New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh has decided it is a worthwhile endeavour to expend official energy and resources in tinkering posthumously with the name of B.R. Ambedkar – the lawyer, economist and Dalit icon who led the drafting India’s constitution.
On March 29, the UP government announced that Ambedkar will now be referred to as ‘Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’ in all official documents and records in the state. ‘Ramji’, his father’s first name and his middle initial will be fully spelt out, and the spelling of ‘Ambedkar’ in Hindi will change from अम्बेडकर to आम्बेडकर (‘Aambedkar’) with the objective of helping people pronounce his name ‘correctly’.
The idea came from Ram Naik, the UP governor and former BJP MP, who, in December 2017, urged the state government to make the change. “I am a Marathi and so was he. Hindi-speaking states have been writing his name incorrectly. Most importantly, his name is written as Bhim and Rao as two words, however, the correct way to write is Bhimrao, which is one name,” Naik told ANI.
It is a common patriarchal practice in Maharashtra for the father’s name to be added as the middle name. However, several prominent leaders from the state, including Ram Naik himself, do not follow the practice. Were he to follow the practice, Ram Naik would be known as Ram Damodar Naik. Prakash Javadekar would be known as Prakash Keshav Javadekar, Prithviraj Chavan would be known as Prithviraj Dajisaheb Chavan, and so on.
And if the practice of using the precise birth name were to be imposed, UP’s priest-turned-chief minster Adityanath would henceforth be known as Ajay Mohan Bisht.
The UP government’s move has attracted strong criticism from Dalit organisations and intellectuals. “We would like to see if Yogi Adityanath would like to call himself Yogi Jaatav Adityanath or Yogi Chamaar Adityanath or Yogi Shudr Adityanath. Why can’t he do that? His name is anyway an adopted name. If he is so concerned about Dalits, he should adopt one of these surnames to send out a strong message,” said Sushil Gautam of the Bhim Sena, a Dalit rights organisation in Western UP.
Dalit organisations have also expressed surprise at the UP government announcing that it will be using his full name in official communication. “What is the big deal? Everyone knows his name is Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. It’s not a hidden fact that the UP government has unearthed. If they are going to use his full and correct name, so be it. Why create a pomp-and-show about it?” asked Vinay Ratan Singh, one of the founders of the Bhim Army, a Dalit rights organisation named after Ambedkar that rose to national prominence last year following the caste-related violence which broke out in Saharanpur.
Singh believes that the move of the UP government is the BJP-RSS’s attempt to appropriate Ambedkar and bring him under the Hindu fold. “Babasaheb (Ambedkar) is the icon for all Dalit movements. He is the guiding force in our efforts at social reform. He shunned Hinduism and converted to Buddhism. The BJP-RSS will not talk about that. Instead, they are trying to appropriate him by insisting on using ‘Ramji’,” he said.
If the practice of using the precise birth name were to be imposed, UP’s priest-turned-chief minster Adityanath would be known as Ajay Mohan Bisht. Credit: PTI
The shunning of Hinduism by Ambedkar that Singh alluded to is his rejection of the Hindu religion, its caste system and his conversion to Buddhism in 1956 along with almost half a million Dalits. Annihilation of Caste is an undelivered address self-published by Ambedkar in 1936, in which he criticised Hinduism for the caste system that it propagates and announced his decision to ‘leave the Hindu fold’.
“You must not only discard the Shastras, you must deny their authority, as did Buddha and Nanak. You must have the courage to tell the Hindus that what is wrong with them is their religion – the religion which has produced in them this notion of the sacredness of caste,” Ambedkar wrote in the undelivered address.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati also reacted sharply to the UP government’s move, calling it a publicity stunt. “Baba Saheb used to work for the betterment of Dalits, whereas BJP is doing drama to attract Dalit votes. In the regime of Narendra Modi, Dalit atrocities are at an all-time high. The new-found love for Dalits of the Modi government is just a show-off, nothing else. When they don’t write the full name of Gandhiji as Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi and the full name of Narendra Modi as Narendra Damodardas Modi, then what is the need to write the full name of Baba Saheb? It is not required, ” she said.
Tension between so-called upper castes and Dalits has been on the rise in UP, particularly in Western UP, in the last one year. Saharanpur saw several incidents of caste-related violence in April and May 2017, which deepened caste divisions in the area, as reported by The Wire earlier. We have also reported in the past about the BJP-RSS’s concern over the Dalit electorate moving away from BJP in the region.
Satish Prakash, a Meerut-based Dalit intellectual and political activist, argues that political considerations are at the heart of the BJP government’s move. “There are only political reasons for this. They know what Baba Saheb means for the Dalit movement and they want to try and bring Dalits into the Hindu fold by trying to appropriate him,” he said.
“They can try all they like. But, my question to them is: will they allow a Dalit to be a priest at the Ram mandir that they want to build?” Prakash asked.