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Hyderabad, 14 April 2023. The 125-foot bronze Ambedkar statue unveiled by the Telangana government on his birth anniversary — blue suit, red book, raised finger, on a pedestal modelled on Parliament.
ZVIssue 42

Politics / Justice / Institutions · Research Access

Ambedkar Is Not a God. He Was Made One in 1990 for Votes — by Politicians Who Never Read Him, Defended by Followers Who Throw Paint at Anyone Who Does

Ambedkar died on 6 December 1956, out of office, out of Parliament, his party wiped out at the polls, his last book unpublished for want of money. For thirty years afterwards he was a regional figure, honoured in Maharashtra and largely ignored elsewhere. Then, between 1987 and 1997, he became something no Indian politician had ever been: a deity with a fixed iconography, a sacred date, a Bharat Ratna, a portrait in Parliament, and a body of followers for whom quoting his own words is blasphemy. This closing article tells how that happened, who did it and why, and then sets out — as fairly as we can — the ledger of a great and mistaken man.

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Nagpur, 14 October 1956. Ambedkar and his wife Dr. Savita Ambedkar arriving at the Dhamma Deeksha ground — the end of the twenty-one-year search.Cover photo: Unknown author · Public domain · Source ↗

Special 41 · Politics / Justice / Institutions · Research Access

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Ambedkar Rejected Christianity Too: Conversion Would "Denationalise" the Untouchables, and Baptised Dalits Stayed Untouchable — Why He Said No to Every Religion but One

From 1935, when he announced he would leave Hinduism, to 1956, when he became a Buddhist, Ambedkar was the most courted man in India. Christian missions, the Muslim League, the Sikh leadership, the Hindu Mahasabha and the British government all wanted to know where he would take his people — because, in the census politics of the day, six crore Untouchables changing religion would change who ruled India. This article is about what he thought of Christianity in particular, what he wrote about the Indian Christians who had already converted, why he said no to every offer, and what his final choice says about the man.

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Bombay, 6 January 1940. Muhammad Ali Jinnah (centre, in the three-piece suit), Periyar E.V. Ramasamy (seated, in the shawl) and Ambedkar (far right) at Jinnah's residence — eleven weeks before the Lahore Resolution and eleven months before Thoughts on Pakistan.Cover photo: Unknown author · Public domain · Source ↗

Special 40 · Politics / Justice / Institutions · Research Access

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Ambedkar on Islam: "Brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims Only," "All the Social Evils of the Hindus and Something More," and Moplah Was "a Jehad" — the Book Nobody Quotes

In 1940, seven years before Partition, Ambedkar wrote the most detailed Indian analysis of the demand for Pakistan that exists. In it he said that Muslims "have all the social evils of the Hindus and something more," that "Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin," that the 1921 Moplah violence "was not a Hindu-Moslem riot. It was a Jehad" — and, in the same book, that "if Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country." Today one side quotes the first half and the other side quotes the second, and nobody reads the book. This article reads the book.

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1927. The printed Marathi handbill announcing the Mahad conference at which the Manusmriti was burned. Paired with (Mahad, 20 March 1927, the reception committee of the first Mahad satyagraha, Ambedkar seated at centre).Cover photo: Unknown author / Not sure. · Public domain / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source ↗

Special 39 · Politics / Justice / Institutions · Research Access

Written byZoomed Vinay

Ambedkar Hated Hinduism and Said So for 30 Years: He Burned the Manusmriti, Called the Vedas Worthless, and Made 400,000 People Swear Against Rama and Krishna

The man garlanded at Hindu temples on his birth anniversary spent thirty years saying, in print and from the stage, that Hinduism was beyond repair. He burned its oldest law book in public. He wrote that Rama's killing of Shambuka was "the worst crime that history has ever recorded." On 14 October 1956 he led the largest religious conversion in modern history and made every convert swear, among other things, "I renounce Hinduism which is harmful to humanity." None of this is hidden. It is printed, at public expense, by the Government of Maharashtra. This article puts it all in one place, explains why he said it, gives the strongest case for him, and asks whether a man who said these things can honestly be worshipped as a Hindu saint.

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July 1942. The Viceroy's Executive Council after its expansion; the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, is seated at the centre in the light suit with the Commander-in-Chief in uniform beside him; Ambedkar, the new Labour Member, is seated in the front row.Cover photo: Unknown author · Public domain · Source ↗

Special 38 · Politics / Justice / Institutions · Research Access

Written byZoomed Vinay

Ambedkar Was Not a Freedom Fighter. In 1942 He Was a Minister in the British Government That Jailed 60,000 Indians — and He Defended It

Every 9th of August India remembers the Quit India Movement, the last great push that forced the British to leave. Every 14th of April India remembers Ambedkar. Almost nobody puts the two dates side by side. In July 1942, twenty days before the Congress leaders were arrested, Ambedkar took his seat in the Viceroy's Executive Council — the British cabinet in India — as its Labour Member. He defended the arrests in the legislature, broadcast for the government on radio, stayed in office through Gandhi's 21-day fast when three Indian colleagues walked out, and in 1946 wrote to a British minister that "British Rule in India owes its very existence to the help rendered by the Untouchables." This is his record in his own words and in the British government's own secret files — and the honest argument he would have made in his defence.

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