Abstract
The main concern in the present article is to bring out the heroic portrait and life-world of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar as witnessed by followers living around/with him from the ‘mundaneness’ of every day. By taking recourse into the autobiographical evidences produced by his followers, the article attempts to investigate how the heroic capital of Ambedkar is continuously (re)produced, (re)imagined and disseminated in the contemporary Dalit life/thought. It is my contention that in the post-independent India, the problematic of hero worship has become an important signpost for floating the questions of representation, identity, self-respect, power and historicity which eventually metamorphoses the upholder/beholder of these qualities (Dr Ambedkar in the present case) to that of a God. In academe, we have models to study such transitions. However, in the present context, the hero worship around Ambedkar is that of an alternative kind, channelized through ‘human concerns and impressions’. Instead of transforming him into a God, the followers here attempt to humanize Dr Ambedkar. The humanization of Ambedkar is extracted by plunging into his household, conjugality, paternal instincts, food, clothes and passion for entertainment, among others, categorized usually within the mundaneness of everyday. The article further attempts to argue that the concerns from everyday offer a contest to bring forth the contested stories; that attempt to (re)interpret as well as (re)count the asymmetry and discrimination of caste dynamics in India’s cultural life and Ambedkar’s subsequent combative response to them. The discussion concludes by formulating that these concerns and anecdotes from everyday also give an alternative twist to the process and context of hero worship itself.
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