Congmen `purify’ Ambedkar’s statue after RSS chief `defiles’ it

The Congress fired the first salvo with Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee vice president Ulhas Pawar lashing out at the RSS chief for his visit last week. He described the visit as a political gimmick, aimed to counter the `Save Constitution’ rally, to be organised by the Congress on April 14 at Deekshabhoomi where Sonia Gandhi will address the gathering.

According to Pawar, Sudarshan’s visit to Deekshabhoomi was prompted by political considerations and not by genuine reverence for the leader of the downtrodden. According to observers, the sudden detour in the RSS line, evident by the paying of obeisance to Ambedkar, can well be understood in the backdrop of the rally arranged by the Congress to thwart the BJP’s `nefarious’ designs to change the constituency.

Though RSS chief Sudarshan was not available for comments, most of the RSS activists here at the headquarters feel that the issue was unnecessarily being politicised by the Congress and its allies. "The way the issue was blown out of proportion by the Congress, they have degraded a great son of the country," they feel.

According to them, this is not the first time a RSS chief has visited Deekshabhoomi. Rajendra Singh, alias Rajju Bhaiyya, also visited the site immediately after his nomination six years back and garlanded Ambedkar’s statue. Besides, late Deoras also visited the site and garlanded the statue.

Deoras was a known Dalit sympathiser and instrumental in changing the RSS’s middle-class, pro-upper caste image by involving Dalits and tribals in the organisation. The late Guruji Golwalakar reportedly had a major role to play in preventing Ambedkar from taking to the Muslim religion or Christianity and persuaded him to settle for Buddhism. Bhausaheb Madkholkar, then the founder editor of Tarun Bharat, the RSS mouthpiece, was dispatched to convince Ambedkar on this.

Meanwhile, the issue is fast becoming a political football. Arvind Khandekar, principal of the prestigious G S College of Commerce and a senior RSS activist, regretted the act and asked how the trustees of Deekshabhoomi had given a permission for purifying the statue?

Sudhir Pathak, the editor of Tarun Bharat took a strong exception over the development and said that a new caste system is being pampered and developed by branding a section as `untouchable’, referring the purification episode. "Instead of raising objections, they could have welcomed the visit of Sudarshan at the site in the wake of furore going on over the review of the Constitution", he further added.

On the other hand, Avinash Pande, general secretary of MPCC, went a step further and said the RSS chief has no moral right to visit Deekshabhoomi as it was Sudarshan who had demanded scrapping of the Constitution and wanted a new one. "The person, who wanted to scrap the Constitution, has no right to garland the statue of Dr Ambedkar, who is the architect of the Indian Constitution," he said.

Political observers here feel that the controversy was blown up in the wake of the proposed `Save Constitution’ rally of the Congress to be organised at Deekshabhoomi on April 14, just to get mileage and lure the minority and backwards.

It seems that the Congress has deliberately chosen Nagpur, the national headquarters of RSS, for its rally of `Save Constitution’ to counter the Vajpayee government for its move to review the Constitution.