B.R. Ambedkar at the University of Columbia Cosmopolitan Club

Dhananjay Keer in his biography of Ambedkar titled Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission notes that Dr. Ambedkar stayed at the university of Columbia Cosmopolitan Club after he arrived at the University of Columbia to do his post graduate studies(p.26).This was sometimes beginning from late July/early August 1913.Towards end of August and till the 18th of September the 8th World Student Congress started at Ithaca,New York at Cornell which included in its itinerary a visit to Columbia University and a grand session and dinner at New York city near Columbia University.The New York city session(which included British India student delegates) was hosted by the New York Peace society for the delegates of the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs and Corda Fratres and it was the culmination of what the report of the Proceedings of the 8th World Students Congress called 'one of the most cosmopolitan and international gatherings ever held in the U.S'.The event in the New York city itself concluded with the performance of the dance-drama 'When the Dreams Come True' depicting the welcome accorded to new immigrants to the United States.At the New York city session and dinner Prof.William M.Sloane of Columbia University acted as the chief toastmaster and the event was extensively covered and commented on by the New York Times. Though we have very little from Ambedkar on these events except that he was around at the Cosmopolitan Club of Columbia at the time,we do have from the University newspaper the Columbia Spectator that the Cosmopolitan Club there was engaged in a hectic discussion amongst its members and guests about its future role in the international peace movement and its role in lessening ethnic and racial tensions in the U.S. and the countries of its members and foreign guests including India.This included creating a friendly environs for the newly arrived members which included B.R. Ambedkar in late July/early August in 1913.We have given a sketch of the international peace movement in which the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs was involved in an earlier post titled'Pandurang Khankhoje at Oregon Agricultural College'.The 8th World Students Congress was an attempt to take this peace movement forward and to assert in the face of the gathering war clouds that 'Above all nations is Humanity'.The cosmopolitan clubs movement attempted to do this by bringing together all shades of understandings on cosmopolitanism in the U.S. and the European students peace movements.The different Cosmopolitan Clubs could have their differences as the Columbia University Cosmopolitan Club did but these were sought to be resolved.A letter to the Editor in November 1910 reported to the Columbia Spectator that 'for some time Columbia University has had a Cosmopolitan Club which confines its activities to monthly social gatherings of its members,students of foreign and American birth mostly enrolled in the Teachers College.However the name Cosmopolitan Club stands for a program one essence of which is expressed in the motto "Above all Nations is Humanity"and which is represented in other American Universities and colleges by over 20 organisations which are united in Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs(ACC).The ACC in turn is affiliated to the international association of students called the Corda Fratres.Columbia University as yet is not represented in this association but the Cosmopolitan Club is preparing to do so after having accomplished its reorganisation by giving a broader scope to both its activities and membership.A meeting of the students has been called and it is hoped that a sufficient number of foreign and American students of all departments of Columbia University will follow the invitation and join the club so that it will apply for admission to the ACC with a membership worthy of an alma mater.We are confident that Columbia will not stand back in this movement.'It is significant that the above letter points out that the Columbia Cosmopolitan Club was preparing to become a member of ACC and Corda Fratres.As the sixth convention of ACC report at Philadelphia had pointed out that there were various categories of the chapters of the ACC which included full members,associate members and some clubs which were preparing to become members.This preparation involved hectic discussions and parleys which contributed to the richness of the debate in the peace movement regarding issues,objectives and diversity of ideas on cosmopolitanism and peace.This debate on diversity of ideas on cosmopolitanism probably had an important influence on Ambedkar's ideas of cosmopolitanism as we will later attempt to show.Here it is interesting to note that large number of students in the Cosmopolitan Club of Columbia University were from the Teachers College.It is at Teachers College that John Dewey the famous educationist and a profound influence on Ambedkar taught at that time.As Arun Mukerjee and following him Ananya Vajpayee have noted that Ambedkar was to borrow the concept of social endosmosis from John Dewey.Social endosmosis meant the natural flow and exchange of ideas, values, practices, knowledge and energies between and across groups in a society which Ambedkar found lacking in Indian society due to the caste system.Dewey himself engages with the issues of cosmopolitanism.In his early work on Leibniz he praised the latter for his cosmopolitan approach in both philosophy and diplomacy and how the two shaped each other.In his work on Ethics Dewey highlighted the origins of ethical universalism and moral individualism in the cosmopolitanism of Greek Stoics and showed the culmination of these ideals in the Enlightenment philosophy of Immanuel Kant.Ambedkar was familiar with these aspects of Dewey's work and as also with Dewey's Democracy and Education(1916) and German philosophy(1915).Ambedkar was aware as his writings show that Dewey had argued that'early cosmopolitans imagined a universal moral community lying beyond actually existing political communities with their biases and corruption;cosmopolis was a moral ideal beyond concrete institutions'.Ambedkar was further aware that for Dewey the enlightenment, then moved towards a 'wider and freer society-toward cosmopolitanism..as membership in humanity,as distinct from the state...