The Tragic Regression of Anand Teltumbde – From ‘Mahad: The Making of First Dalit Revolt’ to ‘Bridging the Unholy Rift’

From RED POLEMIQUE:

By Abhinav Sinha

A year ago, I had read Anand Teltumbde’s book ‘Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt’. I found it to be a research work of the first degree and probably the best on the subject so far. Though the book never directly criticizes the Deweyan Pragmatism of Dr. Ambedkar, yet, through the comprehensive account of his political practice in the 1920s and early-1930s, the book reveals the extent of the impact of Deweyan Pragmatism on Ambedkar, especially for those who know what Deweyan Pragmatism is. For me, the book was extremely useful and I have prescribed the book in my talks and presentations throughout the country and outside the country as well. I considered it a commendable and rigorous fact-based research, despite the fact that the portion of historiography of caste was weak in the book. Therefore, when I came to know that Teltumbde has written the introduction of Dr. Ambedkar’s unfinished manuscript ‘India and Communism’, I bought it immediately in the hope that Teltumbde would have presented an objective account of Ambedkar’s relation with Marxist philosophy as well as Indian communists.

However, reading the introduction, which is named ‘Bridging the Unholy Rift’, came as a shocker to me, indeed a tragic one.

This ‘Introduction’ named ‘Bridging the Unholy Rift’ is not only full of factual and logical mistakes but also shows that Teltumbde understands the least about Marxism. He distorts facts about Ambedkar’s attitude towards communist philosophy, his attitude towards Indian communists (howsoever ideologically weak they were!) and makes a shame-faced attempt to make Ambedkar a sympathizer of Marxist philosophy. Anyone who has read Ambedkar knows that such a claim would be nothing less than a travesty of facts, a mockery of history. This attempt leads Teltumbde, first, to make a liberal appropriation of Marx, Engels and the entire Marxist philosophy and then show the vicinity of pragmatist liberalism of Ambedkar to Marxism as a science of revolution. Such wilful distortion of Marxism was not expected from Teltumbde. Also, he has revealed his “understanding” of Marx’s Capitalas well as his stand towards the use of parliament and establishment of socialism, not to speak of Lenin’s theory of Imperialism and the strategy and general tactics proposed by Lenin in the imperialist stage.

In the present essay I will attempt to show these serious shortcomings of this ‘Introduction’ written by Anand Teltumbde, mostly in chronological order.

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