The recent controversy in parliament about a demeaning reference to B R Ambedkar by the home minister and the extraordinary spectacle of both Congress and BJP MPs holding duelling protests outside the House—brandishing his posters and screaming “Jai Bhim!”—offer the most recent and most dramatic confirmation yet that Ambedkar is the one Indian political figure who has grown in stature since his death.
He is among the most revered of Indians, his birthday the occasion of a five-night vigil by his devoted followers, his statues across the country second only in number to those of Mahatma Gandhi. Every village and every junction appears to have one, a stocky balding figure in a suit and tie, clutching a book meant to represent the Constitution. When India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, was conferred upon him posthumously in 1990, the only criticism was of why it had taken so long.
Today, the Left parties, the right-wing BJP, the centrist Congress and the non-ideological Aam Aadmi Party all express their admiration for Ambedkar. The decision of the AAP government in Punjab to display Ambedkar’s portraits in government offices was one more example of the iconic status he has now attained. As the social scientist Badri Narayan has observed, “If Babasaheb Ambedkar were alive today, he would probably have been quite amazed to see how political parties with completely different ideologies are vying with each other to associate themselves with his persona.”
Indeed, Ambedkar’s life and work has been reinvented and reimagined to occupy a larger space in the public imagination than ever before. Narayan attributes this to Dalits becoming more politically aware than in the past and political parties using their proclaimed commitment to Ambedkar’s vision as their instrument of outreach to Dalit voters, who account for some 16.6 percent of the electorate.
The young Dalit writer Yashica Dutt argues that it is precisely because he opposed them so bluntly, with critiques too dangerous for the upper-caste establishment to absorb, that it was safer to neutralise Ambedkar by appropriating him. Parties needed Dalit votes without engaging with his bold ideas; commandeering his image without its content was the solution.
The attitude of India’s newly-dominant Hindutva movement towards Ambedkar is a case in point. Initially dismissive of him for his savage remarks on Hinduism and his mobilisation of the Dalits—which went against the RSS’s emphasis on Hindu unity—the Hindutva movement was relieved when he chose to convert to Buddhism, an Indic faith, rather than to Islam or Christianity, and began speaking of him with respect after his death. Two prominent RSS ideologues, Dattopant Thengadi and Krishna Gopal, even authored books on Ambedkar. The RSS duly celebrated Ambedkar’s birth centenary in 1990, praising him for his efforts to reform Hindu society and rid it of discriminatory practices and injustices.
By the time of his 125th birthday, the BJP was in full celebration mode. Their attempts to appropriate him have proceeded apace, with PM Modi frequently invoking Ambedkar in his speeches and BJP grandees conspicuous by their presence at local Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations each year. Of late, the BJP has extended its observance to an entire ‘social justice week’ commencing on Ambedkar’s birthday.
Many public institutions in India are named in his honour, including such diverse entities as the Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport in Nagpur, the B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, and Ambedkar University in Delhi (with a second one on the anvil with the proposed renaming of Jawaharlal Nehru University).
Ambedkar statues continue to proliferate around the country, getting bigger and more majestic as the competitive adulation of Ambedkar in statuary proceeds apace. The Statue of Knowledge, a 70-ft statue of his, was unveiled in Latur, Maharashtra, in April 2022. Telengana announced that a 125-ft statue of Ambedkar would soon be installed at NTR Gardens near Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad. Maharashtra, not to be outdone, declared that work on a memorial in Ambedkar’s native Mumbai was progressing; with a budget of Rs 1,000 crore and made of bronze and steel, it will be the tallest Ambedkar statue in the world at 450 feet, standing as high as a 50-storey building and weighing 80 tons.
In May 2022, the government of Andhra Pradesh went one better and announced it wished to rename its Konaseema district as the B R Ambedkar Konaseema district. The government issued a notification inviting objections and suggestions on the proposal from the people residing there. It is considered highly unlikely that anyone would object. It is only a matter of time before another state government decides to take the next step and name an entire city after Ambedkar.
All this would have been greeted with incredulity in India when Ambedkar passed away as a politician who had lost more elections than he had won, and whose own parties failed to achieve the national resonance he himself did. It is, of course, debateable to what extent all this represents any genuine commitment to Ambedkar’s vision and ideals, rather than mere tokenism for political gain.
Still, historian Sunil Khilnani considers Ambedkar “the founding father most meaningful to ordinary Indians today”. Student bodies like the Ambedkarite Students’ Association, which was formed on the Hyderabad University campus in 1994, the Birsa-Ambedkar-Phule Students’ Association at JNU, and the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle at IIT Madras have helped disseminate Ambedkar’s ideas on campus, fight student union elections and win new adherents to his vision.
“Life,” Ambedkar once observed, “should be great rather than long.” Sixty-five years is not a long lifespan; but of its greatness, there can be no doubt. In 2012, Ambedkar was voted the ‘greatest Indian’, ahead of Gandhi, Nehru and Sardar Patel, in a poll conducted by two respected television channels in which over 20 million votes were cast.
Every political party in India—from the Congress he opposed, to the Hindutva warriors who denounced him—feels obliged to express their admiration for him today. He has entered the rare pantheon of the unchallengeable. Ambedkar today is larger than life, and nearly seven decades after his death, he keeps on growing.
(Views are personal)
(office@tharoor.in)
Shashi Tharoor | Fourth-term Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram and the Sahitya Akademi winning author of 24 books, most recently 'Ambedkar: A Life'