Thread by @KumarSeshadri

There has been a lot of outrage about the scrubbing of #MaulanaAzad from the history textbooks in India by the BJP, and justifiably so.

A thread 🧵. (1/n)

But for the last 75 years, nobody seems to have been outraged by the fact that the greatest Indian public intellectual of the 21st century, Dr. BR #Ambedkar, was practically scrubbed from history textbooks by Congress governments and BJP governments alike.

(2/n)

Sure, when I studied about Ambedkar in Maharashtra State Board textbooks, they told me that he was the author of the #indianconstitution and had grown up enduring great #castediscrimination. But THAT WAS ALL.

(3/n)

I had to wait many decades to discover Ambedkar on my own, and when I did, by reading "The #AnnihilationofCaste," I understood why Savarna-dominated governments led by the #Congress or #BJP always tried to minimize Ambedkar.

(4/n)

Yes, don't be fooled by the BJP's current embrace of Ambedkar. They despise him as much as the Congress leaders do. Both parties give only lip service to Ambedkar. Just like #Gandhi. The ideas of both men have been discarded, but they are useful symbols to be exploited.

(5/n)

That's why you have roads named in every Indian city after both Ambedkar and Gandhi. Every government office will have their portraits. And every #Rupee note has Gandhi's face. It's purely tokenism.

(6/n)

That's because Ambedkar launched the fiercest, most logical, and clearest attack on the caste system in Hinduism. He explained why caste discrimination was the basis of Hinduism, and so caste could only be destroyed by destroying Hinduism.

(7/n)

He said one could not expect to get justice by reforming Hinduism; that it was beyond repair. And so, he decided to leave Hinduism and embraced #Buddhism.

This is why Ambedkar is mentioned so briefly in history textbooks in India.

(8/n)

His philosophy horrified #Hindus. Most Hindu political leaders simply couldn't stomach his criticisms of their religion. But they couldn't ignore the man, either.

That's why they have created cartoons of Ambedkar in Indian history textbooks for 75 years.

(9/n)

The fact is, no Savarna leader today cares about Ambedkar's ideas. Had he not been the chief architect of India's #Constitution, he would have been erased from India's history.

The only Congress leaders who understood that Ambedkar was right were #Gandhi and #Nehru.

(10/n)

#Nehru made #Ambedkar India's first #lawminister, even though Ambedkar had exposed the Congress Party as a corrupt, untrustworthy organization in his writings.

That's because Nehru, for all his faults, was a great leader who understood that Ambedkar was a genius.

(11/n)

Gandhi was another person who understood, albeit slowly, the truth of Ambedkar's ideas on Hinduism. But Gandhi was a politician above all else, and he knew that the deeply conservative Savarna businessmen who supported the Congress could never accept Ambedkar's views.

(12/n)

Even the Dalit politicians who have come to power in the decades since #IndianIndependence in 1947 have turned out not to be idealistic followers of Ambedkar but cynical power grabbers. How many of them have truly tried to uplift Dalits? Zero.

(13/n)

One of Ambedkar's key slogans was "Educate, Organize, Agitate." Dalit leaders organize and agitate, but how many of them are themselves educated, let alone people who help others get educated? Why have we not seen a Dalit leader of Ambedkar's eminence ever since?

(14/n)

With no #reservation and a hostile society against him, Ambedkar still managed to go to London and New York and get the highest degrees the best Universities in the world could bestow. With so many facilities for Dalits in India today, why can't Dalits today match him?

(15/n)

So while it's not nice that Muslims are being scrubbed out of Indian history today, let's not forget that Dalits have been scrubbed out of history for the last 75 years. Not just Ambedkar, how much do people know of the life of Jyotiba #Phule?

(16/end)

@threadreaderapp unroll