Ambedkar is dead. Long live Ambedkar! |
Sitting in a friend’s dining hall, a silent witness to the history of the subcontinent, in Lucknow, I was reminded of Dr BR Ambedkar in a rather bathetic manner. It was recalled during a chat over ghar ka khana that a certain politician arrived in Ambedkar Nagar, a city near Ayodhya, and commented casually that the father of the constitution was born there. The said politician was only about 857 kilometres off the geographical mark. Ambedkar was born in a military garrison in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh. This city boasts outstanding sweet-shops and tailors, the marks of cities of any consequence.
Coming back to Ambedkar, there’s something disturbingly odd about how the politics of the day keeps exhuming the memory of an exceptional man. The appropriation of Ambedkar by those who care nothing about social justice in their private lives is an insult not just to the personality of India’s most famous economist-jurist but also to his public legacy. The reification of Ambedkar, the modernist, the pro-enlightenment constitutionalist as a card to be........