveals the pragmatism of Ambedkar.

Now let us see Teltumbde’s selective account of Ambedkar’s politics in the period of the ILP.

Teltumbde is obliged to accept that Independent Labour Party was basically a child of the Poona Pact. In view of the reserved seats instead of separate electorates, the strategy to form a broad mass-based party with transcendental appeal was better for Ambedkar, as compared to the strategy of establishing the image of a Dalit leader for himself. Jaffrelot has demonstrated this fact beyond doubt. Teltumbde’s section on ILP in this introduction borrows heavily from Jaffrelot’s analysis, but according to his own ideological and political exigencies and convenience. Let us see how.

It is true that during the period of the ILP, Ambedkar collaborated with communists on a number of issues including that of land and the Industrial Disputes Bill, which threatened the very right to strike. Though Teltumbde builds on Jaffrelot’s analysis however he omits and edits at will. For example, Jaffrelot shows that the proposal for strike against this ID Bill came from the communists which Ambedkar accepted. However, Teltumbde’s account shows that the communists and Ambedkar “came together for this strike” without mentioning the origin of the initiative. The communists had proposed for a one day strike against ID Bill and Ambedkar had readily accepted this proposal. Secondly, during the phase of the ILP, it was natural for Ambedkar to use class rhetoric. However, the class rhetoric that he uses never goes beyond the class rhetoric used by all “leftists” belonging to the breed of Labour-Party-style Leftism. This rhetoric in and by itself had nothing to do with Marxism. Even where Ambedkar talks about the communist philosophy being nearer to him as compared to other philosophies, he makes it clear that he does not believe in the idea of class struggle. Jaffrelot also shows that even during the period of these joint fronts with communists, Ambedkar particularly ruled out any idea of revolutionary transformation and stressed upon the constitutional methods to win power. (see Jaffrelot, 2005, p. 79)

The program of ILP was program of state capitalism with huge doses of welfarism. This is termed by Teltumbde as ‘state socialism’. Lenin and later Marxists have shown that this term ‘state socialism’ is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as ‘state socialism’. In transition to a socialist economy, there can be a period of ‘state capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat’ (which tantamount to socialism itself), as Lenin called it. However, the nationalization of key and basic industries and land does not tantamount to socialism. There have been several cases of such State capitalisms under bourgeois dictatorship in the modern history of world, from Bismarck to the war-time economy of Germany during the First World War (called ‘WUMBA’ economy), economies of certain Scandinavian countries, etc. For a Marxist, the first characteristic feature to determine whether a country is socialist or not, is the character of the state power. What is the class character of the state: is it a workers’ state or a bourgeois state? This is the first and foremost yardstick to determine the character of a social formation. However, the model of welfarist state capitalism (a la Fabians and Labour Party) has been termed as ‘state socialism’, which actually is an empty term and can be filled up with anything. This program of the ILP in no way shows any affinity towards Marxist program of socialism, as Jaffrelot has convincingly shown. Moreover, there are specific provisions in this program which tend to accommodate the bourgeois principles of Ambedkar also. For example, due to his respect for private property, Ambedkar was against the agrarian program for confiscation without compensation. He argued that the feudal lords and landowners should be compensated for confiscation of their land. The quote that Teltumbde has presented mentions this element of the program of the ILP. In fact, it was Ambedkar who just before the Independence proposed that the feudal lords and erstwhile royals should be compensated by giving them government bonds and they will be paid the dividend for these bonds from the revenue collected by the Indian state from the peasantry. This is a travesty of, even, a radical bourgeois land reforms, and Teltumbde is busy striving to make a ‘socialist’ out of Dr. Ambedkar. Besides, the proposal of privy-purse to be given to the erstwhile royals and lords was made by Dr. Ambedkar. Even a bourgeois revolution of the late-18th century presented a program of confiscation without compensation! If a program is not even radical enough to match the program of a late-18th century bourgeois democratic revolution, what justification does it have to be called ‘socialist’?

