Even as we celebrate his one hundred and thirty-fifth birthday, Dr Ambedkar continues to be extremely relevant to India’s society and polity. All sections of society, and particularly all political parties, are scrambling to claim his legacy. And this scramble is increasingly getting more cacophonic and frequently leading to squabbles. This does not mean that Ambedkar can be all things to all people. It just means that people distort his writings, speeches and utterances to suit their own ends. The best way to understand, interpret or report on Ambedkar is to quote him in the original. The reading and re-reading of Ambedkar unfailingly pays rich dividends and fresh insights. It is also simply remarkable how prescient he was in his writings and speeches.

Take, for example, one of his most famous speeches to the closing session of the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949, exactly two months before the adoption of the Constitution. In the concluding part of that speech, he says, “Let us not forget that this independence has thrown on us great responsibilities. By independence, we have lost the excuse of blaming the British for anything going wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except ourselves.”

He then goes on to describe three potent dangers to India’s nascent democracy. The first is the tendency to hero-worship or build personality cults in politics. He said, “In India, bhakti, or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to........

© Free Press Journal