The 101st birth anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar was observed at a well-attended function here in Columbia University on May 3.
Dr. Subhash G. Gedam, President of VISION, welcomed the audience. VISION stood for Volunteers in Service to India’s Oppressed and Neglected. Ven. Suhita Dharma from California, Vice-President of the American Buddhist Congress, inaugurated the meeting.
He said he was an American citizen with the blood of American Indian, African, American and French, and was a Catholic monk for some time. He was awakened and enlightened by the sufferings he saw in his extensive tours of India, Lanka and other countries. He decided to embrace Budhism.
Hindu gods: Har Dayal, member of VISION, said it originated in New Jersey in 1976 as a non-political, non-religious, human rights organization. He referred to the representations that VISION had made to Prime Ministers Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi about the Dalits in India.
Miss Lizeanne Germain, a VISION member from Rhode Island, read portions from Babasaheb’s book, Buddha and His Dhamma , to show how democracy as practised by the people of Vaisali in Bihar in Budha’s time was able to withstand attempts by despotic rulers to destroy it.
Ram Gautam spoke against the divisive forces that separated peoples. V.K. Chowdhary, former president of VISION, said that Hindu gods like Ram and Krishna were not role models, and asked why Dalits should continue to show their slave mentality by patronising stage shows of Ramayan and Mahabharat. He said that Ram, who forsake his devoted wife on suspicion of fidelity, was no hero worth emulating. Krishna with his large entourage of women, defended by Hindu theologists as his wives from previous births, was also not inspiriting. The fiction in Ramayan and Mahabharat ,was not appealing to thinking men. As an engineer by profession, he appreciated the environment in the US which promoted science, logic and rationality. M.K. Gandhi supported the caste system and helped its perpetuation. In South Africa, he could not equate himself with the Blacks there. Dr. Ambedkar had the foresight to oppose Gandhi’s drive for temple entry, as he did not want Dalits to be Aryanised.
Double – standards of Indian press: Prof Marvin Koenrisberg of Brooklyn College, New York, referred to his recent visit to Bombay, Delhi, Agra, and other places and said that the plight of the “poor” people that he saw was appalling.
Dr. Suresh Bhamre, Commissioner for Human Rights in Suffolk County, New York, said he had just returned from a trip to the UK and India during the birth centenary of Babasaheb. He deplored the double- standards of the upper caste press in India which condemned the apartheid in South Africa but ignored the atrocities committed on the Untouchables in India.
Dr. Sudhir Diwan, MD, a surgeon at St. Luke’s Hospital, New York, who hailed from Gujarat, admitted that he grew up in Saurashtra, innocent of his social status and the sufferings that a great leader like Babasaheb had to endure in his childhood and adolescence. He was aware of the power of the Dalit Panthers but was unaware of the moral force behind it till later in life. He wanted to help, and looked forward to doing whatever he could in Dalit cause. He felt disturbed by the racial blow-out in Los Angeles which seemed to be an echo of what was happening in the land of his birth.
Bigoted upper castes: Kulwinder Mahay made an emotional speech outraged by the bigotted behaviour of upper castes who wanted to perpetuate in India a vertical hierarchy, and could never think of a horizontal social order based on equality and freedom. Do they still want to cut our tongues and pour molten lead in our ears, he asked. Mahay laid great emphasis on Babasheb’s message: “Educate, agitate, organise”.
Prof Owen Lynch, New York University, said that if Dr. Ambedkar were alive today, he would indeed be impressed by the number of Ph. Ds, doctors, engineers and scientists that the Dalit communities had produced over the years after him. Dr. Ambedkar was no doubt a social revolutionary, but it should not be forgotten that he was also a patriot. He had the foresight to sign the historic Poona Pact in 1932 in the long-term interest of a united India.
Varhade Suggestion: Yogesh Varhade’s (Toronto, Canada) speech was brief and to the point. He emphasized the urgent need for setting up an Ambedkar Center in the US for dissemination of information and promoting international awareness of the plight of Dalits in India.
Naresh Duraiswamy, a Ph.D. student in Columbia University as Dr. Ambedkar was early this centuary, expressed concern at the repression of some 200 million Untouchables in Bihar, UP, and other States. Why is that the gifted, enlightened Indian immigrants in this country not addressing the problems of Untouchables in India, he asked.
Dr Subhash G. Gedam, VISION, said he was born at Nagpur in the Untouchable Mahar community to parents who 3 years later embraced Budhism along with Dr. Ambedkar in 1956. He lived amid Hindus and was educated in Catholic schools. He grew up as a cosmopolitan, respecting all religions. A local leader whom every community respected was Tejuddin Baba, a Muslim saint. On completion of his studies in the US, he became an electronics engineer in Rhode Island. Kewal Singh Dhanda, vice-president VISION, spoke with great anguish about the atrocities perpetrated on the Untouchables in India by bigotted Hindus.
Thiyyas of Kerala : P.P. Lakshman said that it was emotionally very satisfying to meet at least once a year at Columbia University to pay homage to one of its greatest alumni. V.T Rajshekar from far-off Bangalore in India kept reminding us all about Dr. Ambedkar’s thoughts twice every month. Lakshman urged more and more people to read Rajshekar’s fortnightly, Dalit Voice, the only one of its kind.
Lakshman said that he hailed from the large community of 8 million Thiyyas in Kerala which had a Buddhist past.
British blunder: Many Hindu temples were now thriving where Budhist viharas preached, including Sabarimala. At Sabarimala, the deity sastayis actually Budha, and the saranam submission there also is Budhist. The British rulers created a serious blunder in classifying, for easy census counting, populations other than Muslims, Christians and Parsis, as all Hindus. Sikhs protested, and got out of the Hindu fold. If the other communities like the Thiyyas (Ezhavas) in Kerala, Vanniyars in Tamil Nadu, and hundreds of other communities throughout India got out like the Sikhs, the Hindus would get confined to their Aryan chaturvarna order, a minority of about 150 million in India with a total population of 844 million.
The Indian immigrants in the US were estimated at 850,000, about 70% of whom might be reckoned as Hindus. The Hindu immigrants were mostly upper castes. The Dalits were too disadvantaged to make it to the American shores, except a very small number represented at the present gathering. There were no indications that the upper castes on reaching the American shores would show great concern for the Dalits back home. Dr Kevin O Neil, President of the Budhist Association of New York, said Budhism aimed at creating a better being.
