Ambedkar's Prime Cut

Several states have moved away from the liberal compromise engineered by him on the touchy issue of cattle slaughter while framing the Constitution. With Maharashtra joining the band wagon last week of states banning cattle slaughter, India would appear to have become more conservative than it was while framing its Constitution over six decades ago.Though the restrictions in various states are traced to the “directive principle of state policy“ contained in Article 48 of the Constitution, there was no trace of this provision in the first draft published in February 1948 by the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly headed by BR Ambedkar. The clause enjoining the State to take steps for “prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle“ surfaced in a subsequent draft, thanks to a backroom “compromise“ between some upper caste Congress members and the Dalit leader.
ECONOMIC ISSUE, NOT RELIGIOUS
The term “compromise“ was used by one of the proponents of the clause in the Assembly, Ram Sahai. They had originally demanded its insertion as no less than a fundamental right, which, unlike a directive principle, was binding on the State and enforceable in a court of law. But Ambedkar, with the backing of Congress leadership, had forced them to settle for the compromise under which Pandit Thakur Dass Bhargava proposed the amendment in the Constituent Assembly merely as a directive principle. As a strategy for making it acceptable to a body committed to a pluralist vision of India, Bhargava was also compelled to remove any admission in the clause that the concern for cattle was driven by any religious sentiment. Instead, Bhargava's amendment, which was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on November 24, 1948, had been framed purely as an economic issue, as part of a larger objective “to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines“.
HOW THEY AGREED
In the debate that preceded the adoption of the clause on that day, Bhargava and other opponents of cattle-slaughter made repeated and pointed references to Ambedkar's role in forcing them to climb down in off-the-record negotiations. Bhargava went to the extent of saying that the language of the clause proposed by him was actually Ambedkar's “manufacture“. Calling it “an agreed amendment“, Bhargava said, “While moving this amendment, I have no hesitation in stating that for people like me and those that do not agree with the view of Ambedkar and others, this entails, in a way , a sort of sacrifice.“ Yielding to the approach of solving the problem “without using any sort of coercion“, Bhargava said, “To my mind, it would have been much better if this could have been incorporated in the fundamental rights, but some of my Assembly friends differed and it is the desire of Ambedkar that this matter, instead of being included in fundamental rights should be incorporated in the directive principles.“
Seth Govind Das, another ardent votary of the anti-slaughter clause in the Assembly, gave a peep into how Ambedkar had his way in the backroom negotiations, on the strength of rationality. “I had then stated that just as the practice of untouchability was going to be declared an offence so also we should declare the slaughter of cows to be an offence. But it was said that while untouchability directly affected human beings, the slaughter of cows affected the life of animals only and that as fundamental rights were for human beings, this provision could not be included therein,“ Das said, adding that he “did not protest against that view and thought it proper to include this provision in the directive principles“.

MUSLIM LEAGUE PROTESTS
Despite all the responsibility ascribed to him by Hindu hardliners for the language and location of the anti-slaughter clause, Ambedkar did not own up to any of it in the course of the debate in the Assembly . All he said was that he accepted Bhargava's amendment, paving the way for its adoption. Ambedkar remained tacit even after a couple of Muslim League members had expressed preference ironically for the draft originally demanded by Hindu hardliners. Syed Muhammad Saiadulla alleged that those trying to pass it off as an economic issue “create a suspicion in the minds of many that the ingrained Hindu feeling against cow slaughter is being satisfied by the backdoor“.
Another Muslim League member, ZH Lari, objected to the conversion of the clause from a fundamental right to a directive principle. His reason: “it is better to come forward and incorporate a clause in fundamental rights that cow slaughter is henceforth prohibited, rather than it being left vague in the directive principles, leaving it open to provincial governments to adopt it one way or the other.“
In his classic, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, Granville Austin seemed to endorse Saiadulla's contention that the clause against cow slaughter detracted from India's secularism. Despite Ambedkar's success in diluting it, Austin wrote, “Article 48 shows that Hindu sentiment predominated in the Constituent Assembly.“ State governments have since disregarded HM Seervai's exposition in his Constitutional Law of India that the Article 48 protection “did not extend to cattle which at one time were milch or draught cattle but had ceased to be such“. Reversing its own consistent rulings, the Supreme Court in 2005 held that the ban envisaged by Article 48 extended to all the cattle, irrespective of their age and the strain they put on the availability of fodder. Maharashtra's decision fits in with the pattern of moving away from the liberal compromise struck by Ambedkar.