Despite accepting the fact that the ILP was mainly an electoral strategy for Ambedkar, Teltumbde claims that ideologically ILP as a model was closer to Ambedkar’s disposition and closer to program of communists. However, both these claims are baseless. First, if ideologically the ILP was closer to Ambedkar’s disposition, why did he shifted to the strategy of SCF in 1942 and disbanded the ILP? May be Teltumbde would argue that the communists forced him to do so! Whatever be their intellectual mistakes and ideological-political weaknesses, we certainly cannot blame the communists for the different strategies employed by Dr. Ambedkar. It would be too demeaning for Dr. Ambedkar if we make all his strategies as a derivative of what the communists did or did not do. The truth is that the ILP was purely an electoral strategy and nothing in the theory and practice of ILP was communist or communistic. The program is thoroughly Fabian and the practice is totally in congruence with the ideals of Fabianism and Pragmatism.

Ambedkar’s defence of workers’ rights to strike or later his introduction of Indian Trade Union Amendment Bill as the member of labour of Viceroy’s council is basically the defence of workers’ right of collective bargaining, which is totally supported by the Fabians as well as the Pragmatists. One does not become a communist by defending these economic rights of workers. Different strands of liberal bourgeois thought totally defend these economic rights of workers, in fact, support them vociferously because they believe that if the workers are not given certain legal and economic rights, then their militancy or opposition to the establishment could not be regulated. Every serious social scientist now knows that laws in the bourgeois state have dual functions: rights and regulation, and they must be understood as such. Teltumbde is uselessly trying to drag Marxism and Ambedkar’s Deweyan Pragmatism closer, which is bad for both. He laments that despite Ambedkar becoming so ‘radical’ the communists adopted an antagonistic stand towards Ambedkar! I would later show that the tension was mutual and even in the period of the ILP, Ambedkar never missed an opportunity to attack Marxism as well as Indian communists.

As soon as the political exigencies that led to the creation of the ILP disappeared, so did the ILP and Ambedkar shifted to the strategy of SCF. During this period, while attacking Ambedkar for his demand of separate electorates and collaboration with the British, the CPI protested the police crack-down on SCF units that demanded separate electorates for Dalits. However, according to Teltumbde, the communists should have accepted this demand of separate electorates for the Dalits. Teltumbde should also critique Bhagat Singh and his comrades for their “presumed Brahmanical bias”, because they too opposed communal award and separate electorates. However, he would not mention Bhagat Singh and single out the communists for his attack. There is no doubt that there were leaders and cadre in the CPI who had casteist mind-set. Before 1951, the CPI took action against such elements whenever they came to light. That is what communists could have done. How can someone figure out, a priori, who has caste prejudices and who does not? Only through political practice such elements appear or rather surface in a communist party. The communist party accordingly takes action against such elements and expels them or tries to change them through the process of criticism and self-criticism. In general, the CPI did undertake this process at least before 1951-52. As we mentioned earlier the communist movement in India had been intellectually and politically weak due to its intellectual dependence on other big parties like the CPs of Britain, Russia, Germany and later China. Due to this, they could not even work out the program of Indian revolution till 1951 and were content with some scattered program-related statements, articles and essays. In such a scenario, they were bound to fail in understanding the caste question and how it is articulated with class struggle and adopting a particular program on the annihilation of caste. However, to claim that the CPI was a Brahmanical outfit, even before 1951, is a preposterous and outrageous claim.

Teltumbde presents a picture that since Ambedkar undertook class politics with ILP, the communists felt threatened! This too is a ridiculous claim. Teltumbde does not care to provide any documentary evidence to support it. In fact, Ambedkar felt threatened due to increasing appeal of communism among his followers, as he accepted to Field Marshall Wavell. We will quote that source later in this essay. The truth is that, subjectively and consciously, Dr. Ambedkar was never in favour of class struggle; even in the period of the ILP he had made it clear time and again. Objectively, of course, every politics is a part of the overall class struggle that goes on in any society. In that sense, every political strategy of Dr. Ambedkar was always a part of class struggle. However, subjectively and consciously, he was always against the politics of class struggle and he never hid this fact. Teltumbde’s claim that it was the communal atmosphere of 1940s that drew Ambedkar away from class politics has no historical evidence and is nothing more than a false speculation to prove his hypothesis of supposed vicinity of Ambedkar and Marxism. It would have been better had Anand Teltumbde saved his energy for a better intellectual enterprise, instead of performing endless ideological somersaults to prove that Dr. Ambedkar had any affinity with Marxism and it was the practice and behaviour of Indian communists that drove him into the arms of liberal bourgeois philosophy!

