Amar Chitra Katha And 'Misrepresenting' Dr Ambedkar

On 14 September, 2024, just three days before the 95^th birth anniversary of Anant ‘Uncle’ Pai of Amar Chitra Katha, the webzine The Print published a book excerpt from Remaking the Citizens for New Times (Seagull Books, 2024), a book by Deepa Srinivas of Hyderabad University.

The subtitle of the book reads ‘History, Pedagogy and the Amar Chitra Katha.’

The excerpt unwinds as a bizarre quest to unearth sinister motives within the pages and panels of Amar Chitra Katha (ACK). The author's analysis, a tangled word salad of jargon and conjecture, strains to portray these much-loved comics as insidious tools of social indoctrination, pushing the notion that they promote a 'Brahminical-patriarchal order' and 'upper-caste middle-class hegemony.'

Here is a criticism of ACK that she makes:

The above is actually an ideological criticism to which one can return later. But from that flows an accusation of distortion. She 'analyses' how Dr Ambedkar is portrayed in the comics.  

Here the author makes the following accusation:

Before entering into the major ideological criticism that she has made, let us look into this specific accusation.

Dr Deepa Srinivas makes it look like as if ACK went out of the way and fabricated a story to contain Dr Ambedkar within 'Hindu patriarchal mode'.

The fact of the matter is that this episode of ACK itself was mainly based on the authoritative biography of Ambedkar written by the chronicler of detailed biographies of national leaders—Dhananjay Keer.

Keer's comprehensive biography, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Missions, published in 1954, two years before the Parinirvana of its subject, derives its authority from meticulous research and personal interviews with Dr Ambedkar himself, ensuring an unparalleled level of accuracy and insight.

Within its pages, Keer recounts the popular tale surrounding Dr Ambedkar's birth, wherein an elderly relative, now a mendicant, was recognised by a family member and Dr Ambedkar's father, who sought the mendicant's blessing for the child yet to be born:

Thus, the ACK depiction, drawn from Dr Ambedkar's biography, which he himself had the chance to read and did not object to, offers a glimpse into his life grounded in Hindu culture.

However, Dr Deepa Srinivas overlooks a crucial aspect: the same ACK comics issue boldly portrays Dr Ambedkar's famous declaration – "I was born a Hindu, but I will not die one."

While acknowledging this assertion, it is essential for all admirers of Dr Ambedkar to remember that the context of national security was one of the important factors that informed his decision of seeking a path away from Hinduism that didn't jeopardize India's safety. This was a key factor in his embrace of Buddhism.

Now we shall move to the ideological criticism:

Dr Srinivas critiques ACK's portrayal of Dr Ambedkar as an exceptional individual transcending adversity, rather than solely as a product of his social circumstances. She writes:

This is nothing more than inventing negativity where there was none. However, the passage displays the typical rhetorical word-salad approach that inhabits most of the academic realm today. So let us also use this paragraph to deep dive into the thoughts of Dr Ambedkar.

Dr Ambedkar the Exceptional Individual dedicated to social cause

Dr Ambedkar was indeed an exceptional individual. He was a polymath. This phenomenon of being a genius was indeed part of the core of Dr Ambedkar's personality.

He defied societal constraints, achieving extraordinary intellectual and political heights through remarkable determination and resilience. Yet, he dedicated his personal triumphs and strengths almost entirely to societal betterment – striving to infuse Hindu society with humanistic ethical values, through the vital principles of liberty, fraternity, and equality, within its core religious frame.

That was a Bhagirathic task.

After the British takeover, Hinduism had been gravitating towards becoming a maze of ‘a religion of rules’. The greatest concerns about religion was regarding defining and redefining it within the legal framework of the British, with vested interest of the dominant classes and castes of the then society, deriving the maximum benefits from it.

This mitigated against the sense of natural justice of every righteous individual. An aversion for Hinduism or an apologia for a religion of caste rules became the norm of the Hindu society, particularly its intelligentsia.

It was Swami Vivekananda who first challenged this. It was he who impressed upon the national conscience forcefully that Hinduism as a religion of Upanishadic principles and Hinduism as a religion of rules, had unreconcilable core differences.

Dr Ambedkar reasserted and logically continued that stand. Coming from the marginalised sections of the society, he positioned himself as an insider-outsider.

He was an insider as a person belonging to the larger Hindu-Buddhist family of principles and an outsider to Hinduism which discriminated through socially stagnant rules. Dharmacharyas favoured the latter while piggybacking on the grandeur and charm of the former.

