What shall Dalit-Bahujans do for the emancipation? Is it dependent on our will to be free from caste discrimination? Read an article by Ashish Gajbe on what we shall do for emancipation?

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14th April, a historical date in history. We all are aware and respectfully observe the day as an earth-shattering day of liberation of thoughts, equal social recognition, freedom from medieval principles of graded inequality. On this day many meetings are organised, speeches are delivered, oaths are sworn, processions are taken out and many other events take place. This happens not only in a single part of the country but we see the events taking place on a pan-India basis, majority of the masses are busy in organizing events, social get-together, and other forms of channelizing public sentiments onto a single point of motivation, birthday celebration of none other than, voice of Masses, Inspiration for youth, war over weighty form of existence, we celebrate birth of Dr B. R Ambedkar.

Yet after his struggle for more than three decades converged and focused towards upliftment of the neglected, deprived sections of the society, do we see the required change in the Indian philosophy of social existence.

One may acclaim, of course, they do see the differences now. Many of us live in metro cities and have become proud owners of cars from Hyundai to Baleno or even more remarkable segments. Many of us are proudly representing the IIT’s and IIM’s and hold important, key positions in the corporate as well public sector units. Many have reached the pinnacle of career growth and holding top positions in management as well other career fragments. We may ask ourselves at this point, has really everything has changed?

While we are part of the transformation process as engineered by our beloved leader and father like figure, yet becoming a doctor or an engineer does really strike the objective laid down by the ideology of Ambedkar. Why is it so that even after attaining higher education than most of the peers from the Hindu community, we are yet to observe or be an eyewitness to a greater social reform of mixing of blood amongst the Indians? We study in the same schools now, graduate from the same colleges, universities, and almost land into the similar job, career opportunities. But are we questioning ourselves at any point in our daily lives, or while lying in the bed, or in the bathroom, or in the toilet, or simply standing, seating, eating, and travelling. Are we aware of the fact that the mere existence of our so-called opportunities, the party time, the higher salaries, education, is a resultant of socio-political reform chain reaction process as ignited by the key constituents of particles namely knowledge and education poured into the reactor by Ambedkar?

We may call him a social scientist, there are other examples of public figures in the timeline, but the major contributor and direct influencer of the flawed pattern of untouchability were his steal character and he was able to wash off a little, the stigma attached to the fabric of untouchability.

Does the current education system, and job opportunities, convey true value or importance for us? Our children who migrate to foreign countries, like USA, United Kingdom or other European nations, do they really carry on the message of B R Ambedkar or the legacy along. There is a big gap between the ideologies of a son of the soil and the new age youth. While he had an option to never return to India, after getting an education, he wilfully came back and what he later did for the country is history. Well, one may comment, and it’s a known fact that independence struggle was an era of revolution and many lives were transformed to attain the objective of independence. Visionaries like him had a long struggle in life while having a clear goal in mind he envisaged a plan to empower himself with necessary knowledge and information to prepare for the fight coming along. What if he too like other people in the vicinity took the path to a regular household career, earning bread for the family spending time with children, and another chorus of our daily routine. After achieving formal higher education, he could have continued to be hated by the idiotic day to day humiliation by so called other peers. Instead, the spark which he was born with, instilled the necessary fuel into his brain, and the chemical reactions were of supreme nature, to cultivate thoughts that would bring down the entire existence of social apartheid. Ironically many generations have passed by after his demise; still, we haven’t seen the history to repeat itself in time.

The blame may be put on the genes of the lineage of Ambedkar, but to transform oneself into a world figure, the energy and mantle must have been of Himalayan magnitude. Why do we not see a new Ambedkar? This can be understood in the somewhat nearly true manner as below:

1. When Ambedkar was born, there was a pre-existing culture of social atrocities was ornamented on to people.
2. He was a brilliant student.
3. His life was full of misery, alienation from other leisurely objects.
4. He was having a particular character trait, that of a scholar.
5. His interest in education was overwhelming.
6. Getting birth into a low caste family, being harassed by villagers on pity issues like access to drinking water, denial to hygiene. Access denied in the elementary school and denied the right to stay in a clean room despite having the financial liberty.

Well, what is the pathway for success? In contrast to the above situation, we, on the other hand, have access to better education, opportunities, and study materials etc. Yet why is that so we have failed to recreate the magic of persona of Ambedkar? Have we failed the ideology! Remember the days when we were young we had to face the subjects like Mathematics, History, Civics, Geography, English, Hindi and a little more of other academic subjects. It didn’t finish there and more college circles awaited with a plethora of subject choice for us. Many young guns would be great at sports, or other areas like craft, art, music, apart from the regular studies. This is true for the current generation of students too.

