How can a central university be allowed to insult/defame Ambedkar and there is a conspiratorial silence on it?
Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University located in Wardha, Maharashtra has once again come into limelight for wrong reasons. More than four months have passed in which a unique initiative to read the material written by Ambedkar has been forcibly stopped,Show cause notices are being issued to them and even punitive action is being taken against Dalit teachers, but there is no murmur of protest about it and despite these developments, top officials of the UGC or the University Grants Commission There is silence on this.
Stop reading about Ambedkar in the open on the university campus, as this may pose a threat to the “safety and health of the (participating) students and the reputation of the university”.
The news of this incredible decree of an educational institution remained suppressed throughout the day.
As expected, the massive nationwide uproar over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election speech in Banswara, which is being considered as his most ‘divisive’ speech in the last 30 years, has overshadowed other similar pressing issues.
The institution that has issued such orders to teachers and is under investigation is Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University, Wardha, Maharashtra, which is a central university. You may remember that some time ago, this institute had similarly attracted everyone’s attention when a team of Hindi researchers from China had visited it. During his visit, the team was taken to the RSS headquarters (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) in Nagpur and held a meeting with RSS leaders.
What is disturbing is that it has been more than four months since this unique experiment of reciting material written by Ambedkar in the open, which was started by Dalit teachers of the university under an informal group called Ambedkar Study Circle India, There was an initiative which was forcibly stopped, show cause notices were issued to the teachers involved and punitive action was also taken against three of them, but there is a conspiratorial silence on it.
What could have been the reason behind the action of the university administration against those teachers who were following the UGC Code of Professional Conduct?
..’The teacher should participate in extension, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities including community service…The teacher should work to improve education in the community and strengthen the moral and intellectual life of the community.’..
(The above statement is quoted from the reply given by the teachers concerned to the university administration.)
The administration’s vindictive attitude was also visible when it allegedly used the old and tried method of ‘punishment posting’ against some teachers, some senior professors were relieved of their important responsibilities, some staff were separated -Sent to different departments etc.
Second, why has no corrective action been taken till date regarding these undemocratic actions against those teachers by the UGC or those top bureaucrats of the Education Ministry or the self-proclaimed disciples of Dr. Ambedkar who only discuss the writings of Dr. Ambedkar? Was doing?
Would it be too much to expect that they would wake up from their deep slumber and take action so that the session of reading material written by Ambedkar would be resumed and the teachers facing punitive action would be given appropriate compensation?
As far as ‘tarnishing the entire effort of studying Dr. Ambedkar in public’ is concerned, there is nothing shocking or surprising in this.
Anyone who has a strong hatred towards Dr. Ambedkar’s world view or the way he analyzed the society and proposed revolutionary solutions for its improvement can easily resort to such arbitrary actions against respected teachers. Are.
Anyone who feels that the spread of such ideas among the wider masses would be a subversive or destabilizing act, detrimental to their long-term project of building a Hindu Rashtra, would be accused of insulting Dr. Ambedkar or its fighters. There will be no hesitation in punishing.
Since the rise of Hindutva supremacist forces at the Centre, there have been several instances when the ruling party has talked of itself as being a ‘disciple’ of Dr. Ambedkar, but in actual socio-political life, it has been humiliated, Their ideas have been defied or distorted.
It was 2017, when the nation celebrated the 90th anniversary of the ‘Mahad Revolution’, as it is called in Dalit folklore, when we witnessed a very disturbing scene. Billboards were put up at New Delhi Railway Station where Ambedkar was presented as a symbol of cleanliness.It shows an Ambedkar-like figure leading a group of people towards a dustbin to throw garbage and the banner title asks people to awaken their inner ‘Babasaheb Ambedkar’ and take up the task of cleaning garbage. Participate in this great campaign.
Was this an indirect way of communicating the prevailing understanding among the dominant castes that for them Ambedkar’s historic contribution in drafting the Constitution or his more than three decade long struggle for equality meant nothing?
For example, 2016 was the year of Dr. Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary and plans were underway to celebrate it not only in India but also in other countries. The Maharashtra government had planned to spend Rs 500 crore on a grand memorial for Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar in Dadar, Mumbai and a statue at Indu Mills in Dadar. This was the same year when Dr. Ambedkar Bhawan in Dadar, Mumbai, and the adjacent building which housed a printing press, were demolished in the dark of night (June 25, 2016).
Whatever explanation was given by the government, it had to be defensive because of the demolition – it cannot be forgotten that this building was situated on prime land and the then Bharatiya Janata Party led state government had constructed a 17-storey building there. Plans were made to erect a building.
