BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR LIVES ON IN THE GENERATIONS WHO CAME AFTER HIM

He was found dead in his cell in the prison where he was brought just two days before his exams started. The reports said he died of shock from multiple injuries. His fault was that he belonged to a Dalit family and wanted to be like Babasaheb Ambedkar. On December 10, when a desecrated copy of the Constitution was found near the statue of Dr Ambedkar, a protest was launched in Parbhani in Maharashtra. Police arrested indiscriminately.

Somnath Suryawanshi was one of those who was arrested. His grandmother said he was never into activism. He was only interested in books and was a proud owner of no less than 100 of them, said Grandma with her eyes filled with tears.

Parbhani is tense, especially where Dalits live. Police are engaged in brutality. The plight of Somnath has been shared by many. Their fault, all of them like Somnath, dared to walk in Babasaheb’s footsteps. And
then it was not only in Parbhani alone, a remote rural town, the echo could be heard in Parliament itself.

Dr Ambedkar is no more but even without him, the anger and animosity against his ideas are still alive. Amit Shah’s denigration of Dr Ambedkar is but one example. Ambedkar had dared to challenge a centuries old system and he gave us our Constitution, a guide to build and protect our democratic system.

Dr Ambedkar had pointed out in his famous speech to the Constituent Assembly, “India is today entering
a life full of contradictions, where there will be prevailing inequality in socio-economic life.” He had asked how long one can sustain with the growing gap? It is certain that for our sustenance, it is imperative to keep alive social democracy, that imparts a deep influence on the political dimension of the society.

Babasaheb established democratic values that played an important role in the making of the Constitution.
But in the circumstances of today, efforts are being made to destroy the spirit of the Constitution itself
and create a situation when Ambedkar’s ideology would become irrelevant. Our freedom of expression is under attack.

We are going through a period of undeclared emergency. Constitutional values are being violated. “Hindu Rashtra” is being promoted in a secular country. Those who talk about democratic values, and in the interest of entire people, are mostly looked on with apprehension.

Communalism is being promoted. Mob lynching are being carried out. Incidents of caste discrimination
and atrocities are increasing. Exploitation of the Dalit is a common occurrence. They are being treated in an inhuman manner such that all limits are crossed.

Ambedkar’s clarity of thought has never been more important, as we witness societies divided between
those who experience the continuing humiliation of caste discrimination and violence, and those who deny its reality or significance or want to silence public debate on an inhuman outrage, the fight against which Babasaheb Ambedkar devoted his entire life.

The good news is, the world is waking up to the values and importance of him as a democrat. Of all of India’s great leaders, Dr Ambedkar continues to shape history, whose relevance is refreshed in the context of economic and social dimensions, whose influence extends beyond India, to people subject to
discrimination wherever they are found.

Dr Ambedkar is more than just a great leader: First, he embodies the personal struggle against repeated
adversities that inspires so many and gives voice to the obstacles they have to face. Second, Dr Ambedkar set in motion changes to benefit the lives of millions, fighting for legal protections for Dalits, for their self-representation, and for equality of opportunity through reservations in education and employment.

Such provisions for those marginalised were established earlier and are more extensive in India than anywhere else in the world. They have been made part of the Constitution, which abolished untouchability and went beyond that to enshrine a commitment to equality and recognition of historical disadvantage.

Perhaps, most importantly, the very figure of Dr Ambedkar itself communicates the self-respect, the
intolerance of injustice, and the voice of those who were broken and ground down, but who now struggle against social and economic oppressions. In the wider world, Dr Ambedkar represents somebody unavoidably central in our times — the rise of groups that were downtrodden everywhere.

The racially discriminated and economically exploited — who claim justice and humane treatment in the age of inequality and absence of rationalism to which Dr Ambedkar tirelessly pointed. Why are Dr Ambedkar’s ideas so important to understand the lives of the oppressed today; not just in India but globally?

First, Dr Ambedkar was determined to address social reality as it is, not just how we’d like it to be; second, he took the perspective of those at the bottom that are oppressed; and third, Dr Ambedkar insisted that the
conditions of the poor were the result not of individual disappointments but of the working of the social system under which they lived.

Ultimately the question Dr Ambedkar asks of the downtrodden is not ‘who are we?’ and ‘what is our identity?’ but ‘how are we treated?’; and ‘why?’ So he told the world that his people are called ‘Dalit’ — the downtrodden, and the broken. While studying Dr Ambedkar’s thought, we also find that he does not separate social inequality from economic inequality, or caste from class.

Indeed, Dr Ambedkar was the only person in his time to link the rights of the oppressed classes and the
rights of the Dalit. The oppression of caste cannot be treated as a religious matter separate from society and economy. He was also critical of the Hindu scriptural sanction of caste and varna, but he rejected the idea that untouchability was just a cultural or religious matter.

The solution to discrimination lay not in religious reform but in legal rights and state intervention on behalf of the downtrodden. In this sense, Dr Ambedkar removed the issue of rights from the realm of Hindu religion. The discrimination he fought against was a violation of civic and human rights in any community, any religion, region or country.

Dr Babasaheb’s clarity about what real democracy means, combined with his loyalty to the experience of the downtrodden, made him relevant as a guide to social policymakers, educators, politicians and reformers, in India and internationally, especially to different nations’ struggles to balance opportunities and costs of economic change and ever-greater integration in a global market economy. Ambedkar was India’s greatest thinker on democracy — which he understood in terms of the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Dr Ambedkar was deeply committed to freedom and the necessity of universal franchise: freedom for all to vote. Because of his deep knowledge of the way society worked, he also knew that this would require special measures for those whose rightful claim to freedom was impaired by the existing social order; hence the need for reserved positions for those whose voice would otherwise remain silenced. Dr Ambedkar then insisted that political freedom is of limited value without social freedom; and that in the absence of economic democracy (that is freedom of opportunity) political democracy would be under threat.