I am wracked by shame today.
Ramdas Athavale, a minister in the Central Cabinet, leader of the eponymous splinter group of the Republican Party of India, added volumes of vomit to the overflowing bowl of embarrassment that is the zeitgeist. If you have not seen the "Go Carona" (sic) video, search it now. I will not dignify it by appending it to this post.
Why am I ashamed? Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar evolved an independent political space for Dalits in stages: first by launching the Independent Labour Party of India, then, the Scheduled Caste Forum and finally, the Republican Party of India, which he announced in September 1956 but died before it was formally constituted.
Why did he choose to name it "Republican Party"? I am speculating here but my hypothesis is this. For Dr. Babasaheb, the Reublic, where the Citizen was the Sovereign, where there was no greater power in the country than every last one of us, must have represented an even greater sociopolitical value than Democracy. By the nomenclature he chose, he was sending a loud and clear message: that the long oppressed Dalits were, henceforth, not merely masters of their own destinies, they were equal partners in being the sovereign rulers of India. His message to Dalits, "Educate, Agitate, Organize", critically emphasized "Organize". The organising principle was people's sovereignty and the Republican Party of India would evolve into the point of the spear.
That incomparable legacy; of Education, Agitation, Organisation; was publicly destroyed today. By a politician who claims to inherit the great Babasaheb's mantle.
Then again, that is the price of the Faustian bargain that he made with the party which stands for "Uneducate, Oppress, Destroy".
1 comment:
We live in a strange world. We belittle Dr Ambedkar, Nehru Gandhi and Dr Singh and listen to jokers.
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