If Ambedkar Saw Today’s india, What Would He Say?
The warnings he gave have become the behaviour we normalised.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar warned india against three dangers: hero worship, social inequality, and the misuse of state power. Today, these are not warnings — they are political culture.
Ambedkar feared the rise of leaders treated as gods. Modern india has crossed that line. Political parties no longer sell ideologies but personalities. Supporters defend leaders the way devotees defend deities — unquestioningly. Ambedkar’s nightmare of a “bhakti in politics” has become constitutional reality.
His second fear — that caste inequality would mutate, not disappear — also stands vindicated. Despite economic growth, caste continues to influence marriages, jobs, housing, police treatment, and elections. Political parties talk social justice, but their ticket distribution quietly mirrors caste mathematics. Reservation debates are framed not for justice but for electoral arithmetic — an insult to Ambedkar’s vision.
His third warning was about the misuse of state machinery. Today, central agencies are deployed like political weapons. Dissenters are branded anti-national. Student groups are investigated like terror cells. Governments selectively target critics while shielding loyalists — exactly the institutional rot Ambedkar predicted if constitutional morality collapsed.
If Ambedkar returned today, he wouldn’t be surprised. He warned us that india could become a democracy in form but not in spirit.
The tragedy is not that his fears came true.
The tragedy is that India never took those fears seriously in the first place.
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