Hritik Lalan
A quest for Dalit Asmita
A quest for Dalit Asmita
Hritik Lalan
Artwork by Rahee Punyashloka
Artwork by Rahee Punyashloka
Artwork by Rahee Punyashloka
Hritik is a researcher and activist working within several feminist, Anti-caste and queer movements in South Asia. She positions her work in gratitude to the ideologies underwriting her political experiences as a Dalit & trans activist-researcher from India's westernmost borderlands. Through her personal, emotional and political work she intends to provoke us to imagine the redundancy of state institutions and ideologies.
Hritik is a researcher and activist working within several feminist, Anti-caste and queer movements in South Asia. She positions her work in gratitude to the ideologies underwriting her political experiences as a Dalit & trans activist-researcher from India's westernmost borderlands. Through her personal, emotional and political work she intends to provoke us to imagine the redundancy of state institutions and ideologies.
Hritik is a researcher and activist working within several feminist, Anti-caste and queer movements in South Asia. She positions her work in gratitude to the ideologies underwriting her political experiences as a Dalit & trans activist-researcher from India's westernmost borderlands. Through her personal, emotional and political work she intends to provoke us to imagine the redundancy of state institutions and ideologies.
Author’s note: The memoir begins with reminiscing about Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations in my hometown, Ganeshnagar, a Dalit neighbourhood in Gandhidham, Gujarat. I contrast the symbolic Dalit festivities with the BJP’s co-opted commemorations that attempt to align Ambedkar with Hindu nationalism. I remember the Jayanti in 2018 as the year marked significant political shifts, and personally, my trepidations with my identity(s) allowed me to acknowledge these shifts critically. In doing so, I reflect on the lingering presence of Dalit Asmita Yatra and the Una movement in Ambedkarite organising to outline how the idea of Dalit Asmita embedded in the cultural assertion of Gujarati Dalits has emerged in a clear opposition to Hindu Nationalism. The narrative concludes with concerns about Dalit exclusion from Gujarat’s development model by outlining the ongoing protests against the relocation of the Ambedkar statue from the city centre in Gandhidham.
As the evening settled over Gandhidham and there was some respite from Kutch’s scorching heat, I rode towards Oslo Circle to garland Dr Ambedkar’s statue. Every year on Ambedkar Jayanti, the statue at the city’s central roundabout is flooded with people from across the district who come here to pay their homage to Dr Ambedkar. When passing by this statue, my father and his sisters often remarked that Dr Ambedkar's raised index finger pointed towards the neighbourhoods where his people lived. Indeed, the raised finger pointed towards Ganeshnagar, where most of us had lived since the city’s foundation. Situated on the outskirts of the refugee town of Gandhidham, Ganeshnagar is a Dalit ghetto populated by Maheshwari-Meghwars, Kutch’s numerically largest Scheduled Caste community.
Soon after, I took a U-turn to Ganeshnagar to prepare for the evening celebrations organised by local Ambedkarite groups. The evening had set in, and my house was decorated with candles across the yard. Surprisingly, more homes around the locality had been lit with diyas and candles. Young boys and girls in fresh clothes were heading towards the community ground. For us, witnessing the growing scale of Ambedkar Jayanti in the neighbourhood was a tangible marker of how far the movement had spread. I headed to the municipality’s public playground, where the tent and the stage for the evening celebrations had been set up. I was just in time for the beginning of the program. The event began with a series of speeches. A senior Ambedkarite from the Bahujan Samaj Party initiated his address by asking us to respond louder to his spirited chants of Jai Bhim. The gathering echoed in unison: Jai Bhim! In his speech, he recounted the significance of the day by reminding us of the struggle that led to the BSP’s inception and the legacy of Kanshiram. The evening celebration was named ‘Ambedkarwadi Asmita’- an expression that gave voice to the conflict unfolding in Gujarat over the past two decades. In Gujarati, the phrase Asmita stands for dignity. The slogan ‘Dalit Asmita,’ expressing the Dalit quest for dignity, is a recurring theme in Ambedkarite politics across west India. Notably, since the ‘Dalit Asmita Yatra’ of 2016, all Ambedkarite gatherings have reverberated with the slogans of ‘Dalit Asmita.’ This shift highlights a much more charged political project that the Gujarati Dalits have undertaken in opposition to the idea of ‘Gujarati Asmita.’
