I remember it was 6th Dec 2008. Crowds and crowds of people were moving towards Chaityabhoomi on Dadar Chowpatty.Now for people who do not know what the significance of 6th December is and do not have any iota of an idea of what Chaityabhoomi is, let us start from the basics.
6th December is the Mahaparinirvan Divas of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, the great Indian leader who fought all his life for the rights of the lower caste people. For some people, who do not even take the effort of thinking with their heads, he is the person responsible for the reservations and why their kids cannot get admission because they are in OPEN category. For the lower castes, he is, put in a single apt word, GOD. For people like me, he was a visionary and a great scholar, a lover of books, the architect of our constitution and of course a great leader!
Chaityabhoomi, on the other hand, you could say is the Samadhi of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Babasaheb had embraced buddhism towards the end of his life and like the Stupa in Sanchi, Chaityabhoomi stands at Dadar Chowpatty. People, especially his followers, visit Chaityabhoomi & pay their respects to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.
So, on 6th December every year, our Dalit Bandhus, as our politicians love to put it, come from all over the nation and visit Chaityabhoomi. And as always, our great Netas, put up posters and hoardings with Dr. Ambedkar’s photo and one of his quotes, and even bigger pictures of themselves on it.
On 6th December 2008, I was walking down Swatantryaveer Sawarkar Road and I saw a poster which instantly caught my attention. Roughly A3 in size it had a quote of Dr. Ambedkar written on it.I do not remember which political party had put up the poster but the quote is still fresh in my mind. It was addressed to the lower castes & goes like this,
“ I want to see one of YOU become the PRIME MINISTER of India”
Little did Babasaheb know how the genius Netas of our nation would interpret the statement and use it for their benefit.What he actually meant was different and what the maker of that poster wanted to convey was completely different!
Babasaheb Ambedkar simply wanted to tell the downtrodden people to progress! He wanted them to learn. He wanted them to have education. He wanted they not only be literate but they be capable of understanding things said by Netas and be able to take the right decisions! He wanted them to be educated in the real sense of the term. When he said he wanted to see one of the lower caste people become the Prime Minister of the nation, he actually meant that they should educated themselves, enter the system, change it for the better of both the people and the nation! He wanted them to elevate their castes to such a great height that there would be no divide between people based on castes! And when such educated persons enter the system and do good for the country then he deserves to be the PM. When such a time dawns, it won’t matter if the person is an OBC, NT,ST,VJ, Brahmin etc.
What Babasaheb Ambedkar meant when he quoted the above line and what our great politicians, or Dalit Netas as they call themselves, convey to the masses is completely different!
They will use this statement by Dr. Ambedkar and his Demi God status in the lower castes and based on that will try to achieve political mileage.
They will say, “ Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar wanted that a Dalit become the Prime Minister of India. We are Dalit leaders and we will work for the benefit of Dalits. So, give us your valuable votes and bring us to power so that we can make a dalit the PM of the nation and complete his life dream!”
What they actually mean is, “ Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar wanted to uplift the Dalits to such a level, that each one of you would be capable of leading the country as the PM. However,we are neither interested in your benefit nor in achieving the dreams of Dr. Ambedkar. All we are interested in is coming to Power. All we want is avenues to earn money so that our 7 generations to come can feast using that money. We know, you people are not educated enough because we have deliberately kept you like that and hence we will show that we are extremely concerned and will dedicate our lives to uplift you. However, we will not uplift you but keep you oppressed and away from the opportunities that are actually your fundamental rights. But then to ensure that you vote for us we will continue to offer you reservations. We will make you so used to reservations that we will make you feel that they are your fundamental rights. By doing this we will maintain a division between various castes so that the nation is never united and our vote banks are secure!”
To achieve their own selfish motives, these worthless, lowly creatures who dare call themselves “leaders” of a huge chunk of the Indian population, have destroyed what Dr. Ambedkar wanted to tell his followers and after his death have taken the Dalit population for a ride and unfortunately, they continue to do so.
Bastards.
Regards,
Pranjal A. Wagh
This work by Pranjal A. Wagh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License