Teltumbde on ‘How the Indian Communists Made Ambedkar Anti-Communist!’

The mistakes and weaknesses of the Indian communist movement apart, can we blame the shifts and transitions in the political career of Ambedkar on the deeds of communists, especially, his repulsion to communism? The central slogan of Anand Teltumbde is: whenever you cannot show that Ambedkar is friendly towards Marxism, blame it on Indian communists! Interestingly, this argument robs Dr. Ambedkar of all political autonomy and agency and his entire attitude towards Marxism becomes a derivative discourse stemming from what the Indian communists did. Isn’t it ridiculous to make such an argument about an intellectual like Dr. Ambedkar? However, I would not simply speculate. I will show in a short while that Ambedkar as a firm and consistent Deweyan Pragmatist had a natural antipathy towards Marxism. But first, let us return to our eternal Leftist interlocutor between Ambedkar’s pragmatism and Marxism, Mr. Anand Teltumbde.

The problem with Mr. Teltumbde is that he cannot decide which stool to sit on; he jumps back and forth from one stool to another and in the process falls in between the two stools. First Teltumbde accepts that Ambedkar’s interest in Marxism was thwarted by his religious upbringing, influence of pragmatism and Fabianism during his education in the US and Britain; he never accepted Marxist economics even when he used the term ‘state socialism’ in his ‘States and Minorities’; he also accepts that the term ‘socialism’ has assumed many meanings over the centuries and it was only with Marx that theories of Scientific Socialism were propounded. However, here Teltumbde by mistake exposes his poor understanding of the difference between myriad forms of pre-Marxian socialism and the Scientific Socialism of Marx. Teltumbde argues that the differentia specifica of Marxian Scientific Socialism is that it wants to do away with State whereas the pre-Marxian or non-Marxian theories of socialism including theories of ‘state socialism’ believe that it is the state that will do away with exploitation and will promote general welfare. While it is true that the theories of state socialism did believe that State is the agent that will end exploitation and promote general welfare, this is not the main basis of difference between Marxist theory of Socialism and other theories of socialism. The most important aspect of Marxian Scientific Socialism is that Socialism is a result of class struggle and what Marx called ‘liberation of the working class by the working class itself’; it is not the work of some enlightened and benevolent individuals; it is the dynamic of class struggle that leads, first to socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat and then the eventual withering away of the state with emergence of a classless society; under socialism, state continues to exist but now it is characterized by dictatorship of the proletariat; this dictatorship of proletariat is only a transitional phase towards communism, when the classes and state will wither away in a long and protracted process. Lenin and Mao showed that during this period of transition the possibility of reversal and capitalist restoration continues to exist and it is minimized only to the extent that the continued hegemony of bourgeois ideology is decisively broken under the proletarian state. The differentia specifica of Marxist theory of socialism is not the existence or absence of state, as such. It is the class nature of the process through which socialism comes into existence and the class nature of the socialist state, though this state strives and intends to become more of a no-state in the protracted process of socialist transition. Teltumbde’s arguments in this regard are certainly lacking.

Teltumbde attempts to refute Gail Omvedt’s argument that Ambedkar was opposed to communism. She has quoted Ambedkar where he clearly says that communism is like a forest fire and goes on burning and consuming anything and everything that comes in its way. However, Teltumbde wants to reduce this stand of Ambedkar to his antipathy to Nehru’s foreign policy of creating a false impression of friendliness towards both countries, Russia and China! Any reader can gauge the extent of distortion of facts by Teltumbde here. The statement of Ambedkar has nothing critical about the foreign policy of Nehru as such, but a clear-cut antagonism towards communism itself. Later in this essay, we will quote the entire statement to expose the lie of Teltumbde.

