Maharashtra elections: Ambedkar grandson treads a lonely trail, hopes to reclaim a legacy

MUMBAI: The solitary ceiling fan rustles the air, relieving the fusty feeling in the room. The crowd, weary from their travels from across the state, jostle to get closer to Prakash Ambedkar, who is sitting in a revolving chair behind a table.
Dr BR Ambedkar, in his trademark suit, tie and black-rimmed glasses, watches benignly from a wall; Lord Buddha, cast in brass, sits on a pedestal.This is the office of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) president and the party's headquarters at Ambedkar Bhavan in Dadar east.
Clad in a half-sleeve shirt and trousers, 70-year-old Ambedkar is interviewing aspirants keen to contest the state elections for his party. He personally keys in their details into a laptop. "What is your mobile number?," he asks a candidate, who turns to his phone for the answer. Ambedkar snaps, "You don't remember your mobile number and you want to fight elections."
The lone member of his staff is his PA-cum-media coordinator Shyam Sonar. The VBA chief runs the outfit almost single-handedly. Shuttling between Ambedkar House in Dadar's Hindu Colony and wife Anjali's home in Pune, he keeps a busy schedule. "My wife was a professor in Pune and decided to stay back there. So, I go there often," he says. On many evenings, he takes off for Pune in an XUV with the driver by his side.
Ahead of his statewide tour to canvass for dalit and OBC votes, some of it in a helicopter-he vehemently denies that the BJP is funding it- there is still no alliance in sight with the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) or other secular fronts such as Congress-NCP. But he appears unfazed. "There is a scramble among OBCs and Muslims to get tickets from VBA. We are faced with the problem of huge demand against limited supply," he smiles.
To many, Ambedkar embodies the fragmented nature of dalit politics in Maharashtra, where leaders from the community have never been able to forge a united front. Now in the wake of the Koregaon Bhima controversy, Ambedkar is accused of squandering the goodwill he initially enjoyed by marshalling the community's sense of outrage.
Ask him why the alliance with Congress-NCP didn't materialise and he says Congress wanted to hand out crumbs while keeping the lion's share for itself. "Why should Congress always be a big brother? Now the time has come for the deprived sections to dictate terms. Congress didn't agree to our terms and the alliance didn't happen," he says.
The eldest grandson of B R Ambedkar, born and raised in Mumbai, he was around two when the illustrious patriarch of the family died on December 6, 1956. He does not remember how Babasaheb looked. When he was enrolled at St Stanislaus High School in Bandra, recalls Ambedkar, its Spanish principal hid his identity from staff and students "I had a normal childhood and did everything children do. I played kabaddi, football, cricket and hung out with friends," he says. "I didn't realise who I was."
The realisation that he had inherited a political legacy came after he joined Siddharth College in Fort. Founded in 1946 by the People's Education Society (B R Ambedkar was its founder-chairman), it is here that ideology took root in the junior Ambedkar.
Graduating in arts and subsequently in law, he briefly practised at Bombay high court. "He joined politics after the death of his father (Yashwant Ambedkar who was in the Republican Party of India)," says Dada Dagle, his batchmate in law college.
So how did he enter politics? Recalling his rite of passage, Ambedkar says, "blame it on Sharad Pawar." During the stir seeking renaming of Marathwada University after B R Ambedkar, several Dalit and neo-Buddhist students were arrested. "I couldn't sit on the fence and see fellow Dalits getting killed, implicated in false cases. I joined the movement."
His moment as a mass leader came after he led a massive demonstration in Mumbai against the government's move to delete B R Ambedkar's potshot at Hindu deities in his controversial book "Riddles of Hinduism" from official publications. The riddles were resolved with a disclaimer that the government neither agreed nor disagreed with Ambedkar's comments on Hindu gods.
Ambedkar's been elected thrice -first in 1990 as Rajya Sabha member, then as Lok Sabha member in 1998-1999 on an RPI ticket from Akola and in 1999-2004 from the same seat on a Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh ticket. BBM is one of RPI's splinter factions. In March 2018, he then founded VBA and fought LS elections in 2019 from Akola again, but lost to a BJP candidate.
Will his son Sujat carry on his work? "Right now, he is into music, plays drums and other instruments. I don't believe in dynasty and will not regret if he doesn't join politics," says Ambedkar as he steps out, only to be greeted by a selfie-seeking crowd that loudly chants "Jai Bheem."