Rescuing Ambedkar

The desecration of B.R. Ambedkar statues, in other words, have become synonymous with Dalit assertion, which in turn occasions an antipathy towards him from intermediate castes. The historian Janaki Nair says that the new trend of deploying statues of Ambedkar in public spaces in cities and villages symbolises the self-assertion on the part of Dalits. V. Purdie-Vaughns and R. Eibach identify how marginalised and subordinate groupsand especially minorities within minorities, such as Dalit womenare rendered invisible through three key processes: firstly, historical invisibility refers to the absence or misrepresentation of such groups from mainstream historical narratives; secondly, cultural invisibility points to the systematic devaluation of subaltern cultural forms and the failure of national cultures to incorporate the distinctive experiences that subordinate groups face; and thirdly and finally, they point towards the political invisibility occasioned by the neglect of issues pertaining to the marginalised by even those groups that claim to be inclusive. "Learning the use of symbolic means: Dalits, Ambedkar statues, and the state in Uttar Pradesh", Contributions to Indian Sociology 40: pages175-207.