Gandhi got us freedom, but Ambedkar built modern India: Aruna Roy

Bengaluru: Magsaysay-awardee social activist Aruna Roy believes that Mahatma Gandhi was important in bringing independence, but without Dr B R Ambedkar, there would not have been a modern India. 

The former civil servant, who was instrumental in drafting the RTI and the MGNREG laws during the UPA years, delivered a lecture on ‘Receding horizons of shared spaces’ at the Bangalore International Centre on Thursday. The lecture was organised by Bahuvachana and Rujuvathu in collaboration with the BIC in memory of U R Ananthamurthy who pioneered the Navya movement in Kannada literature, and who was by himself a staunch advocate of social and political justice. 

Roy’s lecture dissected the current social and political status of the country against the backdrop of its pluralistic and inclusive history. 

She regretted the “authoritarian” nature of the government in power today, which labels social activists as ‘Andolan Jeevis’ or “Urban Naxals”, and imprisons people who fight for the rights of Dalits, Adivasis and the oppressed classes. 

“The problems of the last 20 years have been that, the way the people have been walked, they have been attacked, and the way they have not, they are afraid to walk. But we must walk the path we are afraid of,” she said. 

On the significance of the Constitution and constitutional morality, she brought out the stark reality of traditional moralities governed by bureaucrats and capitalistic power mongers. “We lived with witchcraft, we lived with people being killed in the name of dowry, we lived with many other evils. And none of us strongly questioned them. We failed to question the stranglehold the culture had on many people, and we did not try to understand our own predicament of switching from one to the other, not fully understanding or fully accepting, not fully in consonance with the traditions that have run this country,” she said. 

According to her, “We must protect folk art forms as a people belonging to a larger human community. Because behind each art and craft is a political philosophy, which is being erased by the glorification of separatism in the current times.” 

She expressed concern about the politics of convenience by the middle class, saying it had “pushed us into not taking our own logic to the ultimatum, ultimately leading to compromise and inaction.” 

Prominent literary figures including Vasudhendra, Vivek Shanbhag, Arundhati Nag and Ananthamurthy’s daughter Anuradha Murthy were present at the lecture. The event came to an end with the recital of the preamble to the Constitution.