Farcical Greatness Pageant

The media tamasha sponsored by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Mobile and conducted by CNN-IBN and the History channel, both owned by Network 18, has come to an end. As expected, Babasaheb Ambedkar has won the “greatness contest”. He is now anointed as the greatest Indian after Gandhi. The festivity that the result met with on social media shows dalits on the net in seventh heavens, oblivious of the earlier discomfort because contest organisers took for granted the greatness of Gandhi. Wise men began offering their interpretations of the result that young India has overcome the casteist prejudice of the previous generation in voting for Ambedkar. Has it really? Even as this wisdom spilled over much of the television screen, the news in the scroll at the bottom about the desecration of Ambedkar’s statues in many parts of Uttar Pradesh tended to contradict it.

Demeaning Ambedkar