Ambedkar’s city connect

Dhammachakra Pravartan Diwas is celebrated in October to mark the day when BR Ambedkar embraced Buddhism at Dikshabhoomi in Nashik in 1956. A huge number of his followers from Punjab followed suit at a mass event in Chak Hakim, Phagwara. Dr BR Ambedkar’s visit to Jalandhar in 1951 has been a landmark event for the region. It set-off a chain of events which eventually led to a massive Dalit movement in the country. Tribune correspondent Aparna Banerji and lensman Malkiat Singh trace his footprints in Jalandhar.

On October 27, 1951, Dr BR Ambedkar spoke to a gathering of lakhs of Dalits in Jalandhar in Ramdaspura, ahead of the 1952 General Election, exhorting them to build their own alternative to the existing political set up which had been sidelining them for ages. The Ambedkar Bhawan, established by his supporters in 1972, in Jalandhar, at the very spot from where Dr Ambedkar addressed a crowd in 1951 in the middle of (then called) Ramdaspur fields, serves as the earliest reminder of Babsaheb Ambedkar’s legacy in Jalandhar.

Jalandhar is also home to the longest-running Ambedkarite magazine Bheem Patrika published by Lahori Ram Balley (92), one of the Ambedkar’s oldest living associates and a founding member of the bhawan. At a stone’s throw away from the bhawan is Punjab’s first Buddhist Vihar (in Siddharth Nagar) where every Sunday, a group of men gather to read from their scripture – the Babasaheb Ambedkar authored ‘Buddha and his Dhamma’ – sitting in front of a Buddha idol, in a room full of Ambedkar’s portraits.

Lahori Ram Balley (92) says, “Ambedkar once said in his Nashik speech in 1938 — there are two enemies which the workers of this country have to deal with — Brahmanism and capitalism. Dr Ambedkar embraced Buddhism with this very idea. Buddhism was the most scientific religion according to him. He was clear that it would elevate the social status of the oppressed. Now, the so called political dispensation uses his name and holds brahmin sabhas at the same time. His ideals have been tweaked to suit the present-day political, casteist and divisive discourse.”

The bhawan today is run by Ambedkarite Buddhists, who don’t allow any political gatherings in it. Set-up in 1972 by staunch Ambedkarite Buddhists back from a trip from Dikshabhoomi at Nagpur, the Siddharth Nagar Vihar was one of the first testimonies to Dr Ambedkar’s social and religious ideology taking root in Jalandhar, which adopted a new Buddhism aligned with the Ambedkarites.