His face doesn’t shine on currency notes. Neither does Ariel Sharon make floral tributes at his Samadhi. Unlike half clad bania fakirs, he is well dressed and well read. However for millions of unlettered, shabbily dressed and routinely tortured people, living in the margins of India’s village `republics’, he is what Moses was to the Jews, Spartacus was to the slaves of the roman republic. However it doesn’t come as a surprise that school history books in India hardly speak of this revolutionary who inspired and instilled confidence in sixteen billion people who were destined to ‘serve’ in ‘a harmonious Hindu society based on division of labour’. History was always written by the victors, the oppressors and the elites.
Bhimayana comes as a surprise. A pictorial biography of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was much needed to fill the vacuum that exists in the popular representation of the Dalit icon. Ambedkar has been subjected to a lot of use and abuse in recent years by the upper caste Indian intelligentsia. ‘Nationalist Marxist’ historians have edited his life to perpetuate their hegemony. For them, Ambedkar is just the chairman of the drafting committee of Indian Constitution. The Hindu right has appropriated him to vilify the ‘left liberal’ secular dispensation. In their office walls, Ambedkar shares space with Savarkar and Golwalkar. The left-liberal intelligentsia sees him as a liberal force in post-Independent India dominated by Hindu-traditionalists- the architect of Hindu Code Bill and a supporter of Nehruvian secularism. Ambedkar- the “untouchable” Mahar fighting against centuries of oppression by caste hindus, is hardly ever a part of this discourse. Bhimyana is an attempt to discover the real Ambedkar by dusting away the layers of distraction.
The book impresses from its very beginning. It’s a clear break away from the style of storytelling popularized by western graphic novelists like Satrapi and Sacco and imitated by their Indian counterparts. Durgabai and Shyam – tribal artists of the Pradhan Gond tradition do an extraordinary job by telling the story by invoking images from their surroundings. One is left spellbound in by the sophistication of tribal art while depicting Mahad Satyagraha or Babasaheb’s experience of upper caste insensitivities in Baroda. However that is where my excitement ends.
The gifted illustrators of this book are neither dalits nor are aware of the movements of dalit assertion. As a result, their art fails to convey the pain and angst of millions of dalits in this country. The book depoliticizes the life of Babasaheb and makes him look like a tragic Hindi film hero. In an effort to steer clear from controversy, it does not devote much space to the ideological differences between Gandhi and Babasaheb. Ambedkar’s critique of romantic notions of “gram swaraj” and his opposition to oriental obscurantism are not discussed in detail. As a result, never does the reader feel angry and agitated at the injustice inherent in Indian society. The only emotion it evokes is that of sympathy. However I don’t blame Durgabai or Subhash for this. I would rather blame the publishers, who in spite of the best of intentions, have imposed the politics of caste on Durgabai and Shyam and robbed them of their own politics of jal, jangal aur zammen. As a result there appears to be an eerie disconnect between the story and the story teller.
What is even more upsetting is that Ambedkar’s story is used to make a very weak case for affirmative action. By indulging in this naivety, the publishers do a great deal of disservice to the Dalit cause. A much stronger case for affirmative action could have been made by using the huge amount of academic work on affirmative action by Indian scholars like Sukhdeo Thorat, Ashwini Deshpande and western scholars like Glenn Loury, Thomas Wiesskoph and William Darity Jr.
Having said that, I would like to thank the authors and the publishers for trying to narrate Babasaheb’s life to the world, something that upper caste historians have consciously avoided. I just hope that they learn from their experience, and come out with a more political and hard-hitting graphic novel on the life of Babasaheb.
