Protest in the US demanding Home Minister Amit Shah’s resignation, over his derogatory remarks on Dr. Ambedkar

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The protests were preceded by a tribute to former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, who is largely credited with India’s liberalization policies in the 90’s which helped set the stage for India to be a global player economically.

Members of the Texas Coalition Group, formed in 2018, with a multi faith representation, and members/volunteers from various political parties in India, have been relentlessly taking up issues exposing the rise of Hindutva, not just in India but the US as well. Hindutva, a separatist ideology practised by Hindu fanatics, has been on a rise since BJP leader Narendra Modi, a lifelong member of the RSS, became the prime minister of India in May 2014.

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The RSS which has been nurturing Hindu fanaticism since its inception in 1925, along with its political wing the BJP, is a complete anti-thesis of Dr. Ambedkar’s inclusive social and political beliefs, rooted in democracy. RSS and its sister organization the Hindu Mahasabha, have been spewing venom against Dr. Ambedkar for decades, ever since he was chosen to draft the Indian constitution in 1949,  the progressive and secular contents of which were an antithesis of everything that RSS professed.

To RSS, a ‘shudra (untouchable)’, belonging to the lowest rung of the caste system drafting the Hindu Code Bill, considered progressive with reforms in the Hindu personal law, was ‘sacrilege’. For the RSS “Manusmriti’, a reactionary brahminical text, is its guiding principle, which, among other things, says that the killing of a cow is a capital crime without pardon, the killing of a Shudra was not. This is also the guiding principle of the present day Indian government led by Modi.

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The Hindu Code Bill proposed reformist laws against conservative practices like polygamy, endogamous marriages, patriarchal inheritance laws among Hindu communities advocating equal inheritance rights for women, providing equal educational opportunities for women, ending caste discrimination and so on, aiming to create a modern and progressive Hindu society. This was strongly opposed by Hindutva groups and leaders like Veer Savarkar, (a self professed guru of Modi), resulting in the Bill’s defeat in Parliament in the 1940’s. The bill was later reintroduced by Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950’s and became the basis of very progressive acts like the Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Succession Act among others.

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Dr. Ambedkar, who swore that even though he was born a Hindu, he would not die a Hindu, to break the shackles of the caste system, converted to  Buddhism, in October 1956, along with 600,000 of his followers, in the very heart of RSS headquarters  in Nagpur, Maharashtra. The most categorical statement by Dr. Ambedkar is in his own book, Pakistan or the Partition of India (1946) where he said, “If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country…Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost.”

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Ambedkarites which include the SC (Scheduled Caste) and the ST (Scheduled Tribes) and the OBC’s (Other Backward Class) make up anywhere between 75% of the ‘Hindu” population to 90 % in Central India, in states like Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. The entire south is dominated by over 90% of the SC+ST+OBC vote bank, which pose a severe threat to Modi’s rise as an extreme Hindu nationalist leader. BJP/RSS lives in constant fear that the war cry of the Ambedkarities “Jai Bhim”, (victory to ‘Bhim’) may very well be an antidote for BJP’s extreme nationalism and its war cry “Jai Shri Ram”, latching on to the Hindu god Lord Ram.

Amit Shah’s uncalled for remarks in Parliament suggesting that constantly uttering Ambedkar’s name constituted a futile exercise and in contrast the invocation of the name of Lord Ram would pave the way for heaven, caused a wave of dismay and anger among millions of Dr. Ambedkar’s followers who revere him as their only god. The widespread protests witnessed in India, demanding Shah’s resignation following the distasteful remarks, sent a shock wave in Modi’s camp, already upset with Modi’s lack lustre performance at the recent parliamentary elections.

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Ambedkarities in the US, too, expressed their displeasure at the uncalled for remarks, by holding the protest in Dallas. They have in the last few years also intensified their struggle in the US universities and gigantic corporations like Amazon, to curb caste discrimination, which has increased in the US, in direct proportion to the rise of extreme Hindu nationalism in India.