Gujarati Asmita (Gujarati pride) is a discourse constructed over time that signifies a sense of pride in Gujarat's cultural, linguistic, and regional identity. However, this notion has been shaped and redefined across historical and political contexts. Chandrani (2013) argues that Gujarati Asmita is not a static or natural identity but a product of colonial and postcolonial processes¹. Gujarati Asmita was shaped by efforts to define Gujarati identity in ways that aligned with Hinduness, often conflating Gujarati and Hindu identities while marginalising Muslims and other communities. This discourse was later rearticulated in the postcolonial period, particularly within Hindu nationalist politics, where it was used to justify communal polarisation and violence. In contemporary Gujarat, Gujarati Asmita has also been intertwined with neoliberal development narratives, where economic progress is presented as an extension of this regional pride, often at the cost of further exclusion and marginalisation of non-Hindu communities.
Dalit activists and poets have fiercely contended the veracity of these claims of equal development for all. These contentions have been especially visible in the aftermath of the Una movement, where the Gujarati Dalits organised the ‘Dalit Asmita Yatra.’. The yatra emphasised that Gujarat’s development model is not inclusive, and the idea of Gujarat’s pride stood antithetical to the constitutional promise of dignity to Dalits. The yatra also triggered the widespread conversion of Gujarati Dalits to Buddhism. Every year, many Dalits continue to convert to Buddhism, particularly on the Birth anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar.
In 2018, Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations had taken a different turn in other parts of Gandhidham. To address the widespread discontent against the BJP after the Una atrocity among Dalits, the Bharatiya Janata Party directed their cadre to mark the birth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar. The party had organised events that symbolically honoured Dr Ambedkar but did so by aligning him with their Hindu nationalist symbolisms. In some places in Kutch, aartis and poojas were offered in temples honouring Dr Ambedkar. The BJP workers and leaders were instructed to dine at the houses of their Scheduled Caste members to address caste stigma. For the BJP, Dr Ambedkar’s birth anniversary was a day of symbolic reverence to a national reformer for his contribution to Hindu reform and nation-building. The BJP’s distortion of Dr Ambedkar in Gujarat was widely condemned as an effort to restrict the growing assertion of Dalit Asmita. In some villages of Kutch, Dalits had militantly refused to let the BJP leaders garland Dr. Ambedkar’s statues. Through their protests, Dalit organisations urged the larger community to critically examine the ongoing efforts of the Hindu Nationalist forces to appropriate Ambedkar. These protests aimed to tear through the Sangh Parivar’s claims of Dalit welfare.
For many of us, Ambedkar Jayanti is a day to reflect on our deeply affective ties with Dr. Ambedkar, his legacy, and his imagination of India as a democratic constitutional republic. Through gestures of lighting lamps, buying new clothes, and greeting relatives, Dalits insist that Ambedkar’s birthday marked the arrival of a new dawn for the community. We signal the arrival of new imagination(s) of the future- one free of untouchability and an economy of caste (in)dignity. The leitmotif of such imagination is the gratitude towards Dr Ambedkar and the political contexts within which he emerged as a globally relevant figure for the social justice movement. Undeniably, his birth anniversary emerges as an act of reaffirmation to the constitutional promises of equality and fraternity. In Dalit neighbourhoods, Jayanti continues to be a day of imagining many futures through a reappraisal of our collective histories.
It has been more than a decade since the Una flogging and the Dalit Asmita Yatra that followed the atrocity. With the strengthening of individualistic neoliberal values of Gujarat's development agenda, the political momentum that emerged from the Una movement is facing significant challenges. The Gandhidham municipality has been upgraded to a municipal corporation. With that, the increased budget has led to a complete overhaul of the city’s existing infrastructure. Several demolitions of informal housing and shops have pushed people to precarity. The bulldozing of landmarks, houses, and other economic establishments has threatened Dalit lifeworld in a town with a fraught caste history. In Gandhidham, the statue that stood at the city's heart since 1970 has been relocated to another place. A huge overbridge connecting the Gandhidham railway junction to the newly built community hall has come up in its stead. The hall has been named the ‘Ambedkar Bhawan’ and was inaugurated by the Prime Minister before the 2022 Gujarat legislative elections. Paradoxically, The Bhawan hosts several Hindu-Sindhi events but often maintains an eerie silence during Ambedkar Jayanti. The protests that followed the statue's relocation briefly halted the construction work. During the Ambedkar Jayanti of 2024, several Dalit organisations stuck posters all over the bridge with Dr. Ambedkar’s picture and a note that the overbridge was named after Dr. Ambedkar. These posters did not come up following any official notification but were a mark of protest by Dalit organisations and youth in the city. The administration swiftly settled for this solution to placate growing resistance, and the overbridge was officially recognised as ‘Dr. Ambedkar bridge.’ The statue's relocation from the middle of the city to unnoticed interiors also meant that the Dalits in Gandhidham had lost their only claim to the city centre. Amidst the changing cartography of the city, the Dalit critique of Gujarati Asmita has found grounds within Dalit mobilisation in Gandhidham. The statue's relocation has relegated Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations to the Dalit ghettos.
