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| Reasons for the resignation of Dr. Ambedkar from the Law Minister |
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar tendered his resignation from the Independent India’s first Law Minister on September 27, 1951. He mentioned various reasons in his resignation statement. They are,
1. He
was not considered for the important portfolios or not even appointed to be a
member of main Committees of the Cabinet.
2. He
dissatisfied with the Government which it related over the neglect and the
treatment accorded to the Backward Classes (not
appointing the Commission for the Backward Classes) and the Scheduled
Castes.
3. He
dissatisfied for the foreign policy of India. (Kashmir Issue and East Pakistan).
4. Dropped the Hindu Code Bill.
Here is the Statement of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar:
"It
is now 4 years, I month and 26 days since I was called by the Prime Minister to
accept the office of Law Minister in his Cabinet. The offer came as a great
surprise to me. I was in the opposite camp and had already been condemned as
unworthy of association when the interim Government was formed in August 1946.
I was left to speculate as to what could have happened to bring about this
change in the attitude of the Prime Minister. I had my doubts. I did not know
how I could carry on with those who had never been my friends. I had doubts as
to whether I could, as a Law Member, maintain the standard of legal knowledge
and acumen which had been maintained by those who had preceded me as Law
Ministers of the Government of India. But I kept my doubts at rest and accepted
the offer of the Prime Minister on the ground that I should not deny my
co-operation when it was asked for in the building up of our nation. The
quality of my performance as a Member of the Cabinet and as Law Minister, I
must leave it to others to judge.
I
will now refer to matters which have led me to sever my connection with my
colleagues. The urge to go has been growing from long past due to variety of
reasons.
I
will first refer to matters purely
of a personal character and which are the least of the grounds which have led
me to tender my resignation. As a result of my being a member of the Viceroy's
Executive Council, I knew the Law Ministry to be administratively of no
importance. It gave no opportunity for shaping the policy of the Government of
India. We used to call it an empty soap box only good for old lawyers to play
with. When the Prime Minister made me the offer, I told him that besides being a lawyer by my education and experience,
I was competent to run any administrative Department and that in the old
Viceroy's Executive Council I held two administrative portfolios, that of
Labour and C.P.W.D., where a great deal of planning projects were dealt with by
me and would like to have some administrative portfolio. The Prime Minister
agreed and said he would give me in addition to Law the Planning Department
which, he said, he was intending to create. Unfortunately the Planning
Department came very late in the day and when it did come I was left out.
During my time, there have been many transfers of portfolios from one Minister
to another. I thought I might be considered for any one of them. But I have
always been left out of consideration. Many Ministers have been given two or
three portfolios so that they have been overburdened. Others like me have been wanting
more work. I have not even been considered for holding a portfolio temporarily
when a Minister in charge has gone abroad for a few days. It is difficult to
understand what is the principle underlying the distribution of Government work
among Ministers which the Prime Minister follows. Is it capacity? Is it trust?
Is it friendship? Is it pliability? I was not even appointed to be a member of
main Committees of the Cabinet such as the Foreign Affairs Committee or the
Defence Committee. When the Economic Affairs Committee was formed, I expected,
in view of the fact that I was primarily a student of Economics and Finance, to
be appointed to this Committee. But I was left out. I was appointed to it by
the Cabinet, when the Prime Minister had gone to England. But when he returned,
in one of his many essays in the reconstruction of the Cabinet, he left me out.
In a subsequent reconstruction my name was added to the Committee, but that was
as a result of my protest. The Prime Minister, I am sure, will agree that I
have never complained to him in this connection. I have never been a party to
the game of power politics inside the Cabinet or the game of snatching
portfolios which goes on when there is a vacancy. I believe in service, service
in the post which the Prime Minister, who as the head of the Cabinet, thought
fit to assign to me. It would have, however, been quite unhuman for me not to
have felt that a wrong was being done to me.