Since, Teltumbde senses the weakness of his arguments, he comes up with a new argument: the Soviet Russia had lost its sheen after Lenin! So, this might be the reason for Ambedkar’s antipathy, though Teltumbde does not say so. However, he mentions this “losing sheen by Soviet Russia” only to create the context that Ambedkar might have become critical of Soviet Russia like many had become during the Stalin years. Teltumbde argues that stories of persecution of political opponents by Stalin were pouring from Russia. This too is a ridiculous claim. The news of famous trials of 1930s did emerge from Soviet Union, however, the slandering based on these trials, what Teltumbde calls “stories” emerged from the American and British bourgeois and imperialist press, not from the USSR. Interestingly, a few sentences later, Teltumbde had the audacity to claim that Ambedkar also had a ‘soft corner’ for Stalin and arguably he maintained a one day fast when Stalin died, though there is no evidence of this! These anecdotes without evidence are produced here by Teltumbde in order to show that Ambedkar became anti-communist due to the misdeeds of the communists in the 1930s! However, the fact is that Ambedkar never expressed his admiration for communism even in the 1920s. He deals with communists and communism mainly in the 1930s because that was the decade when he entered electoral politics. In the late 1920s itself, Ambedkar clearly believed that communism and strikes are twins and he would never support a strike which is led by communists, because communists politicize the strikes which lead to economic loss of workers! An incorrigibly liberal bourgeois idea, as you can see. In the 1930s too, he critiqued communism in a number of writings including ‘The Annihilation of Caste’. Even during the phase of the ILP, he clearly declared that class analysis is not relevant in the Indian context and the Marxist theory of class conflict is something to which he cannot agree. In fact, Ambedkar had expressed his antipathy to Marxist theory of class struggle in his paper presented in Columbia University in 1916 itself, which Teltumbde himself has quoted. Evidently, the claim of Teltumbde that Ambedkar became anti-communist only in the 1940s and that too due to the practice of Indian communists, is a gross distortion of historical facts. Later, Teltumbde accepts in a shame-faced fashion that some responsibility of this antipathy also lies with Ambedkar who himself felt threatened by communism once he entered electoral politics. He concedes, “As these instances illustrate, his anti-communist statements mainly came out anxiety to defend his turf in electoral politics.” (Teltumbde, 2017, p. 32) Afterwards, he immediately claims that this antipathy of Ambedkar was not to communist theory in general but the practice of Indian communists, which we have shown is a baseless claim.

Teltumbde fails to understand that the allegedly “trivializing attitude” of communists to the question of caste stems from their broader failure to understand concrete conditions of Indian society and their failure to undertake a concrete analysis of these concrete conditions. He claims that it was the Brahmanical mind-set of communists to follow the vedavakya. First they followed the word of the Brahmin Samhitas and later followed the word of Marxist theory but by turning it into a creed or religion. The problem with this argument is that the Indian communists did not even follow the Marxist classics by word! Not that it would have been sufficient, but, the Indian Marxists not only failed to apply the universal truth of Marxism to Indian conditions, they also failed to understand the “word” of Marxist theory itself. We can see this failure in their support to the formation of Pakistan for a brief period when an anti-Marxist idea of nation based on religious identity was accepted uncritically, or the failure to understand the principal contradiction during the Quit India Movement and the decision not to participate in it and also in drafting and implementing a particular program on the question of caste as well as gender during the national movement. However, the issue of lack of understanding of caste question is singled out to prove that it was the Brahmanical bias of the CPI that prevented it from comprehending this question in totality. This is a gross injustice to the early communists, who despite their lack of understanding of the program of Indian revolution, including the program for annihilation of caste, fought and sacrificed more than any other political force during the national movement of India and also since the Naxalbari Revolt. It is often easy for armchair passive radicals to make such ludicrous claims.

Teltumbde’s Account of ‘Unmarxist Marxists’: An Unmarxist History of “Unmarxist” Marxists!

