If someone from the 1960s were sitting in the visitor’s gallery of the Lok Sabha over the weekend, they’d likely have been shocked by the phalanx of lawmakers cutting across party and ideology swearing their allegiance to BR Ambedkar. Just a decade after the towering constitutionalist died in 1956, his legacy had all but been erased from the political mainstream — a task accomplished by the collective contribution of every major political party at the time.
Kept alive through the sacrifice and dedication of grassroots followers, the edifice of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s legacy was built more painstakingly than any other major leader of his time. Four decades passed after his death before the government saw fit to confer the nation’s highest civilian honor on the man who steered the Republic’s founding document. It took a generation, countless attacks by upper castes, the razing of villages and people being burnt to death for a state government to add his name to a university, that too after 16 years of protests. And it took nearly half a century for governments to begin preserving the buildings and places where India’s first law minister worked.
If it seems to some that Babasaheb’s followers unnecessarily deify him, it is because of their lingering memory of this unsavory history. In a society riven by inequality where biased strictures governed not just human beings but also their shadows, interventions by Babasaheb in the Constitution attempted to level the playing field and ensure that every citizen’s right to political equality was matched by a similar claim to equality on the social plane. His ideology of assertion provided marginalized communities with a weapon to beat back entrenched dogma; it ensured that even as social institutions were slow to evolve and eradicate discrimination, government institutions could no longer legally shield unfair practices.
The love that many communities continue to hold for Babasaheb is rooted in this lived reality. His teachings taught these communities to take pride in their own cultures when dominant groups — irrespective of their political inclinations or ideology — either ridiculed them or sought to efface them. His words gave them courage when they faced bigotry in the classroom or at the drinking water fountain. The Constitution he helped write ensured that no amount of bias could stop them from entering colleges or the workplace. And his achievements helped them build a sense of ownership over a country where everyday socioeconomic disparity often threatens the political equality enshrined in the Constitution. The reverence associated with the figure of Ambedkar, therefore, is neither mere adulation nor frenzy. And it is erroneous to call the politics built around it fueled just by grievance or worship because aspiration and the dream of a better life are baked into it.
The refusal of large chunks of society to evolve from mindsets steeped in caste only bolsters this reverence. If young Dalit children have entered the classroom through the Constitution, they’ve been forced to sit on the floor. If Dalit women have cooked mid-day meals, these have been spurned by upper caste children. If Dalit students have sat in colleges, they’ve been ridiculed as quota cases by peers, even professors. If they’ve been hired to work, they’ve battled immeasurable bias for basic advancements that their colleagues take for granted.
And they’ve been attacked — for marrying across caste lines, sporting a moustache, riding a horse, sitting cross-legged, playing music or using ringtones with Babasaheb’s name in it, studying, having social media profiles, drinking water, wearing their hair. long, shunning manual scavenging, or simply stepping outside the home. They’ve faced volleys of slurs, most of them perversions of their beloved Babasaheb’s name, every time they’ve asserted their identity.
Let alone Ambedkar, even his statues haven’t been spared. In the face of such bigotry, is it really surprising if they’ve rallied around a name that has assured them dignity in a milieu where neighbors and friends, colleagues and peers appear unable to recognize and rectify casteist attitudes?
Since the 1990s, political parties have increasingly come to realize the significance of Babasaheb in the lives of many Indians. But instead of genuine engagement, most mainstream parties have sought to mine the millions-strong demographic for votes. This cynical exploitation of the emotional link between the icon and his followers has crafted a bizarre spectacle where one party, which believes in orthodox scriptures and teachings categorically rejected by Babasaheb, a second party whose stalwarts publicly opposed him, undermined his teachings and refused to give him his due, and a third party whose leader spent years railing against reservations and once fired a colleague for repeating Babasaheb’s vows are all vying to be crowned the true inheritor of the constitutionalist’s legacy.
Lost in this melee are uncomfortable questions of political empowerment — how many parties have genuinely senior Dalit leaders? How many nominated Dalit candidates outside reserved seats? How many can claim to grapple with the expansive ideology and teachings of the man they ostensibly follow? How many have worked to undo the stranglehold of dominant communities in the administration and the police, or better implement reservations? How many have helped young marginalized people battle hostility and build a better life? How many have expressed a commitment to act against casteism, even when it comes from their own leaders and followers? And how many see Babasaheb’s legacy in its entirety — as a labor reformer, economist, legal scholar, constitutionalist, and a pioneer whose philosophy of equity propels evolving struggles such as those for LGBTQ rights — and not reduce him to a single community? If the political battle for Ambedkar appears messy, it is probably because performative rhetoric has replaced genuine engagement.
The views expressed are personal