Many of us have migrated to these countries only to the fate of becoming citizens of these nations and leaving behind the parent country. Well, one may question the motive behind asking, however, it’s a personal choice how an individual from a group of people who are teased by fellow countrymen rise and reach the pinnacle of career growth and individual heights of character. We are aware of the French revolution, or the independence struggle in the USA, and the struggle of slaves in that part of the earth. One may be amazed by the fact that there has never been a social revolution in our country like that above. While these revolutions have taken place not too distant in the past, or we must call fresh revolutions. In India, we have seen independence revolution in 1857, and a revolution as laid by our beloved leader, yet after the demise of him, there has been no continuation as he would have liked it to be. We are aware of the fact of division of the Indian society into four major chunks, by a lesser intelligent person like Mr Manu. What he was thinking or his state of mind, while articulating such disgraceful thoughts over the divide of human beings, was he even a commonly sensible person? Given the fact that Indians are proud inventors of zero, arithmetic and other scientific discoveries, and take pride in a so-called mythological scientific advancement, but where has it been lost? It seems the basis of Manu, contemplating the ideas of the social divide of humans was a result of his insecurity and fear of dying. Even if he was articulating the principles, there would have been a social existence where people were liberalised and enjoying the day to day life, only a shrewd character like him who represented a few groups of society, would do this barbaric act of dividing people. These contemporary thoughts of people of the time in history reflect even today in the fabric of Indian society. Pictorially Indian fabric is divided based on the principle of ‘graded – inequality’ (Ambedkar-devised-term). While we hear today voice for equality from every section of the society, what we forget is that the basics are not clear for these people who raise their voice. Unless there lies the principle of graded – inequality in air, the visible changes or reform is a phoenix concept.

Imagine a scene from the latest movie release and hit of the year, Bahubali. There can be seen two groups of masses spread across the lands at an unknown place (CGI), charging, running, marching towards each other. One group is carrying swords while another group is carrying varying shape and size weapons. Yet the motive for them is clear, death to win, and take over the control of the kingdom of “Maheshmati”. Ideologically this whole concept is so clear, we are curious to see the end and pick up our favourite in the war. In another case considering a WWE fight scene, where two fighters are beating black and blue each other, we out of entertainment need of our brains, pick up a favourite and support him/her to the end of the fight. We can imagine a cricket match at this point, where two teams are fighting for supremacy over each other in a well-organised manner.

Let us give a break to Mr Manu and let him control and devise the plan to play these games, or we must call his version of these fights or games. Always there would be four teams, playing against each other. Ironically he shall install dissimilar power levels at the beginning of the game to the players. A Brahmin being born as per the game theory would be gifted with 500 gold points to start with. A Kshatriya or warrior would be gifted 300 gold points. A vaishya would open the game with 100 gold points, and the Shudra barefoot with no gold point, yes!

The game theory would allow all the groups of Vaishya, Kshatriya and the Brahmin to participate and build their armies, Shudra, on the other hand, would be living alongside lines of the villages or in the jungles. The mere existence of this tribe seems to vary and is fully dependent on the sharing by the other three groups in the game. The Shudra would be surviving only on the food and the dead cattle lying outside the village for survival. But how he may rise and outnumber the population of the majority of three groups living in the gated community of village. It seems next to impossible for him to make any form of accumulation of gold, so as to buy services or build infrastructural units out of the available inventories. While he may be assigned a service to render to the above three groups at any click of the button, as he would be a resource to the above. The option to live is not provided by the game designer and is purely dependent on the time a gamer spends on playing, and the mindset of the gamer. If at any point he does not want to share food with the Shudra, the Shudra would be hungry for days (kids play games on PC for days in a row). At any point in time, the Brahmin would have rights to claim the gold coins from the other teams. Shudra being merely a spectator would be engaged in hard work like cutting trees, agriculture, but only to serve the other three groups. Well not to indulge more in the game, we all know what the game would look like, how it would feel to play it. The total debacle, right?

Why would one go against the rules of the game and help the Shudra to raise a land, to acquire wealth, to allow intercourse and bring offspring with girls from Vaishya, Brahmin, Kshatriya community?

