One of my more embarrassing  memories of life in Delhi and my travels in north India has been to see the ubiquitous public statues of Babasaheb Doctor Bhimrao Ambedkar — to give him the full title accorded to him by the Dalits of India — often encased in cages of thick iron bars. Ambedkar, unlike Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, had never really been in prison, so this was not representational. The cages were to protect  the statues from the wrath of the people. The man, in his western suit and tie, his arm raised pointing to the horizon, his left arm cradling a Book (which was not a Holy scripture) was an affront to antiquity, tradition, culture. Even as a lump of concrete. The embarrassment was in explaining to European and African friends why the Father of the  Constitution of India had to be so protected.

Many statues still remain in iron cages, despite Behenji Mayawati’s four terms as the Bahujan Samaj Party chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, and her huge monuments in sandstone to the man in NOIDA and Lucknow. His photographs are a diptych of a  two-god pantheon, with Gautama the Buddha in the homes and hutments of tens of millions of Dalits from the borders of Karnataka and Andhra in the south to Jammu in the North. Meanwhile the rape of Dalit girls and the lynching of young men barely makes it to Page One.

The irony has not been lost that the city of Nagpur is the headquarters of the self styled protector of the Hindu faith and culture Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) as it is to the neo-stupa that commemorates Ambedkar’s rejection of Hinduism in one of history’s  largest and most peaceful religious conversions, in 1956. A perpetual challenge, so to speak.

Dr Ambedkar had declared as early as 1940 that, “If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country… [It] is a menace to liberty, equality and fraternity. On that account it is incompatible with democracy. Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost”. Earlier, in the 1930s, he said, “India is a peculiar country and her nationalists and patriots are a peculiar people. A patriot and a nationalist in India is one who sees with open eyes his fellowmen treated as being less than men. But his humanity does not rise in protest.”

It was not surprising that the 22-point oath he administered to the 380,000 men and women who followed him into Buddhism had an acerbic, bitter, rejection of just about everything the Hindus of his time held holy. Said today, it would invite immediate arrest, if not trigger a major riot.

Ambedkar stood religion on its head. Not just Hinduism, but also Islam and Christianity. He saw the humanism, and the equality spoken of by their founders (Mohammed and Jesus), but also their reality on the soil of India. His views on Indian Muslims in particular were contentious, questioning the extent of their acceptance of democracy as much as what he felt was their resistance to reforms. In his defence, academicians say, Ambedkar,  no scholar of Islam, perhaps reflected a Western, Christian, perspective of  that faith. Indian Christianity could also not stand his critical eye and stood condemned for absorbing the evils of caste and not being able to politically protect the rights of the weak. It was therefore in Buddhism he found the fusion of the qualities he sought in a religion.

“The society must have either the sanction of law or the sanction of morality to hold it together. Without either, the society is sure to go to pieces…  Religion, if it is to survive, must be in consonance with reason, which is another name for science.  It is not enough for religion to consist of moral code, but its moral code must recognise the fundamental tenets of liberty, equality and fraternity.” (Ambedkar)

It is a contradiction that Ambedkar was still in government when the cabinet of Mr Jawaharlal Nehru enacted the infamous Presidential Order if 1950, amending Article 341 of the Constitution to limit affirmative action including reservations in Parliament and legislatures to Dalits who affirmed Hinduism. In effect, it was the first and the most powerful anti-conversion law — punitive in impact and politically disempowering Dalit Christians and Muslims forever.  It would seem ironic that the political and religious leadership of both Islam and Christianity now affirm fealty to  Ambedkar though their social structures and casteism have not materially changed since he put the spotlight  on them three quarters  of a century ago.

The Communists too have discovered Ambedkar, together with their discovery of caste as the one constant of the land, much more than class. As for the Congress, the slow process of recognising the various stalwarts of the freedom struggle and the formation of the republican democracy continues its tortoise pace, one icon at a time. Always too late to put it to any political use.

For the BJP, political squeamishness is smothered in the burly embrace of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who emerges from his OBC persona to express his fascination with Ambedkar. Love profound is now also shown him by the leadership of the RSS and many in the religious hierarchy who supported Lal Krishna Advani’s Rath Yatra and the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in 1992. It has been a long trajectory since the conservative and orthodox Hindu leadership in Parliament that fought Ambedkar on codification of their traditional personal laws to when, in the period of Atal Behari Vajpayee as the undisputed  leader of the political Hindu, the redoubtable Arun Shourie wrote his Worshipping False Gods.

This week’s Organiser and Panchjanya, the official organs, of the RSS, are ‘Specials’ on the 125 years of Ambedkar’s life, the Quasquicentennial Special, just as Outlook, the voice of the liberal Indian, labels its own cover story on the man. The paeans that the RSS writers sing would embarrass even their own leaders and the ‘bhakts’. The tile of the special is “Ultimate Unifier’, and the subtitle reads: “Dr Ambedkar is erroneously projected as a divisive figure by certain vested interests, but recognition of his contributions will finally prove to be unifier for Bharat.” The editorial and seven articles extoll every virtue of Ambedkar, re-interpreting and translating his memory and his heritage for the Sunday homilies at the Boudhikis (discourses) at the Shakhas. Every crease is ironed out, every contrariness and critique photoshopped.

There is, understandably, no mention of the 22-point oath that Babasaheb administered in Nagpur to his followers, now appropriately called Ambedkarites.

Everybody has suddenly discovered Ambedkar and wants to claim him. Perhaps they have to. The Ambedkar thesis gives them a political crutch and legitimacy to fight discrimination, which otherwise would have become an entirely religious-based, communal, argument. They may not really love Ambedkar, but they cannot live in security without him.