Ramniwas Gurjar

Forget @neha_aisa Bora. What my years at JNU have taught me, and what my experiences in Delhi have repeatedly confirmed, is that the hostility towards Ambedkar and Ambedkarites within sections of the cultural liberal-left is neither incidental nor merely a matter of ideological disagreement. It runs much deeper: a structural antagonism, a resentment that periodically resurfaces whenever those who have historically occupied positions of intellectual and cultural authority feel secure enough to express it. I have encountered this disdain across Delhi’s self-proclaimed liberal, Gandhian, socialist and left intellectual circles. The labels may differ, but the underlying contempt for Ambedkar, Ambedkarites and their emancipatory politics often remains remarkably consistent. Historically, many of these circles have also shared close political and cultural affinities with the Congress establishment in Delhi. Even in my interactions with people like Yogendra Yadav, I have sensed this barely concealed condescension towards Ambedkarite politics. The fundamental contradiction is that the liberal-left can celebrate universal emancipation in the abstract while remaining deeply uncomfortable with the actual political assertion of those whose emancipation would disrupt its own inherited cultural and intellectual authority. Ambedkar is welcome as a constitutional icon, a photograph or a ceremonial reference, but Ambedkarite politics becomes inconvenient when it challenges the hierarchy of who gets to speak, interpret history and define the terms of emancipation. So spare me the rhetoric of the 'larger struggle' if that struggle cannot accommodate Ambedkar, Ambedkarites and their historical experience of humiliation and exclusion. A politics that demands solidarity from our people while harbouring contempt for their intellectual traditions and political assertion is not emancipatory. It is simply another way of reproducing the very hierarchy it claims to oppose.

It was E.M.S. Namboodiripad, a Namboodiri Brahmin and prominent Left leader from Kerala, who opposed Babasaheb Ambedkar’s demand for separate electorates. And it was Neha Bora’s CPI(ML) that opposed OBC reservations. History is more complex than neatly ticking all the politically correct boxes of caste, class and gender.