Reassessing Religion and Politics in the Life of Jagjivan Rām

Peter Friedlander

doi:10.3390/rel11050224

Abstract

Jagjivan Ram (1908–1986) was, for more than four decades, the leading figure from India’s Dalit communities in the Indian National Congress party. In this paper, I argue that the relationship between religion and politics in Jagjivan Ram’s career needs to be reassessed. This is because the common perception of him as a secular politician has overlooked the role that his religious beliefs played in forming his political views. Instead, I argue that his faith in a Dalit Hindu poet-saint called Ravidās was fundamental to his political career. Acknowledging the role that religion played in Jagjivan Ram’s life also allows us to situate discussions of his life in the context of contemporary debates about religion and politics. Jeffrey Haynes has suggested that these often now focus on whether religion is a cause of conflict or a path to the peaceful resolution of conflict. In this paper, I examine Jagjivan Ram’s political life and his belief in the Ravidāsī religious tradition. Through this, I argue that Jagjivan Ram’s career shows how political and religious beliefs led to him favoring a non-confrontational approach to conflict resolution in order to promote Dalit rights.

Highlights

Jagjivan Ram, Congress, and RavidāsAppleby (2006) has suggested that there are three ways in which religious leaders can be constructive builders of peace: first, by fostering the common good of the entire population; second, by their positions as key figures in a conflict; and third, by being repositories of local knowledge and custodians of culture
I suggest that Jagjivan Ram’s career fully matched each of these criteria. His political career was prefaced on the notion that only by the economic and social uplift of the whole of Indian society could the struggle for Dalit liberation be realized
A central question that needs to be considered in relation to Jagjivan Ram is the following: what role did religion play in his career as an Indian politician? This is because in his public life, over four decades throughout the numerous portfolios he held in Congress governments from 1946 to 1977, he seems to have been careful to maintain a distance between his personal religious beliefs and his political role as a facilitator in the uplifting of all communities in India

Summary

Introduction

Appleby (2006) has suggested that there are three ways in which religious leaders can be constructive builders of peace: first, by fostering the common good of the entire population; second, by their positions as key figures in a conflict; and third, by being repositories of local knowledge and custodians of culture. Was the author of numerous works and a tradition developed amongst each community, or samāj, of his followers to have as a central object of devotion a handwritten manuscript of one of his works, such as the guru anyās Such texts appear as a central feature of Jagjivan Ram’s childhood, and the creation of an authoritative sacred text for Ravidās appears to have been a focus of interest for Jagjivan Ram. Second, Caturvedıargued that on the basis of a study of Śiv Nārāyan.’s works, one of the main goals of his teaching was described as being the attainment of a state of entry into a world called sant vilās or sant des (“Sant’s delight” or “Sant land”). This highlights the way in which, the normative depiction of Jagjivan Ram in most accounts of his parliamentary career does not mention the religious values he inherited from his family’s reverence for Sant traditions, they still continued to function as the fundamental ground on which he situated his political career

Jagjivan Ram and the Tughlaqabad Temple in Delhi in 1959

11. Conclusions