¹ Chandrani, Y. 2013. 'Legacies of colonial history: region, religion, and violence in postcolonial Gujarat'. Unpublished thesis. Columbia University.
Author’s note: The memoir begins with reminiscing about Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations in my hometown, Ganeshnagar, a Dalit neighbourhood in Gandhidham, Gujarat. I contrast the symbolic Dalit festivities with the BJP’s co-opted commemorations that attempt to align Ambedkar with Hindu nationalism. I remember the Jayanti in 2018 as the year marked significant political shifts, and personally, my trepidations with my identity(s) allowed me to acknowledge these shifts critically. In doing so, I reflect on the lingering presence of Dalit Asmita Yatra and the Una movement in Ambedkarite organising to outline how the idea of Dalit Asmita embedded in the cultural assertion of Gujarati Dalits has emerged in a clear opposition to Hindu Nationalism. The narrative concludes with concerns about Dalit exclusion from Gujarat’s development model by outlining the ongoing protests against the relocation of the Ambedkar statue from the city centre in Gandhidham.
As the evening settled over Gandhidham and there was some respite from Kutch’s scorching heat, I rode towards Oslo Circle to garland Dr Ambedkar’s statue. Every year on Ambedkar Jayanti, the statue at the city’s central roundabout is flooded with people from across the district who come here to pay their homage to Dr Ambedkar. When passing by this statue, my father and his sisters often remarked that Dr Ambedkar's raised index finger pointed towards the neighbourhoods where his people lived. Indeed, the raised finger pointed towards Ganeshnagar, where most of us had lived since the city’s foundation. Situated on the outskirts of the refugee town of Gandhidham, Ganeshnagar is a Dalit ghetto populated by Maheshwari-Meghwars, Kutch’s numerically largest Scheduled Caste community.
Soon after, I took a U-turn to Ganeshnagar to prepare for the evening celebrations organised by local Ambedkarite groups. The evening had set in, and my house was decorated with candles across the yard. Surprisingly, more homes around the locality had been lit with diyas and candles. Young boys and girls in fresh clothes were heading towards the community ground. For us, witnessing the growing scale of Ambedkar Jayanti in the neighbourhood was a tangible marker of how far the movement had spread. I headed to the municipality’s public playground, where the tent and the stage for the evening celebrations had been set up. I was just in time for the beginning of the program. The event began with a series of speeches. A senior Ambedkarite from the Bahujan Samaj Party initiated his address by asking us to respond louder to his spirited chants of Jai Bhim. The gathering echoed in unison: Jai Bhim! In his speech, he recounted the significance of the day by reminding us of the struggle that led to the BSP’s inception and the legacy of Kanshiram. The evening celebration was named ‘Ambedkarwadi Asmita’- an expression that gave voice to the conflict unfolding in Gujarat over the past two decades. In Gujarati, the phrase Asmita stands for dignity. The slogan ‘Dalit Asmita,’ expressing the Dalit quest for dignity, is a recurring theme in Ambedkarite politics across west India. Notably, since the ‘Dalit Asmita Yatra’ of 2016, all Ambedkarite gatherings have reverberated with the slogans of ‘Dalit Asmita.’ This shift highlights a much more charged political project that the Gujarati Dalits have undertaken in opposition to the idea of ‘Gujarati Asmita.’
Gujarati Asmita (Gujarati pride) is a discourse constructed over time that signifies a sense of pride in Gujarat's cultural, linguistic, and regional identity. However, this notion has been shaped and redefined across historical and political contexts. Chandrani (2013) argues that Gujarati Asmita is not a static or natural identity but a product of colonial and postcolonial processes¹. Gujarati Asmita was shaped by efforts to define Gujarati identity in ways that aligned with Hinduness, often conflating Gujarati and Hindu identities while marginalising Muslims and other communities. This discourse was later rearticulated in the postcolonial period, particularly within Hindu nationalist politics, where it was used to justify communal polarisation and violence. In contemporary Gujarat, Gujarati Asmita has also been intertwined with neoliberal development narratives, where economic progress is presented as an extension of this regional pride, often at the cost of further exclusion and marginalisation of non-Hindu communities.
