Search engine giant Google, famous for recognizing genius human beings worldwide through featuring them on its country specific home page as Doodle, gave a complete miss to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on 125th birthday. But as an Indian, you owe to know Ambedkar!
Google Recognizes Ambedkar
Known as father of India’s Constitution in post independence era, Dr. Ambedkar had extra ordinary courage to fight for “Annihilation of Caste” vociferously. Perhaps that’s why Google, which knows how deep rooted caste problem is, featured him on 124th birthday.
On his 125th birthday people are in a mood to celebrate Dr. Ambedkar, especially after recent debates on caste, discrimination and dalits in India following “institutional murder” of University of Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula.
Annihilation of Caste
Dr. Ambedkar began a movement to bury down caste system in India. He was pioneer in the area to have vociferously pitched for “social reform” through his writings. In his powerful work, ‘Annihilation of Caste’, he equated caste to “the monster” and observed: “You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster.”
According to him, caste system is a social system, which “embodies the arrogance and selfishness a perverse section of the Hindus…”. He believed that annihilation of caste and negation of capitalism are essential for change in the society. For him, both Brahminism and capitalism (bourgeoisie) were enemies of people.
Ambedkar on Nationalism
Dr. Ambedkar was no less than a saint when he observed that the governing class cries ‘nationalism’ whenever downtrodden demand equal treatment. He wrote: “Nationality is a social feeling…a double-edged feeling…a feeling of fellowship of one’s own kith and kin and an anti-fellowship feeling for those who are not one’s own kith and kin.”
In a column, D. Raja noted that Dr. Ambedkar analyzed profit-seeking pursuits of then Indian commercial class under the garb of nationalism, and at the cost of people’s interest. He observes that today’s right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) doing the same.
On Hindu, Hinduism
Dr. Ambedkar openly called Hindus as “the sick men of India”. Though born Hindu, he decided to go out of Hinduism’s folds: “I am sorry, I will not be with you. I have decided to change. This is not the place for giving reasons.”
In an address at Depressed Classes Conference, he said: “I had the misfortune of being born with the stigma of an Untouchable. However, it is not my fault; but I will not die a Hindu, for this is in my power.”