Vol. 1 · pages 226–230

RANADE, GANDHI AND JINNAH I I must tell you that I am not very happy over this invitation. My fear is that I may not be able to do justice to the occasion. When a year ago the Centenary of Ranade’s Birthday was celebrated in Bombay, the Rt. Hon’ble Srinivas Shastri was chosen to speak. For very many reasons he was well-qualified for performing the duty. He can claim to be a contemporary of Ranade for a part of his life. He had seen him at close range and was an eye witness of the work to which Ranade devoted his life. He had opportunity to judge him and compare him with his co-workers. He could therefore expound his views about Ranade with a sense of confidence and with intimacy born out of personal touch. He could cite an anecdote and illuminate the figure of Ranade before his audience. None of these qualifications are available to me. My connection with Ranade is of the thinnest. I had not even seen him. There are only two incidents about Ranade which I can recall. First relates to his death. I was a student in the first standard in the Satara High School. On the 16th January 1901 the High School was closed and we boys had a holiday. We asked why it was closed and we were told that because Ranade was dead. I was then about 9 years old. I knew nothing about Ranade, who he was, what he had done ; like other boys I was happy over the holiday and did not care to know who died. The second incident which reminds me of Ranade is dated much later than the first. Once I was examining some bundles of old papers belonging to my father when I found in them a paper which purported to be a petition sent by the Commissioned and non-Commissioned officers of the Mahar Community to the Government of India against the orders issued in 1892 banning the recruitment of the Mahars in the Army. On inquiry I was told that this was a copy of a petition which was drafted by Ranade to help the aggrieved Mahars to obtain redress. Beyond these two incidents I have nothing to recall of Ranade. My knowledge about him is wholly impersonal. It is derived from what I have read about

212 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES his work and what others have said about him. You must not expect me to say anything of a personal character which will either interest, you or instruct you. I propose to say what I think of him as a public-man in his days and his place in Indian politics today. II As you are well aware, there are friends of Ranade who do not hesitate to describe him as a great man and there are others who with equal insistance deny him that place. Where does the truth lie? But this question must, I think, wait upon another, namely, is history the biography of great men ? The question is both relevant as well as important. For, if great men were not the makers of history, there is no reason why we should take more notice of them than we do of cinema stars. Views differ. There are those who assert that however great a man may be, he is a creature of Time—Time called him forth, Time did everything, he did nothing. Those who hold this view, in my judgment, wrongly interpret history. There have been three different views on the causes of historical changes. We have had the Augustinian theory of history, according to which history is only an unfolding of a divine plan in which mankind is to continue through war and suffering until that divine plan is completed at the day of judgment. There is the view of Buckle who held that history was made by Geography and Physics. Karl Marx propounded a third view. According to him history was the result of economic forces. None of these three would admit that history is the biography of great men. Indeed they deny man any place in the making of history. No one except theologians accepts the Augustinian theory of history. As to Buckle and Marx, while there is truth in what they say, their views do not represent the whole truth. They are quite wrong in holding that impersonal forces are everything and that man is no factor in the making of history. That impersonal forces are a determining factor cannot be denied. But that the effect of impersonal forces depends on man must also be admitted. Flint may not exist everywhere. But where it does exist, it needs man to strike flint against flint to make fire. Seeds may not be found everywhere. But where they do exist, it needs man to ground it to powder and make it a delectable and nutritious paste and thereby lay the foundation of agriculture. There are many areas devoid of metals. But where they do exist, it needs a man to make instruments and machines which are the basis of civilization and culture. Take the case of social forces. Various tragic situations arise. One such situation is of the type described by Thayer in his biography of Theodore Roosevelt when he says : “There comes a time in every sect, party or institution when it stops growing, its arteries harden, its young men see no visions, its old men dream no dreams ; it lives on the past and desperately tries to perpetuate

213 RANADE, GANDHI AND JINNAH the past. In politics when this process of petrifaction is reached we call it Bourbonism and the sure sign of the Bourbon is that, being unconscious that he is the victim of sclerosis, he sees no reason for seeking a cure. Unable to adjust himself to changed and new conditions he falls back into the past as an old man drops into his worm-out arm-chair.” The other kind of situation is not one of decay but of destruction. The possibilities of it are always present whenever there is a crisis. The old ways, old habits and old thoughts fail to lift society and lead it on. Unless new ones are found there is no possibility of survival. No society has a smooth sailing. There are periods of decay and possibilities of destruction through which every society has to pass. Some survive, some are destroyed, and some undergo stagnation and decay. Why does this happen? What is the reason that some survive ? Carlyle has furnished an answer. He puts in his characteristic way: “No time need have gone to ruin, could it have found a great enough, a man wise and good enough; Wisdom to discern truly what the Time wanted, valour to lead it on to the right road thither, these are the salvation of any Time.” This seems to me to be quite a conclusive answer to those who deny man any place in the making of history. The crisis can be met by the discovery of a new way. Where there is no new way found, society goes under. Time may suggest possible new ways. But to step on the right one is not the work of Time. It is the work of man. Man therefore is a factor in the making of history and that environmental forces whether impersonal or social if they are the first are not the last things. III Who can be called a great man ? If asked of military heroes such as Alexander, Attila, Caesar and Tamerlane, the question is not difficult to answer. The militarymen make epochs and effect vast transitions. They appal and dazzle their contemporaries by their resounding victories. They become great without waiting to be called great. As the lion is among the deer, so they are among men. But it is equally true that their permanent effect on the history of mankind is very small. Their conquests shrink, and even so great a General as Napoleon after all his conquests left France smaller than he found it. When viewed from a distance they are seen to be only periodical, if necessary, incidents in the world’s movement, leaving no permanent mark on the character of the society in which they live The details of their career and their moral may be interesting, but they do not affect society and form no leaven to transform or temper the whole. The answer becomes difficult when the question is asked about a person who is not a military general. For, it then becomes a question of tests, and different people have different tests.

