Ambedkar Row: Appropriating The Messenger, And Not The Message

A chaotic session of Parliament, with MPs hospitalised, FIRs lodged, and the BJP and opposition fighting over one name – the architect of the Indian Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar. The parties are grappling with the issue, each claiming to be the bigger successor of Ambedkar's legacy. At the center of the debate this time is a comment by Home Minister Amit Shah.

“Abhi ek fashion ho gaya hai – Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. Itna naam agar bhagwan ka lete to saat janmon tak swarg mil jata (It has become a fashion to say Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar’. If they took god’s name so many times, they would have got a place in heaven).”

These remarks by Shah on Dr. BR Ambedkar, in his Rajya Sabha speech, have become a fresh flash point between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and opposition INDIA Bloc.

The Congress-led opposition has labelled Shah's comments an insult to BR Ambedkar and demanded his resignation or removal. Some Dalit groups also announced plans for demonstrations nationwide. Responding to the backlash, Amit Shah accused the Congress of “twisting” his remarks and sharing “misleading” videos.

Ever since coming to power in 2014, the BJP has tried to consolidate the Dalit vote and reverse its upper-caste image by appropriating the legacy of BR Ambedkar. Supporting Droupadi Murmu as the first tribal woman President of India was one such step. However, this symbolism is backed by concerted intellectual efforts to represent Ambedkar as the protector of the Hindutva identity, as Rakhi Bose explains in Politics Of Appropriation: Why Ambedkar's Legacy Matters.

Prime Minister Modi, who is typically unmoved by controversies, led the charge and came to Shah’s defence, accusing the Congress of hypocrisy and ignoring Ambedkar’s contributions. “If the Congress and its rotten ecosystem think their malicious lies can hide their misdeeds of several years, especially their insult towards Dr Ambedkar, they are gravely mistaken,” PM Modi wrote on X (formerly Twitter).   

The ongoing debate over Shah's remark on Ambedkar has also brought into focus the plight of the Dalit community in India. The August 2023 issue of Outlook, titled “Gandhi Ji, I Have No Home,” discusses whether more than 75 years after India gained Independence, the Dalit community has truly attained freedom. 

In Ambedkar’s Ideal of Maitri, Chandan Gowda writes that Ambedkar observed that equality and liberty were not sustained by law but by ‘fellow-feeling’ and added that the proper word for this phrase was not what the French revolutionaries termed ‘fraternity’ but ‘what the Buddha called maitri.’ According to Ambedkar, without maitri as the foundation, the pursuit of liberty undermined equality, and vice versa.

Click here to read all the stories from Outlook’s 21 August 2023 issue

Dr. BR Ambedkar, considered the biggest Dalit icon of India, continuously fought for eradication of caste discrimination that had fragmented Indian society and made it cripple. As Musafir Baitha argues in Caste Is Poison, And Ambedkar Is The Antidote, if we want to talk definitively and conclusively about the abolition of the caste system, then we will have to begin by foregrounding Ambedkar’s views.

Caste discrimination still remains a contentious issue in India. Outlook's September issue, Caste vs Caste, revisited the debate over sub-categorisation within Scheduled Castes, particularly in the context of a political push for a caste census.

In The Ambedkarite Dual Policy Solution for Sub-Caste Discrimination, Sukhadeo Thorat states that Dr. Ambedkar recognised both the homogeneous and heterogeneous characteristics of the SCs. He argues that, from Dr. Ambedkar’s perspective, the sub-caste reservation policy justified by the Chief Justice may have a limited impact in achieving the goal of “substantive equality.” Click here to read all the stories from Outlook’s 21 September 2024 issue