Ambedkar - By Badri Raina

[Ambedkar Dalit Rights Foundation]

Ambedkar

 

 

 

You carried your own mat

 

to school, drank water from

 

open ditch, turned furtive corner

 

to keep classmates from contagion.

 

In the stable with undiscriminating

 

animals you strove against sleep

 

and suffocation to make

 

your future bright.

 

Then matriculated, found royal

 

patron, and in time proceded

 

scholarly to Columbia land.

 

Three day's food you forsook

 

against the price of desired book.

 

Triumphant back you came,

 

full of letters and law,

 

yet still but untouchable.

 

In that final act of fun,

 

O learned one, they drew from you

 

the Indian Constitution.

 

There, in mockery of your better sense, you

 

wrote your brethren down as citizens,

 

equal of fat man's town.

 

In your delegated power, you forgot

 

the quick truth you were taught

 

in boyhood's rooted hour.

 

 

 

Since that time, your upraised

 

marble finger points in ghastly

guilty joke the ubiquitous way

 

to that house of good intent

 

called the Indian parliament.

 

Resurrected expedient from archive

 

file this ceremonial April day,

 

paid homage to on T.V. screen

 

as incomparable, untouchable god,

 

you help beguile your trodden brood

 

into compensate caste and quietitude.

 

The fate of all great good men

 

was yours, while the shame, the perfidy,

 

the liberal double-cross endures.

 

 

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