Yogi Government's decision to use Ambedkar's middle name in records is a valid political move

Of course, there is going to be row over the decision by the Yogi Adityanath administration in Uttar Pradesh to include Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar's middle name in all official records and correspondence given that single-issue interest groups and community-specific political parties have appropriated the Indian icon's legacy for themselves under the benign gaze of a largely clueless Congress Party over the decades since Independence. What else could any thinking individual, with even a nodding acquaintance with post-1947 Indian political history, expect but a controversyIJ That the great Indian freedom fighter, muscular liberal and passionate advocate of equal rights and opportunities for the depressed classes and women whose stature has sought to be diminished by upper caste bigots, misogynists cutting across castes and reductionist dalit ideologues shares his middle name with the lord, complete with suffix, made a row inevitable. The spark that lit the fire, obviously, was that the decision was taken by a State Government headed by an ochre-robed, ideologically unapologetic politician who swears by an inclusive Hindutva agenda.

The facts are rather easy to discern. Uttar Pradesh Governor and former BJP Union minister from Ambedkar's home State of Maharashtra, Ram Naik, has been arguing for a while that the air-brushing of the leader's middle name from official records was a political move by an establishment and activists who wanted to claim differentness from the country's, albeit in this case regressive, Hindu traditions to further their own political-ideological agenda. (Naturally, that too is a perfectly valid stand to take for those so inclined.) But there is no getting away from the fact that Dr Ambedkar signed his name, in his own hand, including his middle name which by tradition in the parts he comes from is his father's name, in the draft document of the Indian Constitution which he and his colleagues worked so hard on. Naik's recommendation that the subsequent omission of his middle name from official records be rectified is not a new one. But in the Yogi administration he for the first time found a sympathetic hearing among those who had the power to effect the change.

There has been, perhaps uniquely in world civilisations, a vibrant legacy of rebellion and reform within the broad Indic tradition, and Babasaheb's conversion to Buddhism in later life does not take away from this argument. Even the Sangh Parivar, for all its angularities and allegations against it of being a Brahmanical outfit, has worked tirelessly to try and end discrimination and oppression based on jaati (caste is a problematic term in this context) within the broader Hindu fold that has been a deeply shameful chapter of the shared history of our land. For the BJP, it is vital politically, especially in the face of Opposition parties' attempts to undermine their project of unifying the cultural Indic nation without imposing any homogenous solution on the varying strands of its many traditions, to construct a narrative that ensures Dr Ambedkar's reforms and the ideal of a Ram Rajya, as it were, are not seen as mutually exclusive. It should not, however, expect a free ride in this respect because fragmentation and agitprop based on a sense of separateness is the basis on which any countervailing political narrative will stand, and much of the Opposition from the Congress, to the BSP and Communists will agitate with all their might to that end. The discomfort with this move of the Uttar Pradesh Government of those even within the BJP who come from an Ambedkarite tradition of dalit politics will also have to be addressed by the party.