Contrary to popular perception, Dr BR Ambedkar had a close identity of views with Sangh Parivar ideology. There is a lot of material that holds a mirror to this side of Ambedkar. His book “Pakistan or Partition of India,” published in 1946, gives this away. Ambedkar questions the loyalty of Muslims to what he calls a Hindu majority nation state, stopping short of declaring open support to the Sangh Parivar goal of Hindu Rashtra.
Ambedkar claims that the primary loyalty of Muslims lies with the global Muslim Ummah, rather than with the Hindu-majority nation state. He claims it creates a conflict of interest for Muslims in a Hindu-majority democracy.
Ambedkar holds that Muslim invasions, forced conversions and what he calls the enslavement of people created deep historical pride for Muslims, but a sense of shame or defeat on the Hindu side.
This formulation of Ambedkar comes closest to that of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Perhaps this explains why his book is so proudly displayed in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) e-library.
Significantly, it was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar whose treatise on Hindutva in 1923 became the guiding ideology of the RSS, founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in 1925. Ambedkar’s Janata magazine, in a special issue in April 1933, paid a tribute comparing Savarkar’s work for Dalits with that of Gautam Buddha, and Ambedkar maintained a long association with Savarkar.
In a way, Savarkar, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Dr Ambedkar became the triumvirate of the British Indian dispensation, which helped promote all three. Savarkar stood for Hindu Rashtra, Jinnah for Pakistan and Ambedkar had bigger plans of not just separate electorates for Dalits, mooted since 1932, but a land settlement in what goes by the name of “Dalitistan.”
This was the burden of his Special Memorandum on behalf of his Scheduled Castes Federation, which he founded in 1942 and submitted to the Constituent Assembly in 1947.
If Ambedkar could not persist with his pet theme of Dalitistan, credit goes to the Congress leadership. Ambedkar had lost his Bengal seat in the Constituent Assembly when Partition reassigned that constituency to Pakistan.
It was Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad and other senior Congress leaders who engineered his re-election to the Assembly from Bombay in 1947 and persuaded the Congress leadership for his nomination as Drafting Committee Chairman, although the drafting had, by then, taken a definitive shape under Constitutional Adviser BN Rau, N Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar and others.
Significantly, Dr Ambedkar was dead opposed to Mahatma Gandhi. It is ironic, as Gandhi is the only leader on the ground to have worked for the eradication of untouchability. The Vaikom Satyagraha in Kerala in 1924–25 is a shining example, where Gandhi championed the right of lower castes to use roads near the temple. Travancore’s full Temple Entry Proclamation came later, in 1936.
At the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session in Belgaum, Karnataka, in 1924, which was the only time Gandhi was the Congress president, he made all upper caste party leaders clean the open lavatories at the venue.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, too, disagreed and parted ways with Gandhiji in 1939, but with grace and dignity. Resigning after his re-election as Congress president, Bose acknowledged that the Congress needed Gandhi’s leadership more than his own. Years later, in his broadcast on Azad Hind Radio on July 6, 1944, Bose said, “Father of our Nation, in this holy war for India’s liberation, we ask for your blessings and good wishes.” That was the level of courtesy shown by Bose towards Gandhi.
“I refuse to call him Mahatma. I’ve never in my life called him Mahatma. He doesn’t deserve that title,” Ambedkar had said, even as it was Rabindranath Tagore who had called Gandhi Mahatma.
Dr Ambedkar, in a letter to Savita Ambedkar, said he believed that the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi would be good for the country. “There is one incident in Roman history which comes to my mind on this occasion. When Caesar was done to death and the matter was reported to Cicero, Cicero said to the messenger, ‘Tell the Romans your hour of liberty has come,’” he said.
Compare this with what Sardar Patel said about the RSS. In his letter of September 11, 1948, to the then RSS chief Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, Patel said public opposition to the right-wing organisation grew and government action became inevitable when “RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.”
Dr Ambedkar comes under the scanner for his controversial role in helping the accused in Gandhiji’s assassination on January 30, 1948. Belgian scholar Koenraad Elst interviewed Gopal Godse, the brother of Nathuram Godse, who shot Gandhi at point-blank range and was hanged on November 15, 1949. Gopal was convicted and was serving life imprisonment for Gandhi’s assassination.
