As India witnessing thousands of deaths in the second wave of coronavirus, Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi is going ahead with his Vista Project worth 20,000 crores. The Central Vista is a grand redevelopment project for building what will be the power corridor of India, having a new Parliament building, a common central secretariat and revamped three-km-long Rajpath, from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate.
This is utterly shameful when the lives of Indians are at stake, neighboring countries which are relatively poor to India offering help, Modi led BJP government is going ahead with this needless Vista project.
Dr Ambedkar, however, pre-independence warned about India becoming a Fascist state. He warned, how the ruling class predominantly “upper caste” is never going to take notice of inequalities and plights of the working class, untouchables and Non-Brahmins.
Dr Ambedkar in one of his writings concluded that “It is entirely wrong to concentrate all our attention on the political independence of our country and to forget the foremost significant issue of social and economic independence. It’s disastrous to imagine that political independence necessarily means real all-sided freedom”.
He also said in 1943 before trade union activists, the working classes “Often sacrifice their all to the so-called cause of nationalism. [But] they have never cared to enquire whether the nationalism for which they are to make their offerings will, when established, give them social and economic equality”.
Above any other thing, Dr Ambedkar warns is about forming India into a nation. While submitting the Constitution he had said about his concept of Nation’ in his speech of 25th November 1949.
“I am of the opinion that in believing that we are a nation we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realise that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the word, the better for us. For then only we shall realise the necessity of becoming a nation and seriously think of way and means of realising the goal. The castes are anti-national. In the first place because they bring about separation in social life. They are anti-national also because they generate jealousy and antipathy between caste and caste.”
The nation concept is an 18th-century phenomenon. The ‘state’ and ‘nation’ are not synonymous terms. According to one definition, “the state is a political and geopolitical entity, while the nation is a cultural and ethnic one.’ Thus, the nation has a racial tone.
