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The illusion of
images
Unveiling idols
S. ANAND
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It is amusing to watch an entire broad
spectrum of brahamanical forces suddenly shrieking in one voice,
ostensibly a very hurt voice, about Mayawati wasting public
money over statues. Touché. Shame on Mayawati, but shame on all
those who never demanded why India has to slap a Nehru-Gandhi
nameplate on every road, chowk, scheme, bridge, ship, airport,
institute, hospital, you name it. No one is offended when Rahul
Gandhi gets Congress workers to feed poor Dalits. What kind of
tamasha that is? Why should Sikhs be asked to land and take off
from an airport named after Indira Gandhi, the premier who
ordered an Army attack on Sikhism's centre, and for which even
her daughter-in-law has to say sorry? Mayawati's statues may be
a waste of money and signify megalomania, but is that all there
is to the debate? In an effort to fit in, some Dalit scholars
are also rushing to condemn them but again in a most linear mode
of thinking. Will we ever see the debate's nuances? Is the
pressure to fit in so awesome that we refuse to be inspired by a
man as tall as Ambedkar? |
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 The statues
Mayawati erects and the massive birthday cakes she cuts do not
usually bother me. The same media that heaps scorn on Mayawati
habitually and predictably, enthusiastically celebrates and
participates in Rahul Gandhi’s paternalistic and offensive gesture
of getting the Congress cadre to feed Dalits on his birthday, and
gleefully reports the gestural politics of his occasionally spending
a night in Dalit homes. I am, in many ways, unrepentantly proud of
Mayawati. Here’s a Dalit woman who bears no patriarchal initial or
surname; a woman who perhaps shall leave no progeny behind. A
self-made icon who is not Maa in a mother-goddess fixated nation,
but Behen (sister). A voice of the disinherited who has turned the
legacy of inherited brutalities into an instrument of political
power.
Mayawati is not
adequately appreciated for scrapping an order by Uttar Pradesh’s
university and college principals to ban young women on campuses
from sporting jeans—smacking of gender bias and moral policing. But
in the news, again, is her obsession with statues of Ambedkar,
Kanshi Ram, and now, of herself. Mayawati’s statues may cost the
exchequer a lot, but unlike the secret installation of Ram Lalla in
Ayodhya, her idolatry does not threaten the social fabric. The
erection of statues is not, anyway, Mayawati’s unique idea.
Statues,and the symbolism inherent in them, have for long been a way
of claiming and reclaiming public space.
 The
spread of Buddhism ensured that life-size and giant images of the
Buddha sprouted across South Asia and the Far East. The first
temples (stupas) in the subcontinents were for the Buddha,
Tara and other Buddhist deities. Emperor Asoka’s edicts and
pillars of the third century BCE, at a time when there was little
Brahmi literacy in
India,
have survived to tell us the tale of the spread of dhamma. After
Buddhism was brutally stamped out of the country of its origin, what
we recognize today as ‘Hindu temples’ began to spring from the
eighth century onwards, their spread spurred by the bhakti movement
and the worship of beloved deities.
In modern times,
the British erected statues of civil servants and soldiers and named
roads and buildings after them;post-independence the Congress
pantheon’s imprimatur was stamped on roads, buildings, housing
colonies and parks. Government schemes have been launched in the
name of Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. Once regional parties became
powerful, local icons came to be celebrated. These were hardly ever
subjected to the kind of scrutiny and criticism reserved for
Mayawati.
Symbols and
memorials play a crucial role in deepening and broadening the scope
of democracy. Despite his admonition, Ambedkar’s birthday was
celebrated and his statues were erected in his own lifetime. The
Ambedkar birth centenary in 1990 saw his statues crop up in almost
every Dalit inhabitation in India. Poor Dalits pooling hard-earned
money erected these; in rural and urban ghettoes the statue became a
site of Dalits claiming hitherto-denied civic space, resulting
sometimes in social strife.
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Mayawati’s latest obsession with statues may cost the exchequer
a lot, but her idolatory does not threaten the social fabric.
That happensd when saffron aprivar backs secret installation of
Ram Lalla in Ayodhya. The erection of statues is not, anyway,
Mayawati’s unique idea. Statues,and the symbolism inherent in
them, have for long been a way of claiming and reclaiming public
space. |
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But an inflated and
overused symbol ceases to have meaning. Symbolism can only take the
Bahujan Samaj Party and Mayawati thus far; she will have to deliver
on material questions. As Nicolas Jaoul, a French scholar who has
done a micro-history of Ambedkar statues in Uttar Pradesh says,
“Ambedkarite symbolic politics have reached a saturation point…
While symbolic politics have played a significant part in
democratisation, today this seems a convenient motive for the Dalit
middle class leadership to sweep issues of class under the carpet
and to talk exclusively of issues of dignity.”
Mayawati could turn
to Ambedkar and introspect.
Ambedkar’s 1916
letter
On 28 March 1916,
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, then a M.A. student at Columbia University,
published his first public letter in the Bombay Chronicle. Following
the death, in 1915, of Pherozeshah Merwanjee Mehta, one of the
founders of the Indian National Congress, and of Gopal Krishna
Gokhale, another Congress leader and founder of Servants of India
Society, Ambedkar notes: “The memorial for Mr Gokhale is to take the
form of establishing branches of Servants of India Society at
various places, while that of Sir P.M. Mehta is to stand in the form
of a statue before the Bombay Municipal Office.”
While appreciating
the memorial for Gokhale, Ambedkar records his dismay over a statue
for Mehta being “very trivial and unbecoming.” He is “at pains to
understand why this memorial cannot be in a form” that will be “of
permanent use to posterity”. He suggests that the memorial should be
a public library named after Mehta. Drawing from his experience at
“one the biggest universities in the U.S.,”Ambedkar laments how we
have not yet “realized the value of the library as an institution in
the growth and advancement of society.”
 Later,
Ambedkar acted on these principles when he had the opportunities.
Driven by the belief that education was the greatest weapon Dalits
could have, he founded People’s Education Society in 1944;three
branches of Siddharth College beginning 1946; and Milind
Mahavidyalayain 1950. Ambedkar’s choice of Buddhist names for the
educational institutes he founded came from his understanding that
universities in ancient India — Takkasila, Nalanda, Vikramasila,
Somapura, Odantapuri, Jagaddala, Vallabi — were all Buddhist.
Hinduism never set up universities, only ashrams and gurukuls where
only a few Brahmin and Kshatriya men were imparted training.
But Mayawati should
not offer excuses today for the literacy rate among Dalit women in
UP being 30.5 per cent. The total number of Dalit graduates in UP is
a pathetic 3 per cent. Ambedkar would shudder at this. The UGC says
India needs 1,500 more universities. Mayawati could focus on the
education of Dalits, create universities of excellence and name them
after Ambedkar, Phule and other forgotten subaltern icons. Statues
for herself — “very trivial and unbecoming” — only feed her obscene
delusions of grandeur and betray a fear of mortality.
In his concluding
speech to the Constituent Assembly on November 25 1949, Ambedkar
noted: “In India, ‘Bhakti’ or what may be called the path of
devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in
magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other part of
the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the
soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to
degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”
Mayawati could yet
heed Ambedkar.
Anand heads Navayana Publishers.
8
July 2009
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