Coming back to the illusion that we as a social group are growing, look at the fact that how many of have given it back to the society like Ambedkar did? Our children are running to countries like USA, and buying million dollars BMW’s. How many of us have read the complete texts of Ambedkar, why the books are not included in the school textbooks by NCERT or CBSE or other boards?

Why is it that Ramayan and Mahabharat are taught in our schools whereas other books of greater importance and facts writer by Ambedkar never find a place in even the libraries of these schools or colleges? Is there a true need for Ramayan or Mahabharat mythological books? Even our youths are confused as growing in a country like of ours, and many continue to believe the myth of Ram, and Pandavas. Only when we grow old and see the society with own eyes we start believing in the principles of B R Ambedkar.

Our students are growing in numbers, acquiring more knowledge and are brains storming, yet what we see is a major setback to the ideology of Ambedkar, by the disorientation of so-called or self-proclaimed leaders, to attain total annihilation of caste.

B R Ambedkar had clearly envisioned the fate of our people way back, saying if unity doesn’t bind us, we shall fall apart. Recently we have seen the result set pan India, in the form of state elections. Rohit Vemula’s death is not enough for our people to wake up. While there is the smoke of graded inequality in place, we shall imagine an India, having full citizen rights to us. Politically our people have gained, private property, assets, but only to the fact that the social recognition still lies in the belly of black waters of the vast oceans of vicious hatred. Becoming educated and rising to the top position is not enough today; the role we have to play from here on shall be a game changer.

Emancipation at will is another such step necessary towards vanquishing the layers of inequality and attains the purest form of social justice. Why shall we not form a body on a national level, and delegate authority to its regional bodies on the same principal of a central government, only to declare it to be autonomous institution towards protecting the rights of individuals, providing skilled employment, nurturing talent, without asking any support from the government in centre, is it possible? Why there arise not a social revolution amongst ourselves, which may be so strong that the left outs would cry to the quality and unity of strength we acquire in the making of a great nation. Institutionalising ourselves into a socio-political integrated body of human empowerment would call for a national level integration regardless of linguistic, state divide.

The major role of the institution would be to curtail any corruption in existence, to ensure knowledge level of youth, to create job opportunities, to cultivate the business model, to develop individuals and transform the youth with best characteristics, irrespective of gender. To educate our youth regardless of gender, to provide freedom, to respect our old parents, to understand the responsibility of us towards peers of the society, to create a strong fabric of unity and strength. To fight the enemy first power has to be attained, and to attain power requires sacrifice, sacrifice in the form from leisure, laziness, ignorance, and cultivate the will power. Hypothetical it may sound here, but on hope lives the will to survive. To emancipate, to live as fresh air, to breathe pure oxygen (lol-environmental changes- blame us), ever increasing population, increasing rates of crime against women, disharmony, denial to justice, intolerance, fear, anxiety, separation, depression, political turmoil, etc have failed, now only hope lies in the process of social change, unless we accept the change as catalyst reaction, we are ignoring the principles of all our leaders, and living a hypothetical form of existence for us and our children.

Let us come along, let us give back, let us take a stand, let us raise voice, let us not fall apart, let us unite, let us have a discussion, let us not make fool of ourselves, let us not deviate from the principles of Ambedkar. On his birthday celebrations let us take oath whatever we do, we do in the name of Ambedkar, only to improvise, to rise above from the tough situations, let us not be obstacles for ourselves, allow change, allow betterment, allow transformation. Transform for a better human being, a stronger version, in the fight for survival, and to lead in the jungle, let the instincts work and become wider to achieve the impossible. For achievement at the individual level, mixes the breed and chance for survival of the fittest.

Ambedkar in his own words had expressed if there is a need for blood let us not hesitate. He was clear, he is alive, comes and talks to us, lives, sleeps, eat with us. Let him not be an idol for worship, but to adapt his lifestyle, to adapt to his standards, at various levels we may find ourselves indulged, but a thought for independence struggle once again in India is our destiny. When there is war, there is turmoil, a change of order awaits, and the sea of equality with the powerful tide of immense magnitude shall bring the world to be a spectator of inverted reality, flipping, tossing and turning the barriers across masses. The greatness of this phenomenon shall impact thousands if not more, and that would be enough to generate a boost, to pass along the coming generations, to build onto themselves a strong character, enough like an Asoka, to become the rulers once again. And this time there shall be no settlement for a lesser role, only to be called the emancipators of the will. The story doesn’t end here; it’s a start, Annihilation of the ‘CASTE’.

Author – Ashish Gajbe, Bhopal