WEEKS OF STUDENT LED PROTESTS across the country seeking accountability from the Modi government regarding malpractices in conducting the NEET examination, and a host of issues on India’s crumbling education sector, alas culminated some days ago in the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Intrinsic to the flood of images pouring in from the protests in Jantar Mantar and across India’s urban clusters – from Mumbai to Patna – leading up to the Education Minister’s resignation were the invocations of Dr Ambedkar, the Constitution, which he played a key role in the drafting of, and the slogan ‘Jai Bhim’, an adulatory anti-caste call that invokes Ambedkar’s revolutionary ideals.
In Jantar Mantar, young people could be seen waving blue flags, hoisting paper posters and cloth banners with Ambedkar’s photographs plastered. In Mumbai, a young man raised a copy of the Indian Constitution, stretching out his arm. In the days following Sonam Wangchuk's forceful admission at the Safdarjung Hospital and incessant police brutality against peacefully protesting students on July 20, Chandrashekar Azad, the Bhim Army leader, took shelter beneath a statue of Dr Ambedkar inside the Parliament complex, initiating an indefinite hunger strike, condemning the police action and calling for systemic changes in education reform.