I
will now refer to another (Second)
matter that had made me dissatisfied
with the Government. It relates to the treatment accorded to the Backward
Classes and the Scheduled Castes. I was very sorry that the Constitution
did not embody any safeguards for the Backward Classes. It was left to be done
by the Executive Government on the basis of the recommendations of a Commission
to be appointed by the President. More than a year has elapsed since we passed
the Constitution. But the Government has not even thought of appointing the
Commission. The year 1946 during which I was out of office, was a year of great
anxiety to me and to the leading members of the Scheduled Castes. The British
had resided from the commitments they had made in the matter of constitutional
safeguards for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Castes had no knowing as
to what the Constituent Assembly would do in that behalf. In this period of
anxiety I had prepared a report* on the condition of the Scheduled Castes for
submission to the United Nations. But I did not submit it. I felt that it would
be better to wait until the Constituent Assembly and the future Parliament was
given a chance to deal with the matter. The
provisions made in the Constitution for safeguarding the position of the
Scheduled Castes were not to my satisfaction. However, I accepted them for
what they were worth, hoping that the Government will show some determination
to make them effective. What is the position of the Scheduled Castes today? So
far as I see, it is the same as before. The same old tyranny, the same old oppression,
the same old discrimination which existed before, exists now, and perhaps in a
worst form. I can refer to hundreds of cases where people from the Scheduled
Castes round about Delhi and adjoining places have come to me with their tales
of woes against the Caste Hindus and against the Police who have refused to
register their complaints and render them any help. I have been wondering
whether there is any other parallel in the world to the condition of the
Scheduled Castes in India. I cannot find any. And yet why is no relief granted
to the Scheduled Castes? Compare the concern the Government shows over
safeguarding the Muslims. The Prime Minister's whole time and attention is
devoted for the protection of the Muslims. I yield to none, not even to the Prime
Minister, in my desire to give the Muslims of India the utmost protection
wherever and whenever they stand in need of it. But what I want to know is, are
the Muslims the only people who need protection? Are the Scheduled Castes, the
Scheduled Tribes and the Indian Christians not in need of protection? What
concern has he shown for these communities? So far as I know, none and yet
these are the communities which need far more care and attention than the
Muslims.
I
could not contain within myself the indignation I have felt over the neglect of
the Scheduled Castes by the Government and on one occasion I gave vent to my
feelings at a public meeting of the Scheduled Castes. A question was asked,
from the Hon'ble the Home Minister, whether my charge that the Scheduled Castes
had not benefited by the rule which guaranteed to them 12 1/2, per cent
representation was true. In answer to the question the Hon'ble the Home
Minister was pleased to say that my charge was baseless. Subsequently for some
reason—it may be for satisfying the qualms of his conscience—he, I am informed,
sent round a circular to the various Departments of the Government of India
asking them to report how many Scheduled Caste candidates had been recently
recruited in Government service. I am informed that most Departments said in
reply ' NIL ' or nearly nil. If my information is correct, I need make no
commentary on the answer given by the Hon'ble the Home Minister.
From my early childhood I have
dedicated myself to the upliftment of the Scheduled Castes among whom I was
born. It is not that there were no temptations in my way. If I had considered
my own interests, I could have been anything I wanted to be and if I had joined
the Congress I would have reached to the highest place in that organisation.
But as I said, I had dedicated myself to the upliftment of the Scheduled Castes
and I have followed the adage which says that it is better to be narrow-minded
if you wish to be enthusiastic about a cause which you wish to accomplish. You
can therefore, well imagine what pain it has caused me to see that the cause of
the Scheduled Castes has been relegated to the limbo of nothing.
