Two contradictory events can take place concurrently in history. Even as the Maharashtra government announced its decision to buy B R Ambedkar’s London residence and turn it into a memorial-cum-museum, the Hindu Forum of Britain promised electoral support to political parties who would repeal the proposed caste legislation in Britain. So categorically opposed are these Hindu organisations to acknowledging the existence of casteism in Britain, that they have put all their political and financial muscle into defeating the legislation. How hollow is the intent of honouring Ambedkar’s legacy, when every act speaks of defiling it?
Sporadically, between 1921 “ 1922, Ambedkar lived at 10 King Henry Road, Chalk Farm, London. Today, Chalk Farm is a leafy, affluent residential area and it is costing the Maharashtra government upward of Rs 40 crores to buy the house. But in post-war 1920s Britain, many of its near-derelict terraced houses had been converted to ‘boarding residences’ offering rooms, meals and ‘all the freedom of a hotel.’ While there, Ambedkar completed his thesis ‘The problem of the Rupee’, which earned him the examiner’s displeasure for its anti-imperialistic tenor. By 1923, with his money, which came by way of a scholarship from Sayajirao Gaekwad, running out, he returned to India. From Bombay, he resubmitted his thesis, this time accepted and awarded a doctorate.
What would Ambedkar have thought about honouring his legacy? The Modern Manu of the Indian constitution, who fought for the rights of dalits might have balked at such a suggestion, seeing it as empty rhetoric in the face of an unequal reality.
Dalits emigrated to western countries during the 1960s as semi-literate industrial and domestic labour, and later as professionals. Despite their economic upward mobility, there still remains constraints on their social mobility within the Indian community, even in Britain.
Dalits mobilised quickly, forming Ambedkarite organisations such as Voice of Dalit International. They found solidarity in the American Black Panther civil rights movement which resulted in the formation of the Dalit Panther of India. The common cause with the African diaspora continues, as casteism is, if anything, a pernicious form of racism and slavery. In Britain, Meena Varma, the director of Dalit Solidarity Network, can be found on most days sitting amidst a criss-cross of computer cables, in a tiny office space loaned to her by the Anti-Slavery Organisation. Not a single Hindu organisation in Britain has ever supported her work.
When in 2013, Dalit Solidarity Network successfully tabled a motion in parliament which would recognise caste as a form of discrimination, their jubilation was short-lived. A combative Alliance of Hindu Organisations (AHO) led a counter-attack and managed to stall its progress, calling the potential legislation an act of anti-Hindu racial and religious prejudice.
It must be noted here, that many of these so called charity or cultural or ‘Friends of India’ organisations in the diaspora, are closely allied with the RSS. The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, set up in 1966, is the RSS itself in another guise. According to Christophe Jaffrelot, author of Religion, Caste and Politics in India, the HSS is modelled exactly as its Indian counterpart. Its arterial spread is managed through shakhas, annual leadership meets and training camps. Britain shows no resolve in addressing the issue of right-wing Hindu organisation. They are, in fact, supporters of the right-wing Tory government, which conveniently turns a blind eye and on occasion is known to tacitly approve of them.
While the AHO claim they have been the victims of anti-Hindu prejudice and misinformation they have done very little to investigate if caste discrimination does exist in Britain. If they had, perhaps they would have accepted the evidence which cites that casteism plays out quite cruelly in British schools, the workplace, places of worship, in forming marriage alliances and even in renting houses. Instead, the AHO categorically refutes evidence to this effect presented by respectable organisations.
Britain has always shied away from legislating what it considers to be the murky waters of religious sensitivities. The fact that casteism is a human rights issue is lost. Additionally, Hindu Britons are generally regarded as a ‘model community’; highly literate and law-abiding with middle-class values. Politicians do not risk alienating them.
Is it really surprising that the Indian community seeks to jettison legislation which Ambedkar himself would have approved of? The NRI Hindu has collectively long supported the Hindutva nationalist experiment in India, stage-managing Narendra Modi’s image in the west, funding the RSS and focussing on a narrowly defined idea of what it means to be Indian. Ambedkar would have been appalled at the thought of being honoured in Britain given the support the British Indian has shown for right-wing politics in India, and he certainly would have had something to say, if he knew Narendra Modi is likely to inaugurate the memorial in November, 2015.
- Selma Carvalho is the author of A Railway Runs Through: Goans of British East Africa, 1865 - 1980. Between 2011 - 2014, she headed the Oral Histories of British Goans project in London
