I Wish I Had Known Ambedkar Before…

I wish I had known Ambedkar before….

I wish I had known Ambedkar before. I wish my grandmother told me stories about him while she used to detangle my curly hair and oil it as a kid. I wish she told me all of his legacies and made sure I always remember them. I wish she ever knew him. I repent the fact that she passed away without knowing much about him.

I wish my teachers taught me about him. I can remember his name as the “Chairperson of Drafting Committee” in my class 5th civics book and a tiny portrait of his hanging in Staff Common Room. I never knew who that man was; I don’t even know why I was never intrigued as a kid. Perhaps I was never allowed to be near him and his works.

I wish my father spoke about him whenever he dropped me off at school daily. I hope he had spoken on Ambedkar whenever he gave my brother and me Sunday morning baths. I suppose he was also not very aware then, but I am glad, at least now, that he does.

I wish my mother had mentioned him whenever she used to cook Bapa’s favourite manda pitha and made us help her make small dough balls. I hope she had told me how Ambedkar fought for women’s rights whenever she asked me to score better next time in the examinations. I would have understood that this luxury of studying and studying English became my right because of him and that my responsibility is to carry forward his caravan.

I wish my eldest cousin, who was the first to do engineering in my family, had told me about him. I am sure he was also deprived of Ambedkar. Had he known Ambedkar when he was facing bullying and discrimination in his college, he would have had the courage to fight it and never thought to quit his studies and come back home.

I had heard his name multiple times but never knew how much he meant to me. The first time I read him was because I had to attend a book club at the University where I did my Masters. Well, I started reading the book “The Buddha and His Dhamma” so that as a fresher student, I shouldn’t look like a dumb one. I was fascinated by this writer who explained such difficult things in much easier words. I felt like he was talking through me. It felt as if he knows me and I know him.

I wish I had read him before. I wish I had known you before.

I don’t know why my friends, who used to call themselves bibliophiles, never suggested your books. I am sure they have also rarely read any of his books so far, and even if they did, they would never claim the same. Are people afraid or feel threatened by taking Ambedkar’s name? If so, Why?

I wish I had known Ambedkar before so that I would have perfectly replied each time when a random uncle/aunty used to ask my last name, and even after, if they couldn’t figure it out, they would go further ahead and ask my caste. I wish back then I never had to hide it and tell a lie about it. It was never a happy feeling.

Had I read Ambedkar, I wouldn’t have let the shopkeeper talk to my grandma without allowing us inside his shop. Even if I were 7, I would have stood up against it like you did. Sometimes, I wonder how courageous you were as a kid as well. Back then, when we were barred from education, you dreamt, and you dreamt for the entire community and its coming generations, and you worked way hard for it. Even when there were multiple hardships, you never gave up; you survived. Not only did you survive, but you excelled. You wrote the history.

I wish I had known you before; as a kid, I would have asked my father not to run away from the conversation whenever ‘caste’ came into the picture. I would have kept him from hiding the application form and filling in my caste credentials without my knowledge while applying for my Navodaya Exams in 6th grade. I know now that he wanted to protect me by not letting me know my caste identity. I would have asked him to read the books of Ambedkar, and we would have talked for hours over our shared childhood traumas, our history, stories of our struggles, and our legacies.

I wish I had known you when my school teacher was teaching Social Science in 7th grade and told in front of the class that one of the students (that’s me cause no Dalit family in my hometown was able to afford an English medium school) ancestors used to lift the dead carcass of animals and how we don’t fit in varna system. Perhaps he ever learned about you and your books, perhaps not. I hope he did someday later and realized how bullshit is this varna system and nobody should teach such a template of discrimination in the classroom.

I wish I had known you when my friend’s mother asked me to keep my used glass aside and not mix it with other utensils. I was utterly confused as a kid. I tried my best child-level logic and reason for why this happened. The only answer I came up with was that the glass offered to be was extra special, so it needed a special place. I wish I had known before that this had happened not only to me but to my entire family in various other occasions, and yet we never spoke about it to each other.

