‘When Baba Saheb adopted Buddhism...’: Congress hits back as PM Modi plays caste card on Ambedkar Jayanti

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the BJP and the RSS were enemies of B.R. Ambedkar, after the latter accused the Congress of insulting him and spreading the “virus of vote-bank politics” in the country.

While speaking at the inauguration ceremony of Hisar airport in Haryana on Ambedkar Jayanti, Modi accused the Congress of using the Constitution to retain power, and added that its architect – Ambedkar – was made to lose elections twice. He claimed that the party kept the dalit icon out of the system and that he stood for equality while Congress was engaged in appeasement of Muslim fundamentalists.

Referring to Congress’s opposition to the Waqf (Amendment) Act, the PM said that the party made arbitrary changes to the Waqf law for political benefits, and that majority of the Muslim society remained uneducated and poor. “If Waqf properties had been used honestly, Muslim youths wouldn't need to earn a livelihood from repairing bicycle punctures. The land mafia was looting lands belonging to dalits, backward sections and widows.” He said the new Waqf law will ensure the lands of tribals and poor Muslims do not fall into the hands of the Waqf board, and that it was the real social justice as envisaged by Ambedkar.

He also challenged the Congress to make a Muslim the party president or reserve 50 per cent of tickets in the Lok Sabha elections for the minority community, if the party really cared for them.

Responding to Modi’s accusations, Kharge, while speaking to reporters, said that when Ambedkar embraced Buddhism, the saffron organisations said that Buddha had become an untouchable, and that the Hindu Mahasabha was against him. He added that Ambedkar himself had written in a letter that the plot to defeat him in the 1952 Lok Sabha elections was hatched by S.A. Dange and Vinayak D. Savarkar.

Kharge added that those who set the Constitution, which was drafted by Ambedkar, on fire when it was constituted, and burnt the photos of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, have no right to talk about the Constitution or Ambedkar now.

"The Centre is making policies on the basis of the 2011 census and nothing is known about the 2021 census that was supposed to happen. We demand that along with the general census, a caste census should also be conducted so as to know how much which section has progressed," he said.

He accused the BJP of paying only lip-service to Ambedkar and not implementing his ideals in the country.