In fact, Dr Ambedkar conveyed this when he asserted that the greatest Indian of the modern age was not Mahatma Gandhi but Swami Vivekananda.

So if ACK gives the impression of a larger universe of nation-building on the principles of Vivekananda and locates Dr Ambedkar in it, there is considerable justification for it.

Importance of Individual in Ambedkarite Discourse

Dr Ambedkar always asserted the fundamental rights of the individual and positioned it in the context of creating a just and free society.

Even his critique of the birth-based varna system contained a crucial assertion: apart from the injustice of graded inequality, the rules-based Hinduism disregarded, subsumed, and suppressed the individual self in favour of the collective:

His criticism of chaturvarna was that it rejected the individual yearning for educational, political and economic empowerment by compartmentalising them to specific classes while denying them to others.

However, it is quite interesting that Dr Ambedkar who was attracted to a self-rejecting Buddhism was speaking of the importance of the ‘self’.

On a side note it can be noted that a deeper unconscious resonance that Dr Ambedkar had brought in was the with the Gita. One works in the society not for the society but for one’s own self and ‘individual development’.  

The Gita was indeed the first text to assert the importance of individual nature and individual Dharma in the history of pre-modern religion when through its ideas of swabhava (self-nature not clan nature or caste nature) and swadharma (self-Dharma not clan or caste Dharma).

Even in transition from the ‘moral good’ of the pre-modern world to the ‘moral good’ of the modern world, Dr Ambedkar pointed out that human sense of justice moves from pragmatic good of the collective to ‘something which does justice to the individual.’

That is also one of the two major reasons he rejected Communism.

He would not reduce man to just ‘economic man’ though he would not ignore that dimension. He was aware of the problems of capitalistic society, but he was also aware of the problem of the dictatorship of the collective. He was also aware of the spiritual deficiency of Marxism.

The second reason he rejected Marxism was that it was anti-democratic. Dr Ambedkar was not just for political democracy. He was also for social democracy and more importantly he saw democracy more than as a political system. To him it was ‘an attitude of mind or a philosophy of life.’ Among the triune principles, fraternity was important for social democracy, according to him.

Amazingly for him, Hindus had a Darshana which was far more potent to aid social democracy than even the principle of fraternity. He calls it ‘Brahmaism’. Perhaps it can be called Brahmatva. This doctrine of all universe as Brahman had a social implication. What Dr Ambedkar wrote is worth quoting in full:

And he continues:

One should remember here the last address he gave to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November, 1949.

He pointed out that India had known democracy long ago. But it was lost.

Then he cited Buddhist Sanghas as an example of an ancient institution with democracy.

After that he made a remarkable observation. He said that 'the rules of Parliamentary Procedure ... applied by the Buddha to the meetings of the Sangha' he should have 'borrowed... from the rules of the Political Assemblies functioning in the country in his time' or in other words from pre-Buddhist and hence Vedic political institutions. Naturally that democracy should have had its spiritual roots in the Upanishadic Mahavakyas.

When Dr Ambedkar interpreted kamma (karma), he anchored it on a 'moral law of the universe' and kamma as sustaining that moral order. Conceptually this is close to the Vedic rta.

As against Upanishadic Brahmatvam (or 'Brahmism') as well as the Dharma of Buddha, he saw in Marxism a reduction of human dignity despite the bringing of forced equality. He wrote:

Marxist ideologues also were equally harsh and dismissive of Dr Ambedkar. Buddhist scholar turned Marxist ideologue Rahul Sankrityayan in his fictional Marxist propaganda work, Volga to Ganga, had his Marxist protagonist warn against the lure of Dr Ambedkar:

In conclusion, the Amar Chitra Katha comic book offers a historically accurate and ideologically honest portrayal of Ambedkar, presenting young readers an inspirational understanding of his brilliance, resilience, and unwavering fight for social justice.

It captures the essence of his life and mission, acknowledging both his exceptional individuality and his deep commitment to societal revolution.

Conversely, the criticisms levelled against the ACK appear to be driven by a desire to confine Dr Ambedkar to a rigid socio-economic framework, diminishing his agency and the profound impact of his multifaceted genius dedicated to make Hindu society ethically healthy. This critique seems rooted in a leftist, quasi-Marxist perspective, revealing a discomfort with positive portrayals of Indian culture.

Ultimately, the ACK book serves as a valuable introduction to Dr Ambedkar's legacy, inspiring young minds to explore and study his ideals.