DC Edit | The battle over Ambedkar’s legacy mainly for dalit votes

The political slugfest that is on nationally and which led to a day in the Winter Session becoming its worst in India’s parliamentary history may be owed to the facetious comments the home minister Amit Shah made on the floor. Ambedkar is no less than a god to his followers who constitute about 17 per cent of India’s 968 million voters and hence even an allusion to ‘God’ in the debate on the Constitution, of which he was the principal architect, became the tinder that set the issue on fire whose repercussions are hard to gauge now. Truth to tell, Ambedkar’s political and social influence on Indian society has far outgrown the social justice movement he propounded to empower the suppressed and the backward who, being on the lowest rung of India’s reprehensible caste system, suffered the worst of the discrimination. Neither the Congress under Nehru, which could not fully support Ambedkar’s fight on the highest principles and ideals — and so he resigned as law minister, nor the BJP, which has been prone to claiming his legacy in modern times, are the real inheritors of Ambedkar’s valiant fight for social justice.