There are different images of Ambedkar within the Dalit and non Dalit communities, which only suggest that there are different levels of perception of Ambedkar, stated Dr. Gopal Guru. He was delivering a lecture on Dr. Ambedkar as a Mahamanav in the fifth frontier lecture series held at the Seminar Complex of the Calicut University on 28 - 11- 2003.
Guru opened his discussion by commenting how Ambedkar and his image have created an intellectual atmosphere in the society. He talked at length about the image of Ambedkar that is being developed as a cultural construct by the Dalits and non-Dalits in the country.
Of late Ambedkar has become a relevant symbol among the non-Dalit community also. This is because of the electoral compulsions, he opined. Suddenly politicians are discovering sterling qualities in Ambedkar. It takes a lot of time to appreciate Ambedkar which accounts for the late discovery in Ambedkar. This is not the case with other political thinkers in the country. Dr..Guru argued that there are three images of Ambedkar which the Dalits have developed over a period of time.
1. The image of Mahamanav. 2. The image of Messiah - having capacity to change the sufferings of Dalits. 3. The image of a modernist.
Ambedkar becomes a Mahamanav because he had extraordinary moral qualities- the sense of making supreme sacrifice for the common good. Secondly he had an oceanic knowledge. He created a huge body of literature across the social science disciplines.
Dr. Guru suggested that Ambedkar was generating his own intellectual activism. He was not borrowing. It was evident from his writing that Ambedkar himself did not subscribe to the view of Mahamanav. But now people are grafting meaning on him.
Dalits have developed a Messiah in Ambedkar. Dalit women invoke Ambedkar as a supernatural force to free them from harrassments from their in-laws. This Messiah image is very evident in folk poetry and Dalit feminist literature.
The third image of a modernist becomes important because, now a days, scholars both in India and abroad are trying to convert Ambedkar into a postmodernist. This is a terrible injustice to Ambedkar because he was never a postmodernist, said Gopal Guru.
Post modernism basically denies any kind of coherent understanding of reality and image building is against postmodernist thinking, he opined.
Dr. Guru’s conclusion was that the Dalits were trying to identify Ambedkar at a symbolic level, not at the intellectual level. This tendency to resort to images suspend the cause of Dalits. The true challenge is not to look at Ambedkar as a Dalit hero alone, but as a champion of the subaltern cause.