I wish I had known Ambedkar when I had my heartbreaks. The then-boyfriend told me that I was perfect as a girlfriend and that the only reason we shouldn’t be together was that I was from a different caste, so we should break up. I always needed to understand that. It left me in despair, turmoiled in thoughts, and had an existential crisis. I despised my parents, my cousins, and my entire clan, thinking because of them, my so-called boyfriend never wanted to be associated with me.

I really, I really wish I had known you before. I wish I had known you as a teenager when my neighbour threw a tantrum over my acquired marks and claimed I got the college seat because of my quota. If I had known him before, I could have told her that though she was from a dominant caste, she could have had an education and worked as a government employee because of Ambedkar and his constant struggle to uplift us. I could have explained to her how this entire debate on ‘Merit vs. Reservation’ is a sham.

I wish I read you when I was cat-called and slut shammed for no reason in college. I would not have bunked my classes for days and laid in my hostel room crying over what people must think about me now. I would have remembered how you always walked with your head held high even if the world turned against you. 

There are zillions of questions which I wish I could have asked you. Was it difficult? Did you also have bad days? You have written how important it was for you to work each day.  I wonder how were you able to make yourself ready for the day. How has it never affected you? How was your mental health? I wish I could talk to you about all this. How did you never really care? How you were never a people pleaser? Were you always like this, or did you cultivate this craft?

I wish I had known you in my preteen years when my extended family sat down once and decided what course and profession I should choose and at what age I should get married. I was young, timid, and unaware of world affairs. But if I had known Ambedkar, then I would have replied to them with what you said: “Life should be great rather than long.” I would have found my purpose in life much before that time if I had known you before.

I wish I had known you well before. If I had known you before, I would have never felt half as uncomfortable about what I could talk about. I would have never lived a lie by hiding my caste throughout my childhood and teenage. It was only, and only after knowing you that I came out as a ‘Dalit’ among my friends and peers at the age of 23. You gave me the courage to accept my identity, but you also gave me the ‘I don’t give a damn’ attitude to those who roll their eyes whenever they question my credibility for being in the same room as them. Had I known you before and learned about you earlier, I would have never let myself be gaslighted or mansplained by my toxic Savarna ex-boyfriends.

Had I read your books before, I would not have felt sorry and pity for the gross inequalities we face daily in our country. Had I known you as a growing-up woman, I would have never tolerated the biased treatment I received from my department during my UG. Each day, I would cry myself to bed, thinking what a bad student I was, what a bad girl I was. I wish I had known before; had I known Ambedkar before; I would have understood how intersectional our issues are and how desperate we are to play by the rules in pursuing power and relevance.

I think of you on my good days, bad days, not-so-bad days, mundane days, perhaps every day. I think of you and thank you and all the other anti-caste stalwarts for their struggles in my good days and happy days. I am because you were.

I think of you the most in my bad days and wonder how difficult it was for you to receive mass hatred whenever you proposed your progressive ideas in front of the parliament, and yet it never stopped you from standing up for what is right and just. I often think about you in my bad, gloomy days, especially how you walked inside the parliament with your proper, well-trimmed three-piece suit and the constitution in hand each day. You fought tooth and nail for it even if you were standing alone, even if you were called with various names, even if people protested against it. You knew one voice could ignite thousands, and it did.

I only know now WHY I was never given Ambedkar to understand, learn, and read his books. I only know now WHY it has been kept away from us. Today, I give you all the love, admiration, and regard for all the pain, efforts, and hatred you went through so that I can be myself. You helped me in finding the ‘Me.’ It was because of you I came across all the other stalwarts. Now that I know all of them, I will ensure nobody is deprived of their works, struggles, and legacies. I wish I had met you as a child, teenager, grown-up woman, or even now as anything in any form or shape. It will be all worth it.

Sometimes, I think of sitting next to you and admire you wholly immersed in playing the violin.