The
third matter which has given me
cause, not merely for dissatisfaction but for actual anxiety and even worry, is
the foreign policy of the country. Any one, who has followed the course of our
foreign policy and along with it the attitude of other countries towards India,
could not fail to realise the sudden change that has taken place in their
attitude towards us. On 15th of August 1947 when we began our life as an
independent country, there was no country which wished us ill. Every country in
the world was our friend. Today, after four years, all our friends have
deserted us. We have no friends left. We have alienated ourselves. We are
pursuing a lonely furrow with no one even to second our resolutions in the
U.N.O. When I think of our foreign policy, I am reminded of what Bismark and
Bernard Shaw have said. Bismark has said that "Politics is not a game of
realising the ideal. Politics is the game of the possible." Bernard Shaw
not very long ago said that good ideals are good but one must not forget that
it is often dangerous to be too good. Our foreign policy is in complete opposition
to these words of wisdom uttered by two of the world's greatest men. How
dangerous it has been to us this policy of doing the impossible and of being
too good is illustrated by the great drain on our resources made by our
military expenditure, by the difficulty of getting food for our starving
millions and by difficulty of getting aid for the industrialisation of our
country.
Out
of 350 crores of rupees of revenue we raise annually, we spend about Rs. 180
crores of rupees on the Army. It is a colossal expenditure which has hardly any
parallel. This colossal expenditure is the direct result of our foreign policy.
We have to foot the whole of our Bill for our defence ourselves because we have
no friends on which we can depend for help in any emergency that may arise. I
have been wondering whether this is the right sort of foreign policy.
 |
| Dr. Ambedkar's View on Kashmir Issue in 1951. |
Our
quarrel with Pakistan is a part of our foreign policy about which I feel deeply
dissatisfied. There are two grounds which have disturbed our relations with
Pakistan - one is Kashmir and the other is the condition of our people in East
Bengal. I felt that we should be more deeply concerned with East Bengal where
the condition of our people seems from all the newspapers intolerable than with
Kashmir. Notwithstanding this we have been staking our all on the Kashmir
issue. Even then I feel that we have been fighting on an unreal issue. The
issue on which we are fighting most of the time is, who is in the right and who
is in the wrong. The real issue to my
mind is not who is in the right but what is right. Taking that to be the main
question, my view has always been that the right solution is to partition
Kashmir. Give the Hindu and Buddhist part to India and the Muslim part to
Pakistan as we did in the case of India. We are really not concerned with the
Muslim part of Kashmir. It is a matter between the Muslims of Kashmir and
Pakistan. They may decide the issue as they like. Or if you like, divide it
into three parts; the Cease-fire zone, the Valley and the Jammu-Ladhak Region
and have a plebiscite only in the Valley. What I am afraid of is that in
the proposed plebiscite, which is to be an overall plebiscite, the Hindus and
Buddhists of Kashmir are likely to be dragged into Pakistan against their
wishes and we may have to face the same problems as we are facing today in East
Bengal.
I
will now refer to the Fourth matter
which has a good deal to do with my resignation. The Cabinet has become a
merely recording and registration office of decisions already arrived at by
Committees. As I have said, the Cabinet now works by Committees. There is a
Defence Committee. There is a Foreign Committee. All important matters relating
to Foreign affairs are dealt with by it. All matters relating to Defence are
disposed of by the Defence Committee. The same members of the Cabinet are
appointed by them. I am not a member of either of these Committees. They work
behind an iron curtain. Others who are not members have only to take joint
responsibility without any opportunity of taking part in the shaping of policy.
This is an impossible position.
I
will now deal with a matter which has led me finally to come to the decision
that I should resign. It is the treatment which was accorded to the Hindu Code.
The Bill was introduced in this House on the 11th April 1947. After a life of
four years, it was killed and died unwept and unsung, after 4 clauses of it
were passed. While it was before the House, it lived by fits and starts. For
full one year the Government did not feel it necessary to refer it to a Select
Committee. It was referred to the Select Committee on 9th April 1948. The
Report was presented to the House on 12th August 1948. The motion for the
consideration of the Report was made by me on 31st August 1948. It was merely
for making the motion that the Bill was kept on the Agenda. The discussion of
the motion was not allowed to take place until the February Session of the year
1949. Even then it was not allowed to have a continuous discussion. It was
distributed over 10 months, 4 days in February, I day in March and 2 days in
April 1949. After this, one day was given to the Bill in December 1949, namely
the 19th December on which day the House adopted my motion that the Bill as
reported by the Select Committee be taken into consideration. No time was given
to the Bill in the year 1950. Next time the Bill came before the House was on
5th February 1951 when the clause by clause consideration of the Bill was
taken. Only three days 5th, 6th and 7th of February were given to the Bill and
left there to rot.
