Amit Shah must retract remarks on Ambedkar

The igniting statement on B R Ambedkar by Home Minis-ter Amit Shah inside the four walls of the Parliament has taken the form of heated clash between BJP and Con-gress in particular at every nook & corner of the country. Crediting BJP for the revival of Ambedkarite spirit in the country by declaring 26 November as the Constitution Day or making of his statues being erected at different places associated with him, including Mhow in MP, Nag-pur, London and so on is not fair. The BJP must not forget that Dr B R Ambedkar is much more valuable than only being as an icon of dalit & marginalised vote banks of In-dia. We value him because of his contribution in drafting the Indian constitution, his principles, teachings and re-forms for women rights and social justice. He is a symbol of knowledge for every Indian irrespective of any political biasness. Home Minister must apologise for his state-ments.

– Kirti Wadhawan, Kanpur

***

THI front page cartoon by Manjuul (Dec. 20) in which a leader tells the media against the backdrop of Ambedkar's photographs: “Why all this fuss- we treat all the same, we respect no one. It is meaningful. Obviously the politicians, in particular the ruling party, seem to re-spect none of the forerunners: Nehru, the first and uni-versally acclaimed PM gets scant regard but they verbally respect

Ambedkar normally but the frenzied rhetoric by HM Shah took every conscientious Indian by surprise. We cannot rewrite the past but we can set new standards with exemplary governance rather than wasting public money in the Parliament devoting no time for any issue beneficial to the public.

–Dr T Ramadas, Visakhapatnam

***

No one would have ever imagined that a day would come when India’s Home Minister would make an offensive comment against Dr B R Ambedkar on the floor of the Indian Parliament. While expressing his displeasure at the invocation of the name of Dr Ambedkar, Amit Shah left what was wrong with it unexplained. He must have his own reasons for being so upset about Ambedkar chants. However hard you try to conceal your real self, what you say or do sometimes reveals it to the world. The mask that you wear is not a permanent fixture; it sometimes comes off and falls. To say that Amit Shah’s remark does not constitute an insult to the pre-eminent figure among the founding fathers and, by extension, the mass of Indian humanity, adds insult to injury. Implicit in Shah’s remark, made in a mocking voice, is the sugges-tion that heaven will elude those who chant “Ambedkar”.

The crux of the matter is that Hindutva proponents are unable to identify themselves with a leader who tirelessly fought against the odds for the “annihilation of caste”. Reactionaries do not like revolutionaries being extolled as heroes. Our love for Dr Ambedkar is linked with our love of our country. “Jai Bhim” is a political assertion by all those who have been the ineluctable victims of the caste system and an expression of political solidarity with the anti-caste struggles. The passage of time has made the ideals, upheld by Dr Ambedkar, more compelling and ap-pealing to the nation. As for the uncharitable remark that rocked the Parliament and appalled the country, Amit Shah should show the decency to retract it and the Speaker the ‘courage’ to expunge it from the Lok Sabha records and Narendra Modi the willingness to counsel his second in command to be more discreet in his utterances.

–G David Milton, Maruthancode, TN