According to this account, Union law minister Ambedkar, who was in office from August 15, 1947, to October 6, 1951, reached out to Nathuram Godse’s lawyer, offering to commute Godse’s death sentence to a life term. He asked Nathuram Godse’s lawyer to furnish him a mercy petition signed by Nathuram Godse.
As the Union law minister in the Jawaharlal Nehru Cabinet, he would process it and turn the tables on the Congress government. Ambedkar planned to make a case that hanging Nathuram Godse would militate against the Ahimsa of Gandhi. As a result, the Congress government would be trapped in its own web of Gandhian ideology, finding itself compelled to save the life of the assassin of the Father of the Nation.
However, Nathuram Godse declined the offer, saying if he survived after killing Gandhi, the man would gain sympathy, which he could not allow to happen.
Dr Ambedkar then turned his attention to saving another key accused who faced trial in Gandhi’s assassination — Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. He had secret sympathy for Savarkar, standing trial in the assassination at the Red Fort in 1948.
Accounts from Savarkar’s legal team head LB Bhopatkar and later a blog post by BJP leader LK Advani on September 12, 2013, acknowledge the crucial role of Ambedkar in successfully securing Savarkar’s acquittal in Gandhi’s assassination. Ambedkar, the law minister of India, stealthily met Bhopatkar during the trial and privately assured him that the evidence against Savarkar was too thin to secure a conviction — an assurance that guided the defence strategy going forward.
It was magnanimous on the part of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that he did not remove or drop Ambedkar. It only reveals the liberal Nehruvian outlook, in stark contrast to Ambedkar’s own pusillanimous approach.
Savarkar’s acquittal was not because of his innocence, but for lack of clinching, corroborative evidence to nail his role, not just as one of the conspirators, but as the mastermind of Gandhi’s assassination.
There is a trail linking Savarkar to the pistol procured by Nathuram Godse and used in Gandhi’s assassination, which was not only made available, but the user was also trained in using it through Hindu Mahasabha leader Dattatreya Sadashiv Parchure.
Parchure founded the Hindu Rashtra Sena, which gave arms training. He sought the help of arms dealer Gangadhar Dandawate for procuring a pistol, even as securing a good one at such short notice was difficult. Dandawate turned to Hindu Rashtra Sena functionary Jagdish Goel, who agreed to part with his weapon, provided it was either replaced by another weapon or he was paid Rs 500.
Goel was paid Rs 300, even as it is unclear if it was a part or full payment.
The weapon trail led to the Hindu Mahasabha, of which Savarkar was the preeminent leader. It was loaded, tested and finally handed over to Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte, who left on January 28, 1948, from Gwalior, reaching Delhi the following morning. This raises doubts about whether Savarkar was guiding the gun procurement.
Equally controversial is the last one-on-one meeting between Nathuram Godse and Savarkar at Savarkar Sadan in Mumbai as they waited at the gate. After the meeting concluded, Savarkar made the rare gesture of coming out, along with Nathuram Godse, to personally see him off.
Savarkar said, “Yeshasvi Bhava,” blessing Godse to attain fame from the act. The prosecution argued it was an implicit blessing for their assassination plot. All in all, Savarkar got away with punishment in Gandhi’s assassination on the grounds of lack of corroborative evidence, which was hard to get in a criminal prosecution where largely circumstantial evidence was relied on.
Dr Ambedkar did not take part in the freedom struggle. Right from the Champaran Movement in 1917, Gandhi’s support to the Khilafat Movement in 1919 that transformed the freedom struggle into a mass-based movement, the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920, the Salt Satyagraha building up into the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930 to the Quit India Movement in 1942 that hastened the dawn of Independence on August 15, 1947 — Ambedkar stayed away from it all, which is hard to justify considering he claimed he was better than Gandhi.
This 30-year-long epic struggle is unmatched, unprecedented and unparalleled for achieving freedom for India through truth and non-violence under the sterling leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.Yet, Ambedkar was made Drafting Committee Chairman in the Constituent Assembly through the efforts of the very Congress leadership he opposed. Gandhiji stands apart for his grace and courtesy, even towards his trenchant, lifelong critic and opponent, Dr BR Ambedkar.
This post was last modified on May 23, 2026 4:21 pm