Dalit activists and poets have fiercely contended the veracity of these claims of equal development for all. These contentions have been especially visible in the aftermath of the Una movement, where the Gujarati Dalits organised the ‘Dalit Asmita Yatra.’. The yatra emphasised that Gujarat’s development model is not inclusive, and the idea of Gujarat’s pride stood antithetical to the constitutional promise of dignity to Dalits. The yatra also triggered the widespread conversion of Gujarati Dalits to Buddhism. Every year, many Dalits continue to convert to Buddhism, particularly on the Birth anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar.
In 2018, Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations had taken a different turn in other parts of Gandhidham. To address the widespread discontent against the BJP after the Una atrocity among Dalits, the Bharatiya Janata Party directed their cadre to mark the birth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar. The party had organised events that symbolically honoured Dr Ambedkar but did so by aligning him with their Hindu nationalist symbolisms. In some places in Kutch, aartis and poojas were offered in temples honouring Dr Ambedkar. The BJP workers and leaders were instructed to dine at the houses of their Scheduled Caste members to address caste stigma. For the BJP, Dr Ambedkar’s birth anniversary was a day of symbolic reverence to a national reformer for his contribution to Hindu reform and nation-building. The BJP’s distortion of Dr Ambedkar in Gujarat was widely condemned as an effort to restrict the growing assertion of Dalit Asmita. In some villages of Kutch, Dalits had militantly refused to let the BJP leaders garland Dr. Ambedkar’s statues. Through their protests, Dalit organisations urged the larger community to critically examine the ongoing efforts of the Hindu Nationalist forces to appropriate Ambedkar. These protests aimed to tear through the Sangh Parivar’s claims of Dalit welfare.
For many of us, Ambedkar Jayanti is a day to reflect on our deeply affective ties with Dr. Ambedkar, his legacy, and his imagination of India as a democratic constitutional republic. Through gestures of lighting lamps, buying new clothes, and greeting relatives, Dalits insist that Ambedkar’s birthday marked the arrival of a new dawn for the community. We signal the arrival of new imagination(s) of the future- one free of untouchability and an economy of caste (in)dignity. The leitmotif of such imagination is the gratitude towards Dr Ambedkar and the political contexts within which he emerged as a globally relevant figure for the social justice movement. Undeniably, his birth anniversary emerges as an act of reaffirmation to the constitutional promises of equality and fraternity. In Dalit neighbourhoods, Jayanti continues to be a day of imagining many futures through a reappraisal of our collective histories.
It has been more than a decade since the Una flogging and the Dalit Asmita Yatra that followed the atrocity. With the strengthening of individualistic neoliberal values of Gujarat's development agenda, the political momentum that emerged from the Una movement is facing significant challenges. The Gandhidham municipality has been upgraded to a municipal corporation. With that, the increased budget has led to a complete overhaul of the city’s existing infrastructure. Several demolitions of informal housing and shops have pushed people to precarity. The bulldozing of landmarks, houses, and other economic establishments has threatened Dalit lifeworld in a town with a fraught caste history. In Gandhidham, the statue that stood at the city's heart since 1970 has been relocated to another place. A huge overbridge connecting the Gandhidham railway junction to the newly built community hall has come up in its stead. The hall has been named the ‘Ambedkar Bhawan’ and was inaugurated by the Prime Minister before the 2022 Gujarat legislative elections. Paradoxically, The Bhawan hosts several Hindu-Sindhi events but often maintains an eerie silence during Ambedkar Jayanti. The protests that followed the statue's relocation briefly halted the construction work. During the Ambedkar Jayanti of 2024, several Dalit organisations stuck posters all over the bridge with Dr. Ambedkar’s picture and a note that the overbridge was named after Dr. Ambedkar. These posters did not come up following any official notification but were a mark of protest by Dalit organisations and youth in the city. The administration swiftly settled for this solution to placate growing resistance, and the overbridge was officially recognised as ‘Dr. Ambedkar bridge.’ The statue's relocation from the middle of the city to unnoticed interiors also meant that the Dalits in Gandhidham had lost their only claim to the city centre. Amidst the changing cartography of the city, the Dalit critique of Gujarati Asmita has found grounds within Dalit mobilisation in Gandhidham. The statue's relocation has relegated Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations to the Dalit ghettos.
