Reading as an antidote to ‘Frustration’: Ambedkar’s thoughts
Published on: 14 April 2023, 05:39 am
We should take inspiration from Dr Ambedkar, the reader, as a way to both understand the world and to transform it.
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BURIED in Volume 12 of the collected works of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar is a fragment which, according to the editor, was in "the handwriting of Dr Ambedkar" simply titled 'Frustration'. The unfinished note is a poignant reflection on the feeling of hopelessness about the situation of the 'Untouchables.'
As Babasaheb puts it, "[t]he Untouchables are the weariest, most loathed and the most miserable people that history can witness. They are a spent and sacrificed people." He says that the frustration experienced by the Untouchables is "frustration forever", "unrelieved by space or time".
According to Babasaheb, the situation of the Untouchables stands in "strange contrast" to that of the Jews in Biblical times. He begins to outline how the Jews overcame their captivity in Egypt at the hands of the Pharaoh and went to Canaan. He mentions how the Jews survived a second calamity, namely, the Babylonian captivity. However, as the editor notes, there are some pages missing and the argument is not fully fleshed out.
Invoking Emerson, Arnold and Shelley
The point of the contrast, however, seems to be to indicate that the Jews were able to overcome the calamities which faced them. Babasaheb interprets the Jews' "reliance on God" as what American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson would have described as "a plus condition of mind and body" which gives them the power and courage to overcome their adversaries. "God, if nothing else, is at least a source of power" and in particular "mental power", which is "necessary for success".