ICGC South Asia Seminar Series: "Why India needs both Gandhi and Ambedkar"
Blegen Hall Room 145
While the title may seem like an oxymoron to some, it has sadly become necessary to restate the obvious because of the open hostilities and plethora of false narratives that infect the world today.
Attacks on Mahatma Gandhi have become a prime sport in recent times whereas the attack on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar takes a more disguised form thanks to a growing recognition in the world that he was an intellectual giant who gave shape not only to India's Constitution but is perhaps the only Indian whose popularity among the masses has continued to grow long after his physical demise in 1956.
It is of course unsurprising that Hindutva and the RSS/BJP in power has always hated Gandhi and indeed murdered him in 1948. Their attack on Dr. Ambedkar is much more subtle as they must woo a sizable population that holds him in the highest esteem. Both leaders are used by the ruling regime as visual icons, robbed of all substance and meaning.
What is more distressing than the antics of the BJP are the ahistorical critiques of Gandhi, and more rarely, of Dr. Ambedkar that are doing the rounds of academia, including those from otherwise progressive thinkers. I am of the opinion that this stems from unreasonable demands of consistency that neither take into account historical circumstances and prevailing understandings, nor envisage what an effective anti-fascist alliance must look like today.
About the Speaker
Anand Patwardhan has been making political documentaries for over four decades pursuing diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Anand who successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court.
Anand received a B.A. in English Literature from Bombay University, India in 1970, another B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University, USA in 1972 and a Master’s degree in Communications from McGill University in 1982.
Anand has been an activist ever since he was a student. Since then he has been active in movements for housing rights of the urban poor, for communal harmony and participated in movements against unjust, unsustainable development, militarism and nuclear nationalism.
This Fall semester of 2022 he is an artist in residence at Ann Arbor, University of Michigan.