<p>As an Ambedkarite, and as someone who happens to be named Aakash Singh, I took the news coming out of Amritsar last week rather poorly. On January 26, on Heritage Street near the Golden Temple, police arrested one Akash Singh for vandalising the prominent statue of B R Ambedkar which stands in front of the Town Hall. The 24-year-old climbed up onto the towering statue using a ladder that had been set up for political leaders to garland the colossus in tribute to Ambedkar’s centrality in the formation of the Republic. Instead of floral tributes, what we get is a viral video clip circulating that shows the young Akash violently bludgeoning the statue with a hammer – he was also apparently targeting the Constitution held in Ambedkar’s hand, which, witnesses allege, the boy even attempted to set on fire.</p>.<p>The politics ensued almost immediately. Parties in the opposition exploited the event to criticise the bona fides of the ruling party. The act of vandalism, though it appears to have been a single, disturbed individual taking advantage of a moment of opportunity, has been dubbed ‘a conspiracy’, ‘a concerted effort’ to disrespect Babasaheb on Republic Day, and there has even been a demand for Arvind Kejriwal to travel to Amritsar to apologise to the Ambedkar statue in person. As much as I would enjoy watching such a ridiculous spectacle, I must say that the opportunism that is on full display here, and at full steam by all of the various warring political parties, is just too absurd to abide by. To me it evokes some ideas from the Rolling Stones’ 1968 masterpiece, Sympathy for the Devil:</p>.<p>‘Just as every cop is a criminal/ And all the sinners saints/ As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer/ Because I’m in need of some restraint’.</p>.<p>The real conspiracy here is not this act of vandalism (although, to be sure, there is a legitimate and disgusting plague of vandalism against Ambedkar’s statues and images all across India), but how diabolical and insidious so many politicians are when an opportunity like this presents itself to them.</p>.<p>‘Please allow me to introduce myself/ I’m a man of wealth and taste/ I’ve been around for a long, long year/ Stole many a man’s soul and faith’.</p>.Democracy in peril?.<p>As for the perpetrator, the ostensible devil in this episode, all the outraged politicians are calling for ‘their’ ‘exemplary punishment’, and several riled-up Dalit organisations in the area have reportedly submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner urging that a case be registered under the National Security Act against ‘those’ responsible. They have also led a bandh that has seen shops closed for days.</p>.<p>Dalit groups are right to be angered. But when we begin demanding extraordinary punitive measures – measures, it must be said, that tend to be deployed more abundantly towards those on social margins, e.g. Dalits, tribals, Muslims – it often means that reason has taken a back seat to emotions. The politicians want this poor boy dead. But he is just a sacrificial scapegoat for their own failures.</p>.<p>‘Let me please introduce myself/ I’m a man of wealth and taste/ And I laid traps for troubadours/ Who get killed before they reach Bombay’.</p>.<p>Given that there does not seem to be any ‘their’ or ‘those’ behind this unfortunate event, just a solitary poor young man, a daily-wage labourer, who is estranged from his own Dalit family and who is apparently suffering from mental illness, we urgently need to cool down the cries for extreme punishment. If there is vengeance to be had, or better yet, bringing tempers down a notch, if what we seek is justice, then we need to start taking a much more sober look at the actual social and psychological, economic and political causes behind the ubiquitous vandalism of this type.</p>.<p>Why would a poor, young Dalit man attack Ambedkar’s statue with a hammer, and attempt to burn the Constitution that he is holding? We have to consider the intersecting factors of his caste, of his class, his likely psychiatric illness. It is pretty clear, he is not the devil here.</p>.<p>‘I shouted out/ “Who killed the Kennedy’s?”/ When after all/ It was you and me’</p>
<p>As an Ambedkarite, and as someone who happens to be named Aakash Singh, I took the news coming out of Amritsar last week rather poorly. On January 26, on Heritage Street near the Golden Temple, police arrested one Akash Singh for vandalising the prominent statue of B R Ambedkar which stands in front of the Town Hall. The 24-year-old climbed up onto the towering statue using a ladder that had been set up for political leaders to garland the colossus in tribute to Ambedkar’s centrality in the formation of the Republic. Instead of floral tributes, what we get is a viral video clip circulating that shows the young Akash violently bludgeoning the statue with a hammer – he was also apparently targeting the Constitution held in Ambedkar’s hand, which, witnesses allege, the boy even attempted to set on fire.</p>.<p>The politics ensued almost immediately. Parties in the opposition exploited the event to criticise the bona fides of the ruling party. The act of vandalism, though it appears to have been a single, disturbed individual taking advantage of a moment of opportunity, has been dubbed ‘a conspiracy’, ‘a concerted effort’ to disrespect Babasaheb on Republic Day, and there has even been a demand for Arvind Kejriwal to travel to Amritsar to apologise to the Ambedkar statue in person. As much as I would enjoy watching such a ridiculous spectacle, I must say that the opportunism that is on full display here, and at full steam by all of the various warring political parties, is just too absurd to abide by. To me it evokes some ideas from the Rolling Stones’ 1968 masterpiece, Sympathy for the Devil:</p>.<p>‘Just as every cop is a criminal/ And all the sinners saints/ As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer/ Because I’m in need of some restraint’.</p>.<p>The real conspiracy here is not this act of vandalism (although, to be sure, there is a legitimate and disgusting plague of vandalism against Ambedkar’s statues and images all across India), but how diabolical and insidious so many politicians are when an opportunity like this presents itself to them.</p>.<p>‘Please allow me to introduce myself/ I’m a man of wealth and taste/ I’ve been around for a long, long year/ Stole many a man’s soul and faith’.</p>.Democracy in peril?.<p>As for the perpetrator, the ostensible devil in this episode, all the outraged politicians are calling for ‘their’ ‘exemplary punishment’, and several riled-up Dalit organisations in the area have reportedly submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner urging that a case be registered under the National Security Act against ‘those’ responsible. They have also led a bandh that has seen shops closed for days.</p>.<p>Dalit groups are right to be angered. But when we begin demanding extraordinary punitive measures – measures, it must be said, that tend to be deployed more abundantly towards those on social margins, e.g. Dalits, tribals, Muslims – it often means that reason has taken a back seat to emotions. The politicians want this poor boy dead. But he is just a sacrificial scapegoat for their own failures.</p>.<p>‘Let me please introduce myself/ I’m a man of wealth and taste/ And I laid traps for troubadours/ Who get killed before they reach Bombay’.</p>.<p>Given that there does not seem to be any ‘their’ or ‘those’ behind this unfortunate event, just a solitary poor young man, a daily-wage labourer, who is estranged from his own Dalit family and who is apparently suffering from mental illness, we urgently need to cool down the cries for extreme punishment. If there is vengeance to be had, or better yet, bringing tempers down a notch, if what we seek is justice, then we need to start taking a much more sober look at the actual social and psychological, economic and political causes behind the ubiquitous vandalism of this type.</p>.<p>Why would a poor, young Dalit man attack Ambedkar’s statue with a hammer, and attempt to burn the Constitution that he is holding? We have to consider the intersecting factors of his caste, of his class, his likely psychiatric illness. It is pretty clear, he is not the devil here.</p>.<p>‘I shouted out/ “Who killed the Kennedy’s?”/ When after all/ It was you and me’</p>