Under the subhead ‘Unmarxist Marxists’, first Teltumbde repeats his allegation that Indian Marxists took the notions and categories of Marxism uncritically that had come into existence in the specific European context. This claim is incorrect on many levels. First of all, which categories Teltumbde is talking about? Is it class? Is it state and its class character? Is it class struggle? If yes, then he misses that these categories are universal categories and are applicable to all class societies, even the Indian class society. Secondly, in all countries class exploitation is articulated with different forms of oppression from race, ethnicity, linguistic identity to caste and religion. All these forms of social oppression have their own particularity and they articulate with class exploitation in their own specific ways in different national contexts. Communists in India undoubtedly failed to understand the specificity of the articulation of caste-based oppression and exploitation with class exploitation. This led to serious mistakes on the part of communists. But to claim that the communists did not take up caste question is historically incorrect. They did take up the caste question, but in the lack of a proper understanding of the particular form of articulation of caste and class, which I have called the relationship of Correspondence (see, Abhinav Sinha, ‘Historiography of Caste: Some Critical Observations’, Caste Question and Marxism, Arvind Trust, Lucknow, 2014), they failed to devise a particular program of anti-caste struggles as part of class struggle. However, to conjure up an image of Brahmanical idea of ‘following the vedavakya of Marxism’ and impose it on this weakness of communists is preposterous. The truth is that Indian communists did not even follow the word!

Teltumbde again repeats the false claim that Indian communists believed that India had already become capitalist and therefore they ignored peasants and rural class struggle where the caste dynamics was being played out. We have shown above that this claim of Teltumbde is not based on the documents and practice of the CPI but solely on the works of M.N. Roy, which was rejected by the CPI. Teltumbde is not well-versed in the history of communist movement and that is why he makes such a childish claim. His argument that even the Congress understood the importance of Untouchability as early as 1916 and communists were “blissfully ignorant” about it, is inaccurate. First of all, proper formation of the CPI took place only in 1933, as we have pointed out earlier. The 1920 Tashkent declaration was just a formal event. The 1925 All India Conference was even more meaningless, when speeches were made which attempted to make a bridge between Islam and Marxism (for instance, the speech of Maulana Hasrat Mohani), and a constitution was adopted which said that every worker can participate in election of delegates to the party forums like party conferences and party congress. Evidently, it was a constitution that was even weaker than those of the Social Democratic parties of Europe. That is why, it must be understood that the first major milestone in the process of formation of the CPI was 1933, when following the advice of CPs of Germany, Britain and China, a provisional nucleus of the CC was formed. To expect, therefore, that the CPI could have adopted a particular program on the Caste Question, when it did not even have a general program of revolution in India, is ridiculous.

Secondly, though the communists did not theoretically understand the caste question and therefore the question of untouchability, they were not “blissfully ignorant” about it. In 1930, in a document ‘United Front for Action’, the communist party discussed the caste system and untouchability in detail, linked anti-caste struggle with the struggle against feudalism and the British rule. It declared to fight against all forms of caste-based oppression and discrimination. In the Second Congress of the Party in 1948 also, the paper on political situation discusses the problem of untouchability and appeals to the toiling untouchable masses to struggle uncompromisingly against ‘the upper-caste bourgeois state’ and also carry out the struggle against the separatist leaders who want to isolate their struggles from the struggle of all working masses. The allusion here is to Ambedkar. The AITUC, in its fourth, fifth and sixth conferences, had made untouchability an issue, and even later, had included this issue in the ‘charter of the workers.’ Regarding the anti-caste activities and stand of AIKS, we have already talked. In the work of Andhra Mahasabha that prepared the prelude of Telangana peasants’ struggle, the communists actively raised the question of caste and untouchability. The CPI in many states of country was known as the ‘party of chamars and dusadhs’ due to its struggle for the Dalits, especially on the question of land but also on the question of caste-based atrocities. Therefore, to claim that the communists were ‘blissfully ignorant’ of the caste question, again, is a distortion of history by Anand Teltumbde.

