Ambedkar
The dream of Ambedkar he had conceived still remains unrealized. This is not the country of his imagination. His fears have come true. This is nowhere a society he envisaged. Today on his birth anniversary, people remember him just as someone who drafted our constitution. Others remember him for reservations. Specific part of society hate him for that particular reason. But mostly people seem to come to an understanding of his undisputed contributions. His figure have survived in people's minds, his ideals however are long dead.
Today is his birth anniversary. I am sitting here on the terrace of my house. Its almost midnight. 'His' people are celebrating. With sounds of loudspeakers, and DJs, 'They' are dancing joyously. It seems a special day for them, evidently no less than a festival. His figure is godlike. A figure of saviour which saved them. The air is filled with dreadful irony. He would have abhorred the idea of people making him a God. He also would have detested how his people are reduced to as mere vote bank - a political tool for the butchers of democracy and enablers of long lasting tradition of exploitation. He would be sickened to have witnesses state of the contemporary society; with communalism on its peak, religious fanaticism pervading every mind, the discrimination still present, though in a very peculiar form, the misuse of the Constitution, the undemocratic nature of those in power and the society more or less is still pretty backward. His ghastly fears have taken realistic forms. He had well predicted it :
" However good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot."
In the same speech he said,
"It is quite possible for this new-born democracy to retain its form, but give place to dictatorship in fact."
While his figure is known for the making of the Constitution, in fact it is far from being an achievement. The constitution remains rather a tool for mere political misuse. It's credibility is undermined. There are massive loopholes. And he greatly feared about its misuse. He said, "If I find the constitution being misused, I shall be the first to burn it." His influence was greatly limited at the time because of the tangled position the nation was in. The constitution is culmination of sacrifices, compromises that has to made to have a framework which is atleast workable at the time. But it is not the Constitution which represents his idea of society. Which is far from being recognised, moreover the very ideologies he was abhorrent of all his life are being practised shamelessly, and that too on his name!
The current society is far from being casteless, secular, tolerant, prosperous but is exactly opposite. His ideas are now getting lost, they are getting vaguer and vaguer in people's minds. And they might be lost forever soon.
Comments
Post a Comment