What was disturbing was that this building was built by Dr. Ambedkar himself and ‘his place was witness to many of Ambedkar’s movements’. ..This building was a treasure trove of documents and manuscripts of Dr. Ambedkar, which is now buried in debris.”
A few years ago, the Gujarat Textbook Board replaced a slogan ‘Educate, Organize, Agitate’ – synonymous with the Ambedkarite movement in India, in the Class 5 textbook with ‘Educate, Organize and Self-Reliance’ as a true aid. ‘As’ was changed.
This change in Ambedkar’s main slogan – which he had also used in his inspirational speech addressing a meeting of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation in 1945 – created an uproar in Ambedkarite circles and forced the state government to Was forced to correct the mistake.
We can also recall how the then Anandiben Patel led Gujarat government had withdrawn it (in 2015) and later her government had removed the book written on Dr. Ambedkar, because it contained comments on Ambedkar on Hinduism. The revolutionary ideas of and the 22-point vows he took to convert to Buddhism in 1956 were discussed. The said book was started by the government itself, which was to be distributed in government schools as supplementary reading.
What inspired you to sell a few million copies of the book?
It included pledges given by Ambedkar to millions of his followers when he converted to Buddhism, which the government found ‘explosive’ enough to destroy the book itself.
In short, the pledges included ‘no faith in Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh, no faith in Ram and Krishna, no faith in Gauri’ and it was resolved not to worship them. It also talked about ‘not believing in the incarnation of God’ and maintaining distance from religious ceremonies that are part of Hinduism and performed by Brahmins.There was also talk of a belief in the ‘equality of human beings’ and an effort to ‘establish equality’, while pledging to follow the Buddha’s ‘noble eightfold path’.
There are many reasons to believe that the Right has formally declared Ambedkar an icon and continues to sing praises of him, but they have not gone very far from the assessment made by one of his ideologues in the 1990s. A monograph of some 100 pages, titled Worshiping False Gods, published in the mid-90s, spews venom against Ambedkar – an act for which no apology or self-criticism is yet to be seen from his part. Has been found.
What is the real root of this indifference towards Ambedkar?
Is this because as early as the 1940s, Dr. Ambedkar had dismissed the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha as “reactionary” organizations? The political manifesto of the Scheduled Caste Federation itself – the political organization which was founded by him in 1942 – clearly stated:
“The Scheduled Caste Federation will not enter into any alliance with any reactionary party like the Hindu Mahasabha or the RSS.” (See this Marathi book, C section 10 of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s character book, written by Changdev Bhavanrao Khairmode)
Or, in his landmark monograph, Pakistan or the Partition of India, Ambedkar reiterated his fears about a possible majoritarian stance at the hands of those advocating ‘Hindu Raj’.
“If Hindu Raj becomes true, no doubt, it will be the biggest disaster for this country. No matter what Hindus say, Hinduism is a threat to liberty, equality and fraternity. In this respect it is inconsistent with democracy. Hindu Raj must be stopped at any cost.”
One can discuss why RSS and its affiliates hate Dr. Ambedkar, how he proposed that Manusmriti be made the Constitution of ‘Newly Independent India’ and that there is no need to draft a new Constitution Was. We can discuss how she opposed the Hindu Code Bill – which for the first time in the written history of India tried to give Hindu women rights in property or marriage.
Of course, that is not the purpose of this article.
In conclusion, if The Telegraph newspaper had not brought this story, this grave insult to Dr. Ambedkar and the supporters of his ideas would not have come to light.
Why did the local/regional media not report about this injustice, despite the best efforts of Dalit teachers?
Despite the fact that Wardha, a part of Vidarbha in Maharashtra, is barely 85 kilometers from Nagpur – once the bastion of the Dalit movement, why were there no protests about forcibly stopping the reading of material written by Dr. Ambedkar? ? On one hand, it can be remembered that Nagpur is the same place where Dr. Ambedkar along with lakhs of his followers converted to Buddhism in 1956. Every year on Dussehra, lakhs of followers of Dr. Ambedkar gather at Deekshabhoomi.
Can one say that this is a sign of the movement losing its militant spirit or is it a sign that like (one-time revolutionary Dalit leader) Ramdas Athawale or (now late) Ram Vilas Paswan or Mayawati, even Ambedkar’s youth Are the followers also not bothered that according to the Hindutva sect, he was established as Pisces as another symbol of remembering the morning or he was given the garb of a social reformer like RSS founder Hedgewar?
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