It is true that the CPI even after independence failed to present a program for annihilation of caste. Teltumbde quotes Singaravelu and some other early communists who presented a mechanical and economistic understanding of not only caste, but also class struggle. As we showed above, the intellectual weakness of communist movement was apparent from the very beginning. However, Teltumbde also claims that Indian communists followed Marx mechanically by word. If we look at Marx’s and Lenin’s concept of class, we can easily see that Indian communists failed to even mechanically follow the word of Marx! We have presented our detailed critique of how Indian communists failed to present a coherent and cohesive program of Indian revolution based on concrete analysis of concrete conditions and how this also led them to the failure in presenting a particular program for the annihilation of caste too. However, Ambedkar too failed to present such a program and all his remedies remained within the framework of Deweyan Pragmatist methods of collaborating with the rulers (irrespective of the fact who the ruler was!), identity construction, constitutionalism and legalism (see Jaffrelot, 2005). Why single out the communists only, then? Even Ambedkar reached the conclusion that tantamount to the statement that caste belongs to the sphere of superstructure as we showed above. The CPI at particular junctures claimed the same, though not always. There were times when another thesis of ‘caste is class’ also surfaced, which was equally erroneous. However, this error, namely, relegating caste to the sphere of superstructure, as we can see, was shared by the Indian communists and Ambedkar. The critique of communist movement on program of Indian revolution, caste question, gender and nationality is an important task and must be undertaken. We have actually undertaken this task (http://anvilmag.in/naxalbari-retrospection/#.Ws4As4hubIU). However, to claim that Ambedkar was driven to anti-communism due to the failures of Indian communists is a ridiculous mockery of reason and rationality.

“Metaphoric Madness” or Anand Teltumbde’s Derivative Discourse on ‘Base-Superstructure Metaphor’

Teltumbde rightly points out that the understanding of Marx and Engels regarding economic base and superstructure was a dialectical one in which economic base plays a dominant role in the final analysis because it is the production and reproduction of material life that forms the basis of political, ideological, cultural superstructure. However, in the process of stressing upon this dialectical notion, Teltumbde proves too much! The reason for that is that after quoting Marx and Engels on this issue, he relies on secondary sources like Chris Harman (a Trotskyite)! It would have been better had Anand Teltumbde relied on the classic texts on the question of economic base, superstructure, forces of production and relations of production. He relies heavily on a secondary text from a Trotskyite instead and the shortfalls are evident immediately. If you read the essay of Harman, which Teltumbde almost paraphrases, you find that just like the master (Trotsky), the disciple is equally economistic. First of all, Harman argues that base is combination of forces and relations of production. According to Marx, economic base is the sum total of production relations. Secondly, in the dialectics of relations and forces of production, according to Harman, it is the forces of production that are the dynamic element, the independent variable. This is the economism which prevailed in the Second International led by Kautsky, Russian Marxism before Lenin including the “legal Marxists” like Struve as well as Plekhanov and the Soviet Marxism after Lenin, for example, the Soviet textbook of Political Economy and a few writings of Stalin to some extent; however, if one reads Trotskyite works on the issue, they find that Trotsky and Trotskyites are the worst victims of this kind of economism. Marx had showed clearly in Capital that some production relations themselves were forces of production, for example, simple co-operation between labourers constituted a relation of production (as a division of labour) as well as a force of production, as it increased productivity. Lenin steered clear of this mistake and Mao presented a thorough critique of this mistake, though the likes of Bettelheim and Althusser distorted him. The fact is that forces of production can develop in proper way only when the relations of production are in accordance with them. Historically, the forces of production develop with the interaction of human beings with the Nature. However, this interaction itself is shaped and modulated by the relations of production. Therefore, immediately after a revolutionary transformation it is the relations of production that play the dominant role in its dialectic with forces of production by giving impetus to the development of the latter. However, as the productive forces develop, the relations of production become a fetter upon them and the forces of production represented by the revolutionary class becomes the dominant element in the dialectic. Therefore, one cannot make a simplistic statement that forces of production always play the dominant role or the relations of production always play the dominant role. The dominant and secondary aspects of a contradiction always transform into each other and it is this transmutability that actually makes it a contradiction, a dialectic. There is no such thing as a non-transmutable contradiction or a static dialectic. Had Teltumbde read the classic texts of Marxism on base and superstructure, his alleged corrective would not have been built on an equally vulgar economistic representation of the subject by Chris Harman. To prove this, what Teltumbde paraphrases from Harman (though he acknowledges his debt to Harman in a footnote, yet the paraphrased paragraph has not been put within quotes, which creates an illusion that the voice belongs to Teltumbde!) can be presented here, which is a motley crew of mostly stupid questions:

