Reading Notes and Insights on Arun Shourie's Worshipping False Gods

I did not expect this book to feel so procedural. I thought it would read like a polemic. It doesn’t. It reads like someone building a legal case file. Page after page of quotations. Extracts from speeches. Minutes from meetings. British archival correspondence. Constituent Assembly debates. What unsettled me most is not what Shourie says — it’s how often he steps aside and lets Ambedkar speak in long stretches, unedited.

That is where the discomfort begins.

The popular narrative I grew up with is simple: Ambedkar as uncompromising social reformer, architect of the Constitution, defender of the oppressed, nationalist in his own way. Shourie doesn’t deny the reformer. What he interrogates is the nationalist. And he does it by asking a simple question: during the decades when the freedom struggle was at its most intense, where exactly did Ambedkar stand?

When I began tracing the chronology the way Shourie lays it out, I realised something important — Ambedkar’s position was not passive neutrality. It was active opposition to Congress-led mass movements. He repeatedly argued that independence without structural safeguards for Depressed Classes would simply transfer power from the British to caste Hindus. That logic is consistent throughout his writings. It is not accidental. It is foundational.

What becomes difficult is seeing how often British rule is framed in his arguments as a lesser evil, sometimes even as a necessary counterweight. Shourie compiles multiple instances where Ambedkar attributes moral responsibility to the British to protect minorities. It is not that he admired colonialism. It is that he feared majority rule more. That distinction is subtle but politically explosive.

The section on 1942 forced me to pause several times. While Congress leaders were imprisoned and the Quit India movement spread across the country, Ambedkar was serving on the Viceroy’s Executive Council. That fact alone isn’t enough to draw conclusions. What matters is the language he used during that period — language critical of the movement, language suggesting that nationalist agitation endangered minority rights. Shourie doesn’t editorialise much here. He simply juxtaposes the imprisonment of nationalist leaders with Ambedkar’s ministerial role. The contrast does its own work.

I kept wondering: was Ambedkar being pragmatic? Was he leveraging access to power for long-term structural gains? Or was he fundamentally distrustful of Congress nationalism to the point of preferring imperial continuity? The book does not offer easy answers, but it does make clear that modern portrayals erase this tension entirely.

The 1939 “Deliverance Day” episode particularly complicates the moral clarity that textbooks prefer. When Congress ministries resigned and Jinnah declared a day of celebration, Ambedkar’s participation alongside him is rarely foregrounded in public memory. Shourie presents it as evidence of political alignment against Congress dominance. I found myself thinking less about loyalty and more about strategic calculus. If Ambedkar believed Congress rule would consolidate upper-caste dominance, then weakening Congress would appear logical. But logic does not erase optics. And optics shape history.

The comparison between Hindu social order and Nazism is perhaps the most provocative material in the book. Seeing Ambedkar draw parallels between untouchability and the persecution of Jews during WWII is striking, especially when read in the international context of the time. Shourie’s implication is that such analogies were designed to resonate with Western audiences. That may be true. It may also have been genuine moral outrage expressed through the strongest contemporary metaphor available. What makes it complex is the political utility of the analogy. Internationalising caste as fascism reframes the Indian freedom struggle in unsettling ways — suggesting that British withdrawal could empower something tyrannical rather than liberatory.

The chapters on separate electorates are heavy with historical detail. I hadn’t realised how persistent Ambedkar’s demand was, even after the Poona Pact altered the mechanism. Shourie shows British officials recognising how separate electorates fractured nationalist unity. The uncomfortable thought here is that a demand rooted in genuine grievance could simultaneously serve colonial strategy. History rarely grants clean motives.

When the book shifts to the Constituent Assembly, I noticed my own resistance weakening. The “sole architect” myth is easy to believe because it simplifies complexity. But the Assembly debates are long, contentious, and collaborative. Ambedkar was chairman of the Drafting Committee, yes. But committees drafted, members amended, votes altered clauses, and many provisions evolved through compromise. Shourie’s frustration is directed less at Ambedkar and more at the reduction of a collective constitutional project into a single heroic narrative.

One of the most revealing threads in the book is how post-1947 canonisation operates. Selective quoting. Omission of inconvenient passages. Sanitisation of political alliances. Transformation of a combative, sharp-edged thinker into a saintly moral symbol. I found myself asking whether this process is unique to Ambedkar or a general feature of nation-building. Perhaps every country flattens its complex figures into digestible icons. The danger, as Shourie suggests, arises when questioning the icon becomes taboo.

The reaction to Shourie’s book is almost part of the book itself. Attempts at bans, public outrage, academic dismissal without substantive rebuttal — these episodes illustrate the fragility he warns about. If documents can be countered, they should be countered with other documents. If they cannot, suppression becomes the fallback.

What I’m left with after finishing the book is not hostility toward Ambedkar. If anything, I see him as more human — strategic, combative, ideologically rigid at times, deeply distrustful of majority politics, and intensely focused on structural safeguards. The discomfort lies in recognising that such a figure cannot be comfortably placed into the single category of nationalist hero without qualification.

Shourie’s broader warning feels larger than the specific case. When a society elevates figures beyond scrutiny, it loses the ability to examine its own foundations. Hero-worship replaces analysis. Emotion replaces evidence. Memory becomes curated.

I keep returning to one quiet question: if Ambedkar’s legacy is strong, why does it require insulation from archival scrutiny? And if it cannot withstand that scrutiny, what exactly are we protecting — justice, or mythology?

This book does not settle the debate. It forces it open. And perhaps that is why it remains uncomfortable decades after publication.