Babasaheb Dr B.R Ambedkar

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z:\ ambedkar\vol-05\vol5-04.indd MK SJ+YS 23-9-2013/YS-10-11-2013 272 CHAPTER 23 THEIR WISHES ARE LAWS UNTO US I. Adharma for Dharma. II. Manu and Dharma. III. Modern Counterparts. IV. Effect of Dharma on character and outlook. Any one who reads of the lawlessness of the Hindus in suppressing the movement of the untouchables, I am sure will be shocked. Why does the Hindu indulge in this lawlessness is a question he is sure to ask and none will say that such a question will not be a natural question and in the circumstances of the case a very pertinent question—Why should an untouchable be tyrannized if he wears clean clothes ? How can it hurt a Hindu. Why should an untouchable be molested because he wants to put a tiled roof on his house ? How can it injure a Hindu? Why should an untouchable be persecuted because he is keen to send his childen to school? How does a Hindu suffer thereby? Why should an untouchable be compelled to carry dead animals, eat carrion, and beg his food from door to door? Where is the loss to the Hindu if he gives these things up. Why should a Hindu object if an untouchable desires to change his religion ? Why should his conversion annoy and upset a Hindu? Why should a Hindu feel outraged if an untouchable calls himself by a decent, respectable name? How can a good name taken by an untouchable adversely affect the Hindu? Why should the Hindu object if an untouchable builds his house facing the main road? How can he suffer thereby? Why should the Hindu object if the sound made by an untouchable falls upon his ears on certain days? It cannot deafen him. Why should a Hindu feel resentment if an untouchable enters a profession, obtains a position of authority, buys land, enters commerce, becomes economically independent and is counted among the well-to-do ? Why should all Hindus whether officials or non-officials make common cause to suppress the untouchables? Why should all castes otherwise quarreling among themselves combine to make, in the name Hinduism, a conspiracy to hold the untouchables at bay?
z:\ ambedkar\vol-05\vol5-04.indd MK SJ+YS 23-9-2013/YS-10-11-2013 273 THEIR WISHER ARE LAWS UNTO US 273 All this of course sounds like a fiction. But one who has read the tales of Hindu tyranny recounted in the last chapter will know that beneath these questions there is the foundation of facts. The facts, of course, are stranger than fiction. But the strangest thing is that these deeds are done by Hindus who are ordinarily timid even to the point of being called cowards. The Hindus are ordinarily a very soft people. They have none of the turbulence or virulence of the Muslims. But, when so soft a people resort without shame and without remorse to pillage, loot, arson and violence on men, women and children, one is driven to believe that there must be a deeper compelling cause which maddens the Hindus on witnessing this revolt of the untouchables and leads them to resort to such lawlessness. There must be some explanation for so strange, so inhuman a way of acting. What is it? If you ask a Hindu, why he behaves in this savage manner, why he feels outraged by the efforts which the untouchables are making for a clean and respectable life, his answer will be a simple one. He will say: “What you call the reform by the untouchables is not a reform. It is an outrage on our Dharma”. If you ask him further where this Dharma of his is laid down, his answer will again be a very simple one. He will reply, “Our Dharma is contained in our Shastras”. A Hindu in suppressing what, in the view of an unbiased man, is a just revolt of the untouchables against a fundamentally wrong system by violence, pillage, arson, and loot, to a modern man appears to be acting quite irreligiously, or, to use the term familiar to the Hindus, he is practising Adharma. But the Hindu will never admit it. The Hindu believes that it is the untouchables who are breaking the Dharma and his acts of lawlessness which appear as Adharma are guided by his sacred duty to restore Dharma. This is an answer, the truth of which cannot be denied by those who are familiar with the psychology of the Hindus. But this raises a further question: What are these Dharma which the Shastras have prescribed and what rules of social relationship do they ordain ? II The word Dharma is of Sanskrit origin. It is one of those Sanskrit words which defy all attempts at an exact definition. In ancient times the word was used in different senses although analogous in connotation. It would be interesting to see how the word Dharma passed through transitions of meaning 1 . But this is hardly the place for it. It is sufficient to say that the word dharma soon acquired a definite 1 See P. V. Kane—History of Dharma Shastra, pp. 1-2.
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’ Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (14
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No one can hope to make any effecti
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Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar : Writings a
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Collected Works of Babasaheb Dr. Am
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(vi) FOREWORD It is a matter of som
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(viii) PREFACE The success of legis
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(xii) EDITORIAL It was learnt that
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(xiv) EDITORIAL *9. The Decline and
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(xvi) EDITORIAL Part—III What the
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(xx) TABLE OF CONTENTS Page BOOK II
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Babasaheb Dr B.R Ambedkar

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