This
being the last Session of the present Parliament, Cabinet had to consider
whether the Hindu Code Bill should be got through before this Parliament ended
or whether it should be left over to the new Parliament. The Cabinet
unanimously decided that it should be put through in this Parliament. So the
Bill was put on the Agenda and was taken up on the 17th September 1951 for
further clause by clause consideration. As the discussion was going on the
Prime Minister put forth a new proposal, namely, that the Bill as a whole may
not be got through within the time available and that it was desirable to get a
part of it enacted into law rather than allow the whole of it to go to waste.
It was a great wrench to me. But I agreed, for, as the proverb says "It is
better to save a part when the whole is likely to be lost". The Prime
Minister suggested that we should select the Marriage and Divorce part. The
Bill in its truncated "form went on. After two or three days of discussion
of the Bill the Prime Minister came up with another proposal. This time his
proposal was to drop the whole Bill even the Marriage and Divorce portion. This
came to me as a great shock—a bolt from the blue. I was stunned and could not
say anything. I am not prepared to accept that the dropping of this truncated
Bill was due to want of time. I am sure that the truncated Bill was dropped
because other and more powerful members of the Cabinet wanted precedence for
their Bills. I am unable to understand how the Benaras and Aligarh University
Bills, how the Press Bill could have been given precedence over the Hindu Code
even in its attenuated form? It is not that there was no law on the Statute
Book to govern the Aligarh University or the Benaras University. It is not that
these Universities would have gone to wreck and ruins if the Bills had not been
passed in this session. It is not that the Press Bill was urgent. There is
already a law on the Statute Book and the Bill could have waited. I got the
impression that the Prime Minister, although sincere, had not the earnestness
and determination required to get the Hindu Code Bill through.
In
regard to this Bill I have been made to go through the greatest mental torture.
The aid of Party Machinery was denied to me. The Prime Minister gave freedom of
Vote, an unusual thing in the history of the Party. I did not mind it. But I
expected two things. I expected a party whip as to time limit on speeches and
instruction to the Chief Whip to move closure when sufficient debate had taken
place. A whip on time limit on speeches would have got the Bill through. When
freedom of voting was given there could have been no objection to have given a
whip for time limit on speeches. But such a whip was never issued. The conduct
of the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, who is also the Chief Whip of the
Party in connection with the Hindu Code, to say the least, has been most
extraordinary. He has been the deadliest opponent of the Code and has never
been present to aid me by moving a closure motion. For days and hours
filibustering has gone on a single clause. But the Chief Whip, whose duty it is
to economise Government time and push on Government Business, has been
systematically absent when the Hindu Code has been under consideration in the
House. I have never seen a case of a Chief Whip so disloyal to the Prime
Minister and a Prime Minister so loyal to a disloyal Whip. Notwithstanding this
unconstitutional behaviour, the Chief Whip is really a darling of the Prime
Minister. For notwithstanding his disloyalty he got a promotion in the Party
organisation. It is impossible to carry on in such circumstances.
It
has been said that the Bill had to be dropped because the opposition was
strong. How strong was the opposition? This Bill has been discussed several
times in the Party and was carried to division by the opponents. Every time the
opponents were routed. The last time when the Bill was taken up in the Party
Meeting, out of 120 only 20 were found to be against it. When the Bill was
taken in the Party for discussion, 44 clauses were passed in about 3 1/2 hours
time. This shows how much opposition there was to the Bill within the Party. In
the House itself there have been divisions on three clauses of the Bill—2, 3
and 4. Every time there has been a overwhelming majority in favour even on
clause 4 which is the soul of the Hindu Code. I was therefore, quite unable to
accept the Prime Minister's decision to abandon the Bill on the ground of time.