¹ Chandrani, Y. 2013. 'Legacies of colonial history: region, religion, and violence in postcolonial Gujarat'. Unpublished thesis. Columbia University.
Author’s note: The memoir begins with reminiscing about Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations in my hometown, Ganeshnagar, a Dalit neighbourhood in Gandhidham, Gujarat. I contrast the symbolic Dalit festivities with the BJP’s co-opted commemorations that attempt to align Ambedkar with Hindu nationalism. I remember the Jayanti in 2018 as the year marked significant political shifts, and personally, my trepidations with my identity(s) allowed me to acknowledge these shifts critically. In doing so, I reflect on the lingering presence of Dalit Asmita Yatra and the Una movement in Ambedkarite organising to outline how the idea of Dalit Asmita embedded in the cultural assertion of Gujarati Dalits has emerged in a clear opposition to Hindu Nationalism. The narrative concludes with concerns about Dalit exclusion from Gujarat’s development model by outlining the ongoing protests against the relocation of the Ambedkar statue from the city centre in Gandhidham.
As the evening settled over Gandhidham and there was some respite from Kutch’s scorching heat, I rode towards Oslo Circle to garland Dr Ambedkar’s statue. Every year on Ambedkar Jayanti, the statue at the city’s central roundabout is flooded with people from across the district who come here to pay their homage to Dr Ambedkar. When passing by this statue, my father and his sisters often remarked that Dr Ambedkar's raised index finger pointed towards the neighbourhoods where his people lived. Indeed, the raised finger pointed towards Ganeshnagar, where most of us had lived since the city’s foundation. Situated on the outskirts of the refugee town of Gandhidham, Ganeshnagar is a Dalit ghetto populated by Maheshwari-Meghwars, Kutch’s numerically largest Scheduled Caste community.
Soon after, I took a U-turn to Ganeshnagar to prepare for the evening celebrations organised by local Ambedkarite groups. The evening had set in, and my house was decorated with candles across the yard. Surprisingly, more homes around the locality had been lit with diyas and candles. Young boys and girls in fresh clothes were heading towards the community ground. For us, witnessing the growing scale of Ambedkar Jayanti in the neighbourhood was a tangible marker of how far the movement had spread. I headed to the municipality’s public playground, where the tent and the stage for the evening celebrations had been set up. I was just in time for the beginning of the program. The event began with a series of speeches. A senior Ambedkarite from the Bahujan Samaj Party initiated his address by asking us to respond louder to his spirited chants of Jai Bhim. The gathering echoed in unison: Jai Bhim! In his speech, he recounted the significance of the day by reminding us of the struggle that led to the BSP’s inception and the legacy of Kanshiram. The evening celebration was named ‘Ambedkarwadi Asmita’- an expression that gave voice to the conflict unfolding in Gujarat over the past two decades. In Gujarati, the phrase Asmita stands for dignity. The slogan ‘Dalit Asmita,’ expressing the Dalit quest for dignity, is a recurring theme in Ambedkarite politics across west India. Notably, since the ‘Dalit Asmita Yatra’ of 2016, all Ambedkarite gatherings have reverberated with the slogans of ‘Dalit Asmita.’ This shift highlights a much more charged political project that the Gujarati Dalits have undertaken in opposition to the idea of ‘Gujarati Asmita.’
Gujarati Asmita (Gujarati pride) is a discourse constructed over time that signifies a sense of pride in Gujarat's cultural, linguistic, and regional identity. However, this notion has been shaped and redefined across historical and political contexts. Chandrani (2013) argues that Gujarati Asmita is not a static or natural identity but a product of colonial and postcolonial processes¹. Gujarati Asmita was shaped by efforts to define Gujarati identity in ways that aligned with Hinduness, often conflating Gujarati and Hindu identities while marginalising Muslims and other communities. This discourse was later rearticulated in the postcolonial period, particularly within Hindu nationalist politics, where it was used to justify communal polarisation and violence. In contemporary Gujarat, Gujarati Asmita has also been intertwined with neoliberal development narratives, where economic progress is presented as an extension of this regional pride, often at the cost of further exclusion and marginalisation of non-Hindu communities.