(in which) man's capacities would be liberated .. the emancipated individual was to become the organ and agent of a comprehensive and progressive society.'At the Teachers College where Ambedkar would have interacted with John Dewey and with the members of the Cosmopolitan Club he would definitely have been exposed to these ideas and the debates surrounding them.That there was a build up to these debates amongst the students and teachers of the university is shown by the following account in the Columbia Spectator about the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs led 8th World Students Congress to be held in 1913. The Columbia Spectator in 1912 gave a detailed report of the mobilisation for the 8th World Students Congress at the Cosmopolitan Club at the Columbia University.It reported that a 'joint smoker' was held at Earl Hall at Columbia University by the Cosmopolitan Clubs of the Columbia University and the Cornell University on 28th December 1912.The report said that'inspite of the fact that the gathering took place during the holidays both Ithacans and New Yorkers appeared in good numbers.The first speaker was Mr.Hopp of Cornell.He gave a short history of the Cosmopolitan Club movement and showed its rapid growth since its inception in 1904.He also announced that plans are already being made for the International Convention to be held in Ithaca in 1913.Some of the European chapters have considered chartering a boat for this occasion.....After a few humorous songs by Mr. Hagemann, Professor Shepherd was introduced who urged a greater friendship towards foreigners on the part of Americans whom he accused of being the only people who spoke of their own land as God's own country.The last speaker was Prof. J.B. Moore.He expressed himself as heartily in favour of peace but advocated its pursuit by friendly rather than warlike means.A better idea of the foreign people and their ideals was to be striven for.Accordingly he voiced his hearty support for the local Cosmopolitan Club...'The campaign for the Cosmopolitan Club movement continued through the days and months of the World Students Congress and in the later months too as a communication to the Columbia Spectator in November 1913 showed. In this communication a detailed history of the Cosmopolitan Club movement was given and it was pointed out that the objective of the movement was to create 'an international mind'. With the outbreak of the first world war in 1914 the situation changed in the Columbia university too.Nicholas Butler, the President of the Columbia university and a director of the Carnegie peace endowment suggested in 1915 that the endowment should project no future course of action till the war ended and the terms of peace determined.Butler organised a campaign to set up international polity clubs in the university and colleges in late 1914 and a series of summer schools and lectures in 1915 as a part of peace education.But he warned that 'the lecturers should avoid all purely contentious questions and any special propaganda in reference to the unhappy conditions that now prevail.There are no shortcuts to peace.'George Nasmyth who had been the President of the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs in 1913 had now become one of the Polity Club organisers in the Columbia University and in other universities and colleges.He emphasised that his group was seeking to engender a scientific enquiry in to the society and causes of war in 'Carnegie Endowment tradition and was not a group of peace hustlers'.(C.Roland Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform,Princeton,1973) Clearly the emphasis had now shifted in the direction of scientific study of war and society rather than on peace activism in the Columbia university.In this respect the change in the stance of George Nasmyth, the former President of the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs and an important organiser of the 8th World Students Congress in 1913, is quite significant. It is in this milieu Ambedkar developed and honed his skills as a serious scholar of society.His focus on academic work carried forward this serious tradition of studying society and he found renowned scholars he could grow with.We have already mentioned John Dewey.Alexander Goldenweiser,an eminent student of the famous anthropologist Franz Boas(both of them were engaged with debates on cosmopolitanism of that time) perhaps introduced him to Franz Boas's well known 1912 essay titled,'An Anthropologist's View of War' where Boas had examined war as a social phenomenon from the earliest times and suggested that a universal law for peace could be enacted.It was under Goldenweiser's supervision Ambedkar wrote his article on caste in India which was later published in the Indian Antiquary.Franz Boas had brought forward an idea of openness in his piece on war by positing an openness to a stranger for enacting a law for universal peace. Ambedkar brought in the idea of openness and closure in his article by showing how the caste system negates openness by a practise of closure by imitation-a concept he takes from the French sociologist/anthropologist Gabriel Tarde.Secondly, the notion of openness to a stranger which Boas posits was the cosmopolitan ideal of the time which had become the basis for the peace movement championed by the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs.Ambedkar who quotes extensively Tarde's concept of fashion imitation to explain the caste system in India and uses Gabriel Tarde's laws of imitation too would have been aware that for Tarde'Cosmopolitanism indeed is not the exclusive privilege of our own time.It flourished in all those periods of antiquity and medievalism in which fashion imitation held sway.Cosmopolitanism says J.Burckhardt is a sign of an epoch in which new worlds are discovered and men no longer feel at home in the old'(Tarde Laws of Imitation,1903).Thus a concept of stranger akin to Boas would have been noted by Ambedkar in the context of linking up to the study of cosmopolitanism of that time.It is perhaps in such a background that Ambedkar remarked to Mahatma Gandhi that 'Gandhiji I have no homeland'.[ Work in Progress]