214 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Carlyle the apostle of Hero Worship had a test of his own. He laid it down in the following terms : “But of great man especially, of him I will venture to assert that it is incredible he should have been other than true. It seems to me the primary foundation of him, this... No man adequate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say sincerity, a deep, great genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.” Carlyle was of course particular in defining his test of sincerity in precise terms, and in doing so he warned his readers by defining what his idea of sincerity was— “Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere : Ah no,” he said, “that is a very poor matter indeed ; — a shallow, braggart, conscious sincerity ; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The great man’s sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of : Nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity ; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day ? No, the great man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so : I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself ; he cannot help being sincere!” Lord Rosebery proposed another test when dealing with Napoleon—who was as great an Administrator as a General. In answering the question, Was Napoleon Great ? Rosebery used the following language : “If by ‘great’ be intended the combination of moral qualities with those of intellect, great be certainly was not. But that he was great in the sense of being extraordinary and supreme we can have no doubt. If greatness stands for natural power, for predominance, for something human beyond humanity, then Napoleon was assuredly great. Besides that indefinable spark which we call genius, he represents a combination of intellect and energy which has never perhaps been equalled, never certainly surpassed.” There is a third test, suggested by the philosophers or, to be more accurate, by those who believe in divine guidance of human affairs. They have a different conception of what is a great man. To summarise the summary of their view, as given by Rosebery, a great man is launched into the world, as a great natural or supernatural force, as a scourge and a scavenger boon to cleanse society and lead it on to the right path who is engaged in a vast operation, partly positive, mainly negative, but all relating to social regeneration. Which of these is the true test ? In my judgment all are partial and none is complete. Sincerity must be the test of a great man. Clemenceau once said that most statesmen are rogues. Statesmen are not necessarily great men,

215 RANADE, GANDHI AND JINNAH and obviously those on whose experience he founded his opinion must have been those wanting in sincerity. Nonetheless no one can accept that sincerity is the primary or the sole test. For sincerity is not enough. A great man must have sincerity. For it is the sum of all moral qualities without which no man can be called great. But there must be something more than mere sincerity in a man to make him great. A man may be sincere and yet he may be a fool, and a fool is the very antithesis of a great man. A man is great because he finds a way to save society in its hours of crisis. But what can help him to find the way ? He can do so only with the help of intellect. Intellect is the light. Nothing else can be of any avail. It is quite obvious that without the combination of sincerity and intellect no man can be great. Is this enough to constitute a great man? At this stage we, must, I think, make a distinction between an eminent individual and a great man. For I am certain that a great man is something very different from an eminent individual. Sincerity and intellect are enough to mark out an individual as being eminent as compared to his fellows. But they arc not enough to rake him to the dignity of a great man. A great man must have something more than what a merely eminent individual has. What must be that thing ? Here comes the importance of the philosopher’s definition of a great man. A great man must be motivated by the dynamics of a social purpose and must act as the scourge and the scavenger of society. These axe the elements which distinguish an ominent individual from a great man and constitute his titledeeds to respect and reverence. IV Was Ranade a great man ? He was of course great in his person. Vast in physique—he could have been called “Your Immense” as the Irish servant who could not pronounce Your Eminence used respectfully to call Cardinal Wiseman—his master. He was a man of sanguine temperament, of genial disposition and versatile in his capacity. He had sincerity which is the sum of all moral qualities and his sincerity was of the sort which was prescribed by Carlyle. It was not a conscious “braggart sincerity”. It was the natural sincerity, a constitutional trait and not an assumed air. He was not only big in his physique and in his sincerity, he was also big in intellect. Nobody can question that Ranade had intellect of a high calibre. He was not merely a lawyer and a judge of the High Court, he was a first class economist, a first class historian, a first class educationist and a first class divine. He was not a politician. Perhaps it is good that he was not. For if he had been, he might not have been a great man. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them are taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men.’’ Ranade though not a politician was a profound student of politics. Indeed it would be difficult to find in the history of India any man who could come up to Ranade in the width of his