Dalit activists and poets have fiercely contended the veracity of these claims of equal development for all. These contentions have been especially visible in the aftermath of the Una movement, where the Gujarati Dalits organised the ‘Dalit Asmita Yatra.’. The yatra emphasised that Gujarat’s development model is not inclusive, and the idea of Gujarat’s pride stood antithetical to the constitutional promise of dignity to Dalits. The yatra also triggered the widespread conversion of Gujarati Dalits to Buddhism. Every year, many Dalits continue to convert to Buddhism, particularly on the Birth anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar.
In 2018, Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations had taken a different turn in other parts of Gandhidham. To address the widespread discontent against the BJP after the Una atrocity among Dalits, the Bharatiya Janata Party directed their cadre to mark the birth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar. The party had organised events that symbolically honoured Dr Ambedkar but did so by aligning him with their Hindu nationalist symbolisms. In some places in Kutch, aartis and poojas were offered in temples honouring Dr Ambedkar. The BJP workers and leaders were instructed to dine at the houses of their Scheduled Caste members to address caste stigma. For the BJP, Dr Ambedkar’s birth anniversary was a day of symbolic reverence to a national reformer for his contribution to Hindu reform and nation-building. The BJP’s distortion of Dr Ambedkar in Gujarat was widely condemned as an effort to restrict the growing assertion of Dalit Asmita. In some villages of Kutch, Dalits had militantly refused to let the BJP leaders garland Dr. Ambedkar’s statues. Through their protests, Dalit organisations urged the larger community to critically examine the ongoing efforts of the Hindu Nationalist forces to appropriate Ambedkar. These protests aimed to tear through the Sangh Parivar’s claims of Dalit welfare.
For many of us, Ambedkar Jayanti is a day to reflect on our deeply affective ties with Dr. Ambedkar, his legacy, and his imagination of India as a democratic constitutional republic. Through gestures of lighting lamps, buying new clothes, and greeting relatives, Dalits insist that Ambedkar’s birthday marked the arrival of a new dawn for the community. We signal the arrival of new imagination(s) of the future- one free of untouchability and an economy of caste (in)dignity. The leitmotif of such imagination is the gratitude towards Dr Ambedkar and the political contexts within which he emerged as a globally relevant figure for the social justice movement. Undeniably, his birth anniversary emerges as an act of reaffirmation to the constitutional promises of equality and fraternity. In Dalit neighbourhoods, Jayanti continues to be a day of imagining many futures through a reappraisal of our collective histories.
It has been more than a decade since the Una flogging and the Dalit Asmita Yatra that followed the atrocity. With the strengthening of individualistic neoliberal values of Gujarat's development agenda, the political momentum that emerged from the Una movement is facing significant challenges. The Gandhidham municipality has been upgraded to a municipal corporation. With that, the increased budget has led to a complete overhaul of the city’s existing infrastructure. Several demolitions of informal housing and shops have pushed people to precarity. The bulldozing of landmarks, houses, and other economic establishments has threatened Dalit lifeworld in a town with a fraught caste history. In Gandhidham, the statue that stood at the city's heart since 1970 has been relocated to another place. A huge overbridge connecting the Gandhidham railway junction to the newly built community hall has come up in its stead. The hall has been named the ‘Ambedkar Bhawan’ and was inaugurated by the Prime Minister before the 2022 Gujarat legislative elections. Paradoxically, The Bhawan hosts several Hindu-Sindhi events but often maintains an eerie silence during Ambedkar Jayanti. The protests that followed the statue's relocation briefly halted the construction work. During the Ambedkar Jayanti of 2024, several Dalit organisations stuck posters all over the bridge with Dr. Ambedkar’s picture and a note that the overbridge was named after Dr. Ambedkar. These posters did not come up following any official notification but were a mark of protest by Dalit organisations and youth in the city. The administration swiftly settled for this solution to placate growing resistance, and the overbridge was officially recognised as ‘Dr. Ambedkar bridge.’ The statue's relocation from the middle of the city to unnoticed interiors also meant that the Dalits in Gandhidham had lost their only claim to the city centre. Amidst the changing cartography of the city, the Dalit critique of Gujarati Asmita has found grounds within Dalit mobilisation in Gandhidham. The statue's relocation has relegated Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations to the Dalit ghettos.
¹ Chandrani, Y. 2013. 'Legacies of colonial history: region, religion, and violence in postcolonial Gujarat'. Unpublished thesis. Columbia University.
