On May 3, Galaxy Room A filled with the sounds of endless conversation, laughing children and festivity. A blue and white banner stretched across the front of the hall, bearing an illustration of a man in a sharp suit and glasses — the man the whole celebration was honoring. By 11 a.m., the room was alive with dozens of families and students alike, coming together for the 135th birth anniversary of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.
Organized by the Ambedkar Buddhist Association of Texas, alongside UTD’s Phi Alpha Theta historical honor society and Middle Eastern and North African Research in Art and History, MENARAH, the event honored Ambedhkar’s legacy as a Dalit scholar, lawyer, economist and leading architect of the Indian constitution. The event drew around 100 attendees into a space built on the memory of a man that many credit with giving them the right to be in a room like this at all.
Ambedkar was born in 1891 into the Mahar caste, which is a Dalit community designated as “untouchable” under India’s ancient caste hierarchy. He was barred from drinking at the same water source as his upper-caste peers, turned away from temples and made to sit separately in school. However, he quickly rose through the ranks of academia, eventually earning degrees from the University of Bombay, Columbia University and the University of London.
As a politician, Ambedkar demanded separate electorates for Dalits. This was a period of time when India’s terms for its own rule were being written, and who counted, and how, would determine the question of equality for generations to come. He clashed openly with Gandhi over the state of Dalit social and political rights, vehemently opposing Gandhi’s approach to casteism which he found paternalistic, patronizing and exclusionary. He refused to call Gandhi “Mahatma,” a widespread term of utmost respect used almost exclusively for Gandhi meaning “great soul,” and warned against Gandhism as intrinsically against the abolition of caste.
On a separate table near the front of the room, copies of Ambedkar’s “Annihilation of Caste, With a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi” were stacked into neat piles, free for anyone to take. This book is one of Ambedkar’s undelivered speeches, written for an anti-caste convention in Lahore but deemed by the organizers to be too contentious to deliver. At the time of its rejection, this address was regarded by authors, activists and politicians as a model for dismantling systemic class-based oppression in India.
The celebration was emceed by Nila Jeyapriya, a history senior and a member of Phi Alpha Theta. Jagdish Bankar, leader of ABAT, opened with a speech about Ambedkar’s enduring relevance, not just to the Dalit community, but to all those who believe in liberty, equality and fraternity. He echoed Ambedkar’s sentiment about political democracy and its inability to function without social democracy within communities.
“Unless and until [everyone] has been brought to that bench level where everyone is stated equally, doesn’t matter which caste or religion you belong to, there is no social democracy,” Bankar said in a later interview with The Retrograde. “Unless [social democracy] is being brought into action, then there will only be an impact on political development.”
Jeyapriya delivered a speech that made historical and ideological connections between Ambedkar and Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy, the social reformer more commonly known as Periyar, whose Self-Respect Movement shook the foundation of Brahminical dominance in South India. Jeyapriya stated that Periyar was among the first major leaders to recognize and affirm Ambedkar’s fight for Dalits, and Periyar saw in it a reflection of his own war against caste hierarchy and religious orthodoxy. Her speech reminded the audience that the Self-Respect and Dravidian movements were never separated from the Ambedkarite movement: where Ambedhkar approached liberation through constitutional law and social dismantling, Periyar approached it through rationalism and the destruction of religious authority over public life.
This was realized, Jeyapriya mentioned, through a strong literary bond between the two.
“Long before they met, they had been reading each other,” Jeyapriya said, “This was enabled by the translation of their words… across languages, forging solidarities between communities and building the intellectual architecture of a shared emancipatory politics.”
Another speech was given by Pralay Patil, a business analytics master’s student. He walked the audience through Ambedkar’s various titles, focusing on why he is commonly called “Baba,” a term of familial respect in many Indian languages that translates to ‘father.” Patil recited a small Marathi song to provide context for this title and to illustrate generations of reverence.
“I call him father, my father called him father, my grandfather called him father and my son will call him father.” Patil said. “This is why he is my father.
As the chairman of the drafting committee of India’s constitution, Ambedhkar abolished untouchability under Article 17 even as it persisted in practice. As a final act of defiance, in 1956, just weeks before his death, Ambedkar along with nearly half a million of his followers converted to Buddhism. This move rejected Hinduism, which the Ambedkarite movement saw as an inherently discriminatory system with a structural pattern to keep certain individuals permanently below others. Ambedkar was a strong proponent of liberty, equality, and fraternity, not as it was seen in the French Revolution, but the idea of social democracy and revolution derived through his own relationship with Buddhism.
When asked about his perception of social democracy, Patil talked about ethnocentric and caste-based hate speech against Ambedkar across India in recent years, including instances of statue defacement and vandalism. However, he trusts in the fight against such opposition.
“People are learning how to fight back against the people who are trying to oppress us,” Patil said. “There are others who are trying to diminish [Ambedkar] but they can’t: Babasaheb’s thoughts are powerful, they can’t erase them.”
As the afternoon wound down, the voices that had filled the room lingered; in the arguments they had made, the histories they had traced and the future they were reaching towards. Patil, who had spent his speech delineating Ambedkar’s titles and his legacy through Marathi couplets and songs, returned to the same point that he had started with.
“[Ambedkar] was not just for a specific community,” Patil said. “He was not there for a few people. He was a leader. He was a revolutionary. He was a far-sighted person for every human being.”
Yogesh Khankal, a representative of ABAT, echoed this sentiment and spoke further about the messages of the Ambedkarite movement that he hopes students will depart with. For Khankal, the most common misreading of Ambedkar is also the most damaging: the reduction of a universal thinker to a symbol of a community’s grievance.
“Typically, people will bind [Ambedkar] into a caste, but what Babasaheb did was for human dignity,” Khankal said. “What should we stand for? One’s dignity. And that’s what Baba said through his writings, through his speeches.”
When asked why he thinks it’s important for events like these to keep being organized, Khankal said that generational mindsets cannot be undone by arguments like Ambedkar’s, individuals can willingly turn inward and examine the beliefs they have inherited.
“I want to create an environment where people can think about the mindset that they have, it’s not to combat the caste system,” said Khankal. “It’s so deeply rooted in one’s mind, it’s very difficult to change unless there’s one’s own willingness.”
Bankar agreed with Khankal’s statement, saying that change in thought is tied to social democracy in a crucial way. For him, the path forward is clear: it is grounded in fundamental change through events such as this, where speakers, organizers and the distribution of literature is geared towards educating future generations about casteism.
“Our slogan is to educate, agitate and organize: build the right mindset, and when you have the right mindset, build within the community, build the society, you can definitely build the nation,” Bankar said.
One Comment
Very well written by young sukriti sinha. Deep and covered almost all the important aspects doing justice with this important date.