What did Ambedkar warn Indians about on the eve of the republic?
In his closing speech to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949, he did not celebrate. He handed over the document and then spent most of his time warning about how it could be lost. The speech is the nearest thing he left to advice for citizens of the republic, and it is bracingly unsentimental about them.
Three warnings from the speech
- Give up the "grammar of anarchy." Methods that were justified against a foreign ruler — mass civil disobedience, satyagraha, the general strike as a first resort — have no place once Indians can change their government by the vote. Constitutional methods are now available, so the unconstitutional ones are no longer defensible.
- Beware hero-worship. Gratitude to great men is fine, but laying your liberty at the feet of one leader is, he said, a sure road to degradation and eventual dictatorship. In politics, devotion to a person is more dangerous than in any other sphere.
- Do not stop at political democracy. A vote each is not enough while social and economic life keeps most people unequal; the contradiction between one-man-one-vote and a deeply unequal society will, if left, blow the structure apart.
The tone throughout is that the Constitution is only as good as the people working it: however good it is, it will fail if those who run it are bad, and however bad, it can work if they are good. He put the responsibility on citizens, not on the text — which is why the speech reads less like a founder's triumph than like a set of instructions to the people who would come after him.