A memorial for Dr Ambedkar: Why look to London when his Dadar house lies neglected?

Here is something quite odd: suddenly, the Maharashtra government has decided to buy a bungalow in London where Dr B R Ambedkar was a tenant between 1920 and ’22 when a student at London School of Economics. However, the house he had built himself in Mumbai’s Dadar in 1934, on the ground flood of the Rajgriha building, remains locked and there is an inexplicable hesitation in making it a memorial.

The preference for the London property could be explained in two ways. One, buying something in London is more macho than converting a local premises and more theatrical to get bigger headlines. Two, the decision is practical since it was put on the block by the owner, the state grabbed the opportunity. Both are likely.

Without doubt, converting the London premises, which has a floor space of 2050 sq ft, would help draw attention of Englishmen to the eminent leader, the cause of equity he espoused and for the immense contribution to the writing of the Indian Constitution.

The plan to convert Rajgriha, his Mumbai home, into a memorial by the state emerged in 1990 when Sudhakarrao Naik was the chief minister. It is said Ambedkar had built the house because he needed more space to keep his books. The third generation after Ambedkar, including his grandson and former MP Prakash Ambedkar, reside on the first floor and a few tenants as well. They were all to be relocated and the work on the memorial to begin.

However, Sharad Pawar allotted the vacant land which was a possible relocation site for Ambedkar’s descendants to a police housing project and thereafter no one has moved to implement the decision for a memorial.

Vivek Giridhari, writing on Sunday in Pudhari , points to how the ground floor of Rajgriha has been locked for so long that even the locks now bear signs of ageing. Giridhari quotes Prakash Ambedkar as saying the idea of converting the house into a memorial itself has marked its silver jubilee. People who believe in Ambedkar call on the address only to find their access blocked by a shut door and they just bow before it and leave. Some read the notebook hung on the closed door.

That book is meant to mark the attendance of the beat policemen, who write in Marathi the English equivalent of ‘all is well’ or that a particular policemen on an anti-chain snatching patrol dropped by. They seem to do it fairly regularly, perhaps the only attention the place gets from the state.

Just as they do on 6 December of every year, Dalits throng the place before or after their visit to the Chaityabhoomi on the Dadar seaface, the place where Ambedkar was cremate,  to pay their homage to the man they deified because he is their saviour. The rest of the time, people come by to this property in Dadar East to try to get a glimpse of what lies inside but are left disappointed.

While announcing the decision to buy the London house, Maharashtra education minister Vinod Tawde had said, “This house is of cultural and national importance and pride of millions of people of India”.

Indeed it would be, but to the most Indian Dalits, Rajgriha is more easily accessible than the to-be built memorial in London.

The Maharashtra government is committed to build a greenfield memorial, but its shape and content haven’t been determined yet. However, everyone says it will be on the ‘grand’ scale of the Indu Mills plot near Shivaji Park. At no time was it ever announced that the Rajgriha would be not be on the agenda any more.

However, the Indu Mill project is being pushed by RPI chief Ramdass Athawale, and Rajgriha has been the cause of Prakash Ambedkar, the two rival Dalit leaders. Ambedkar, though a maverick, has hardly ever been predisposed towards the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Shiv Sena. Athawale has opportunistically flirted with all of them over the years.