Dear Respected Ambedkarji,
Over here in India we are celebrating your Jayanti, your happy Birthday today. We know that, from over there, you are watching us and watching over us with your blessings. And more than that, you are sending your inspirational vibrations to keep this India always free from fascist, anti-secular, anti-religious, anti-democratic and pro nationalist forces.
But times are getting different Ambedkarji! If you were here today, there would be sinister forces baying for your blood, wanting to burn you and our precious Constitution.
You being the architect of our Constitution know full well what it means for India to be a secular nation. Hence, you drafted it with noble principles and ideals so that we all Indians may live in fellowship and progress.
Yet, sorry to say, our nation has been dragged down from the state of the nobility of a free India to a precipice where fascist forces seek to dump it down into the canyon of nonentity. They seek to tear the Constitution apart, burn it and obliterate human and fundamental rights of the citizens.
They feed us with concocted lies and unscientific theories. They gatecrash into the privacy of our homes and dictate to us on what to eat, whom to converse with, what to watch on television, what to study and learn, what to write, what to speak, whom to marry! And more!
You, Gandhi, Nehru and other freedom fighters are not wanted here, it appears. Many attribute the present day ills to you and your policies. Those of you, who fought for the freedom of India, are relegated to the background. Those who plotted and killed Gandhiji are being venerated as nationalist devotees and martyrs for a ‘cause’.
They want a second freedom for India. They plan and plot for a new India where there will be no secularism, no democracy, no fundamental principles, and no freedom of religion.
Where is Tagore’s aspirational India with that noble prayer: Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake?
As we wish you Happy Birthday, our elder brother Ambedkarji, be with us along the way. Let no steps falter. Let no voices be drowned in fear. Let determination be our footwear. Let courage be our breastplate!