Ambedkar’s Legacy: Critique Of Religion, Quest For Social Justice & The Paradox Of Constitutionalism

By Jayadeva Uyangoda –April 27, 2016

Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda

May I begin my talk this evening by thanking His Excellency Y. K. Sinha the Indian High Commissioner in Colombo for inviting me to deliver this lecture on B. R. Ambedkar? This event is part of a series of celebrations in connection with the 125th birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar, which fell on the 14th of April. I am afraid my talk may not celebrate great Ambedkar’s memory and legacy as such. It will only present some disjointed and hurriedly constructed thoughts about the life and legacy of this great son of South Asia.

Ambedkar’s name is well known in Sri Lanka. In Sinhalese society, the popular culture of which I am somewhat familiar with, Ambedkar is known as the leader of India’s Harijan communities. The word dalit is not in much use in Sinhalese society. The Gandhian neologism of harijan is better known. Ambedkar is respected as the Harijan leader who embraced Buddhism along with several thousands of his followers. Sinhalese Buddhists are particularly sympathetic to Ambedkar and his social reform movement. For them, Ambedkar’s project constituted a critique and a rejection of Hinduism. This is despite the fact that Buddhism has historically and in terms of elite as well as popular practices been closely interwoven with Hinduism. Quite independent of Ambedkar, Sri Lankan Buddhists have a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards Hinduism and Hindu traditions as well. It is almost like their ambivalence towards India in general, as some of their intellectuals and professionals seem to be inclined to demonstrate these days.

Ambedkar

At the same time, talking publicly of Ambedkar by an ordinary non-Indian South Asian before an audience with even a few well-informed Indian citizens is no mean task. Amebdkar’s life, work and thought have been understood, interpreted, appropriated and commented on a variety of different ways in India. A Sri Lankan, following the debates and controversies taking place in the Indian media around Ambedkar’s legacy, can only be perplexed by the sheer complexity of even the very idea of what his legacy might mean. Three recent events occurred in India add to this unending political drama of making sense of the life, work and thought of one of the greatest Indians of the twentieth century. The suicide of Rohith Vemula, a post-graduate student of the Hyderabad Central University, the arrest and release from custody of, and the subsequent speech by, Kanhaiya Kumar of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the public embrace of Buddhism by the mother and brother of Rohith Vemula on the day of Ambedkar Jayanthi last week are these three very recent events in which the invocation of Ambedkar’s legacy has been made to some dramatic effect.

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