“Ever since then Marxists began interpreting this statement: What is the ‘base’? The economy? The forces of production? Technology? The relations of production? What is included in the superstructure? Obviously, the state, but what about ideology (and revolutionary theory)? The family? The state when it owns industry? Finally, what is the relation between the ‘base’ and the ‘superstructure’? Does the base determine the superstructure? If so, what exactly is the nature of the determination? And does the superstructure have a degree of ‘autonomy’ – and if so, how can this be reconciled with talk of ‘determination’ (even if it is only ‘determination in the last resort’)?” (Teltumbde, 2017, p.40-41)

This is the paragraph from Harman paraphrased by Teltumbde, verbatim! And Teltumbde is stupefied by the pertinence of questions! Apparently, any person familiar with the development of Marxist-Leninist thinking on base and superstructure would be surprised at the misplaced character of these questions. For example, the question: “The state when it owns industry?” (!!) This is a stupid question. It does not really matter whether the state owns the industry or not! It still is the most important component of political superstructure. In fact, Engels said, “Force (that is state power) is also an economic power.” (Engels to C. Schmidt, 27 October, 1890). This is why, in same letter Engels ridicules confused people like Harman and his follower Mr. Teltumbde, “What these gentlemen all lack is dialectics.” (ibid) The very question itself, whether state is part of superstructure when it owns industry, is a non-question and shows how Harman is utterly confused about what base and superstructure means, not to mention the relation between them. And it is this Trotskyite fellow on which Teltumbde relies rather too heavily to introduce his corrective in the communist movement of India (!!), though we have seen how little Teltumbde is familiar with the positions of communists from 1925 to 1951, howsoever incorrect it was! In order to correct a mistake, one should first have a comprehensive understanding of what the mistake is!

Teltumbde after quoting oft-quoted excerpts from Marx and Engels to show the non-deterministic and non-economistic character of their use of the metaphor of base and superstructure, argues that what happened in the communist movement of India was just the opposite: a mechanical use of the metaphor which led the Indian communists to “denying the existence of the stark reality of caste.” The first part of the statement is true that the metaphor was used too mechanistically, or rather, the Indian communists failed to understand that it was merely a metaphor. However, the second part that it led them to deny the existence of caste is definitely not true as we showed above. Secondly, the corrective presented in Europe as an antithesis to this mechanistic attitude, that Teltumbde refers to is the New Left of the late-1950s and Maoist Left of 1960s as well as Althusser. One wonders what he includes in the New Left of the late-1950s and the Maoist Left of the 1960s. If it is the French Maoist tradition which emerged from the Paris of 1968, then the less we talk about it, the better it is! In the name of eliminating the economism and determinism of the Second as well as the Third International, they rather eliminated the revolutionary core of Marxism-Leninism. Either we take Young Hegelian idealism and voluntarism of the likes of Charles Bettelheim, or, the non-party revolutionism and pseudo-Maosim of the likes of Alain Badiou, Lazarus, etc; the one thing they share is that they eliminate or dilute the revolutionary analytical core of Marxism such as the notions of class, state, party and dictatorship of proletariat. Similarly, the anti-deterministic corrective of Althusser that Mr. Teltumbde talks about ends up in non-determination because according to Althusser “the last instance never comes!” I doubt whether Mr. Teltumbde has read anything original from Louis Althusser, or any other trend that he talks about. It appears that all his knowledge is coming from the poor source of Chris Harman. That is why Teltumbde ends up commenting, “Notwithstanding these interpretations, many among Indian Marxists even these days swear by this metaphor as profound theoretical tenet.” (Teltumbde, 2017, p. 43) So, for Teltumbde it is not the misuse/abuse of the metaphor of base-superstructure, but the metaphor itself is not a profound theoretical tenet. That is what we call “throwing the baby with the dirty water of the baby tub.”

