Ambedkarites in state feel they are leaderless today
Mumbai: As the Ambedkarites celebrated the 131st birth anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar with much fanfare on Thursday, the community lamented the lack of leadership in Maharashtra because of which problems such as unemployment and poverty continue to remain unsolved
Mumbai: As the Ambedkarites celebrated the 131st birth anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar with much fanfare on Thursday, the community lamented the lack of leadership in Maharashtra because of which problems such as unemployment and poverty continue to remain unsolved.
Prakash Ambedkar, the grandson of Dr Ambedkar said that there are no Dalit leaders left in Maharashtra today. “All the top Dalit leaders have died now and the remaining ones are puppets. I cannot come together with puppets,” he said.
Ambedkarites who came to Chaitya Bhoomi to pay tributes to Babasaheb on Thursday second his thoughts. “Our leaders are fighting with each other and no one is ready to take up our cause,” said a 32-year old Sanjay Jadhav, a farmer from Aurangabad. Similar was the contention of Prakash Waghmare (60), who came from Pimpri-Chinchwad to pay tributes to Dr Ambedkar. “Our children are jobless. The government has stopped recruitment and most of our youths do not get opportunities in the private sector jobs. Every election, we are just used as vote banks,” rued Waghmare.
Prakash Ambedkar on Wednesday said that he was ready for an alliance with Shiv Sena for the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls. “The Shiv Sena is a major player in Mumbai and hence we are interested in aligning with them. We are ready to go with anyone except the BJP,” said Ambedkar.
When quizzed about his splitting the anti-BJP votes, he said he was being singled out. “Why did the Congress not opt-out of UP polls. This could have helped the Samajwadi party to gain power. Did they not split the anti-BJP votes. In fact, I have always offered to align with the Congress but they did not respond,” he said.
Union Minister Ramdas Athawale has been claiming that he was ready to dissolve his Republican Party of India (RPI-A) if all the leaders come together. “I am ready to work under Balasaheb (Prakash) Ambedkar for this. For me, the welfare of dalits matters first,” said Athawale. He also added that such an experiment has worked before when all Dalit parties in 1998 had come together and managed to win all the Lok Sabha open category seats.
Political expert Surendra Jondhale said “The Dalit leadership is political and ideologically bankrupt. They have no independent political base and are used by the established political parties,” said Jondhale.
Prakash Ambedkar, who was marginalised for years, came into the limelight due to the January 1, 2018 incident, when Dalits were attacked at Bhima-Koregaon. Ambedkar took the lead and announced a state-wide bandh, which proved to be a success. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the VBA, in alliance with the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), polled 41.08 lakh (7.63%) votes in the state. While the AIMIM won the Aurangabad Lok Sabha seat, the votes bagged by VBA candidates led to the defeat of two former chief ministers, Ashok Chavan and Sushilkumar Shinde, in Nanded and Solapur, respectively. However, in the Assembly polls held just months later, Ambedkar broke the alliance with AIMIM. The VBA also failed to strike an alliance with Congress as it said it will give 144 seats of the total 288 to the latter. It said of the 144 seats, Congress needs to accommodate even the NCP. In the final tally, the VBA was wiped out, as it failed to bag a single seat. Athawale who was earlier with Congress-NCP switched sides to BJP and has managed to bag a token ministry under the current Narendra Modi Government.