Thursday, November 29, 2007

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar

By Prakash Vishwasrao for Lok Wangmaya Griha. Sanjay Surwade. wonderful book. Still reading it. After a long time fell in love with a book. Last was Francis Fukuyama's Trust.
Although I am happy that the copy that i have is in Marathi, it's also available in Hindi and English.
The story of the collector of memorablia and photographs, Vijay Surwade is stuff one can make a film out of.
Morning spoke to my father in Pune about the book, and the relevance of Ambedkar's views today. He vision is inscribed in our constitution, but we have forgotten most of what is pertinent to society this very moment.
"Hard as it is for someone my age understand, the generation of Poles who have grown up since the fall of Communism have virtually no historical memory of what it represented; they take Poland’s contemporary democracy for granted and feel little emotional connection to the great struggles of their parents’ generation."
That's Fukuyama on Nov 22nd on his blog.
The same applies to the youth of India.
We have Ambedkar's photo just about everywhere; in schools, colleges, at weddings, in all the government offices, in public places and what have you. We have made a God out of him and forgotten his teachings, nay his guidelines about how society and the government should behave.
A revisit is of utmost importance for sanity to return to a nation steeped in the whirlpool of a post modern consumerist kitsch. There will be more of ambedkarism here on my blog as i continue reading this fascinating book...

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