Mr. Teltumbde does not stop there! He claims that this mistake has led to the split between the two branches of movement of Indian proletariat: the Marxist and the Dalit. This again exposes Mr. Teltumbde’s poor understanding of theory and ideology. A movement becomes proletarian or non-proletarian by the character of the hegemonic theory of that movement (“without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” – Lenin). A movement of workers dominated by reformist and pragmatic ideology is not a proletarian movement. Therefore, if by Dalit branch of the movement of Indian proletariat, Mr. Teltumbde means the movement led by Ambedkar, or by Gaikwad-faction and Dalit Panthers, then he is grossly mistaken. Definitely, the Dalit movement has radical potentialities in it and the possibility to become a part of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in India; however, on the one hand, Dr. Ambedkar never failed to keep the movement under his leadership within the bounds of bourgeois legality (as Mr. Teltumbde himself has demonstrated beautifully in his last book ‘Mahad’) and away from political radicalization, and on the other, the communists in India could not organize a class-based anti-caste movement due to their own theoretical shortcomings and mistakes, though they organized Dalits in the land and agrarian struggles in many states. Therefore, the two movements, the Dalit movement led by Ambedkar and the movement led by the communists (which did include a large section of Dalits) remained separate movements from the very beginning and there is no question of split between them because they were never one. Moreover, Teltumbde like many identitarian writers uses Ambedkarite movement and Dalit movement as synonyms. On all questions, from separate electorates to conversions, there was a non-Ambedkarite Dalit movement from the very beginning. It is mischievous of such writers to conflate the two and deny any existence to non-Ambedkarite Dalit movements, radical and reformist alike.

Teltumbde claims that over the years Marxists have realized the mistake of ignoring caste and Ambedkar (again, the synonymity is conspicuous! If you talk about caste or its annihilation, it must be in the Ambedkarite vein, or else, you will be branded a casteist!). I would say it is not Marxists as such but certain “Marxists” who suddenly had this moment of epiphany! However, this epiphany has more to do with appeasing the Dalit masses by using the symbol of Ambedkar, rather than critically engaging with Ambedkar and his theories. As far as ignoring caste is concerned, it is certainly not true about revolutionary communists and it is pointless to talk about revisionist parliamentary Left of India, because once you make a theoretical compromise on one point, your compromising attitude will be manifested in some form or the other on all issues including caste and gender. Secondly, as far as ignoring Ambedkar is concerned, I believe it is true in one sense: there should have been a revolutionary dialectical materialist critique of Ambedkar, which the revolutionary Left failed to present. It moved between the extremes of phenomenal criticisms of the inconsistency of Ambedkar or complete surrender to Ambedkar (as is happening right now in the context of Maoists and other revolutionary Left groups). The need was to go to the philosophical roots of Dr. Ambedkar and present a Marxist critique of his worldview and politics. In this sense, yes! The communists failed to critically engage with Ambedkar. One humble attempt at this can found here: (https://redpolemique.wordpress.com/2017/05/04/caste-question-marxism-and-the-political-legacy-of-b-r-ambedkar/).

Under the next subhead, Teltumbde critiques the stand of CPI on Ambedkar’s demand of separate electorate and calls it casteist prejudice! I was surprised to see Mr. Teltumbde supporting Ambedkar’s demand for separate electorates. Of course, Gandhi opposed it from reactionary casteist Hinduist standpoint. However, this cannot become the reason for supporting this reactionary demand. Just like, just because the Modi government for its own communal and divisive agenda attacks triple talaak and halala, we cannot support it! Secondly, if CPI’s opposition to separate electorates can be ascribed to their caste prejudice, then Teltumbde should also criticize Bhagat Singh and his comrades for opposing separate electorates and communal award. However, Teltumbde safely steers clear of this!

Teltumbde gives a number of instances where the communist leaders or cadre showed a casteist attitude. First of all, let us be clear about one thing. There is no need to defend the communist leaders or the communist party after 1951-52, when the party was ideologically compromised and became revisionist. Revolutionary communists have no responsibility to defend the conduct of CPI or its leaders after 1951 or the CPM from 1964 itself. As I pointed out earlier, once you make an ideological compromise, this compromising approach is manifested on all questions and issues. Secondly, even before 1951, there were casteist tendencies, not so much on party forums, but especially on the mass organizational forums on which communists were a dominant force. For instance, on the platform of AITUC, etc. It must be understood that party exists in a class society dominated by a variet