I have been obliged to give this elaborate explanation for my resignation
because some people have suggested that I am going because of my illness. I
wish to repudiate any such suggestion. I am the last man to abandon my duty
because of illness.
It may be said that my
resignation is out of time and that if I was dissatisfied with the Foreign
Policy of the Government and the treatment accorded to Backward Classes and the
Scheduled Castes I should have gone earlier. The charge may sound as true. But
I had reasons which held me back. In the first place, most of the time I have been
a member of the Cabinet, I have been busy with the framing of the Constitution.
It absorbed all my attention till 26th January 1950 and thereafter I was
concerned with the Peoples' Representation Bill and the Delimitation Orders. I
had hardly any time to attend to our Foreign Affairs. I did not think it right
to go away leaving this work unfinished. In the second place, I thought it
necessary to stay on, for the sake of the Hindu Code. In the opinion of some it may be wrong for me to have held on for the
sake of the Hindu Code. I took a different view. The Hindu Code was the
greatest social reform measure ever undertaken by the Legislature in this
country. No law passed by the Indian Legislature in the past or likely to be
passed in the future can be compared to it in point of its significance. To
leave inequality between class and class, between sex and sex which is the soul
of Hindu Society untouched and to go on passing legislation relating to
economic problems is to make a farce of our Constitution and to build a palace
on a dung heap. This is the significance I attached to the Hindu Code. It is
for its sake that I stayed on notwithstanding my differences. So if I have
committed a wrong it is in the hope of doing some good. Had I no ground for
such a hope connection to refer only to three of the statements made by the
Prime Minister on the floor of the House, for overcoming the obstructionist
tactics of the opponents? I would like in this connection
to refer only to three of the statements made by the Prime Minister on the
floor of the House."
***
On
28th November, 1949 the Prime Minister gave the following assurance. He said:
"What is more, the Government is committed to this thing (Hindu Code). It
is going through with it."
"Government
would proceed with that. It is for this House to accept a measure, but if a
Government takes an important measure and the House rejects it, the House
rejects that Government and the Government goes and another Government comes in
its place. It should be clearly understood that this is one of the important
measures to which the Government attaches importance and on which it will stand
or fall."
Again
on 19th December 1949, the Prime Minister said:
"I
do not wish the House to think in the slightest degree that we consider that
this Hindu Code Bill is not of importance, because we do attach the greatest
importance to it, as I said, not because of any particular clause or anything,
but because of the basic approach to this vast problem in problems, economic
and social. We have achieved political freedom in this country, political
independence. That is a stage in the' journey, and there are other stages,
economic, social and other and if society is to advance, there must be this
integrated advance on all fronts."
On
the 26th September 1951 the Prime Minister said:
It
is not necessary for me to assure the House of the desire of Government to
proceed with this measure in so far as we can proceed with it within
possibilities, and so far as we are concerned we consider this matter as
adjourned till such time as the next opportunity—1 hope it will be in this
Parliaments—offers itself.
This
was after the Prime Minister had announced the dropping of the Bill. Who could
not have believed in these pronouncements of the Prime Minster? If I did not
think that there could be a difference between the promises and performances of
the Prime Minister the fault is certainly not mine. My exit from the Cabinet
may not be a matter of much concern to anybody in this country. But I must be
true to myself and that I can be only by going out. Before I do so I wish to
thank my colleagues for the kindness and courtesy they have shown to me during
my membership of the Cabinet. While I am not resigning my membership of
Parliament I also wish to express my gratitude to Members of Parliament for
having shown great tolerance towards me.
New
Delhi,
10th
October 1951
Source:
* Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Writings and Speeches, English Volume- 14, Part-II / Tamil Volume- 32.
* Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Writings and Speeches, English Volume- 14, Part-II / Tamil Volume- 32.
Jai Bheem...!!!
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