Rahul Gandhi and other Opposition leaders, during the last parliamentary session, turned up in Parliament wearing blue to protest Union Home Minister Amit Shah allegedly insulting Dr B R Ambedkar. This was not an arbitrary decision, for blue has long been a symbolic colour for Dalits, associated with Babasaheb and his politics. Inspired by Ambedkar’s suit For at least the last three to four decades of his life — Ambedkar passed away in 1956 — Babasaheb was almost always seen in public wearing an immaculate three-piece suit. Historian Ramachandra Guha in an article published in The Hindu in 2002 (accessed via Guha’s online archives) wrote the suit symbolised the fact that Ambedkar escaped the fate that millions of his Dalit brethren continue to endure. “By the canons of tradition and history this man was not supposed to wear a suit, blue or otherwise. That he did was a consequence of his extraordinary personal achievements: a law degree from Lincoln’s Inn, a Ph D from America and another one from England, the drafting of the Constitution of India. By memorialising him in a suit, the Dalits were celebrating his successful storming of an upper caste citadel,” Guha wrote. Anthropologist Emma Tarlo, in Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (1996), contrasted Ambedkar’s choice of clothing with Mahatma Gandhi’s. “It is no coincidence that while Gandhi, who came from the Vaniya [Bania] caste, chose to represent the Harijans [Dalits] by dressing as a poor man in the deshi style, Ambedkar, himself a Harijan, chose to represent them by wearing a full set of European clothes. Coming from a Harijan background, and having felt the full weight of social prejudice, he needed to break with tradition and had no nostalgia for the deshi past which summed up centuries of poverty and degradation,” she wrote. Today Ambedkar is popularly memorialised wearing a blue suit. This is one of the main reasons for the adoption of blue as a symbol of Dalit consciousness and resistance. Significance of blue It is entirely possible that Ambedkar’s choice of a blue suit was simply guided by contemporary fashion trends in the West. Afterall, he spent multiple years in New York and London in the 1910s and 1920s, an era when the blue blazer rose to popularity among civilians (it had long been a part of military attire — this is the context in which the term ‘Navy Blue’ was coined in the 19th century). Many Ambedkarite scholars, however, often emphasise on the “ontological dimensions of the colour blue” as well. “One interpretation is that blue refers to the sky which denotes equality. There is no dominance under the sky, everyone is equal,” political scientist Valerian Rodrigues, author of Ambedkar’s Philosophy (2024), said. “The colour blue draws upon meanings that are enshrined in folklore around the world to denote a very specific form of struggle — struggle for equality in an unequal, hierarchical world,” he told The Indian Express. Some scholars also point to the association of the colour blue with some strands of Buddhism, the religion Ambedkar adopted. It is a prominent colour in the Buddhist flag symbolising “the spirit of Universal Compassion for all beings”, and the Buddha and other Buddhist figures are often depicted in blue in South Asian traditions. This is perhaps why Ambedkar chose the colour for the flag of the Scheduled Caste Federation in 1942. Many Ambedkarites directly trace the current importance of blue in the Dalit context to this decision. Lastly, blue is also the colour of the working classes, and those performing manual labour — the so-called blue-collar workers. Ambedkar’s scholarship and politics specifically spoke to this section of society. “Ambedkar’s work recognises a cleavage between the industrial proletariat — low level workers, often belonging to the depressed classes — and capitalists,” Rodrigues said. Symbol of distinct Dalit agenda Dalit movements in the past did not always employ the colour blue. For instance, the Ad Dharm Movement that swept across Punjab in the 1920s-30s, was associated with a shade of deep red. Similarly, most people associate social reformer Jyotirao Phule with red, the colour of his iconic turban. For Ambedkar, however, it was crucial to pick a colour that did not have any other overt political association. He chose blue for the SCF flag to represent an “autonomous Dalit political agenda”. “Ambedkar wanted to paint a contrast with the communists (associated with red), the Hindus (saffron), and Muslims (green). blue represented a distinct vision of where the nation should head to, from the perspective of Ambedkar and the Dalits,” Rodrigues said. The present day pre-eminence of the colour blue in the Dalit context “is a product of the association with Ambedkar. It has only become stronger over time,” Rodrigues said. Kanshi Ram, for instance, drew heavily from the iconography of the Republican Party of India, the post-Independence successor to the SCF, when deciding the colours and symbol of his Bahujan Samaj Party. As Rodrigues put it, “The colour blue is a construct by which a shared bond between Dalits is created and enforced”.
