Looking for Dr B. R. Ambedkar in The Times of India, December 1956–April 1990

Abstract

This article searches for Dr B. R. Ambedkar (India’s first Law Minister) in the pages of The Times of India (TOI; India’s largest-selling English-language newspaper) from December 1956 to April 1990, that is, from Ambedkar’s death to his receiving the Bharat Ratna. A lone soldier for his social and political causes, during his life and after his death, Ambedkar’s afterlife has recently seen a total transformation in contemporary India. This article looks for Ambedkar before this turn by going through the pages of TOI over a period of thirty-four years, to trace both his representation in and resistance to it, before the current appropriation, on four key themes of religion (neo-Buddhism), region (Bombay/Maharashtra), caste (scheduled/backward) and class (lower-middle/political). Drawing upon 200+ items, the article presents the newspaper’s expanding coverage of Ambedkar in Indian politics in a framework of continuum that reconciles its changes, by focussing on the regularity of these reports and analysing their periodicity. Taken together, these details allow us to see the slow switch in the status quo on Ambedkar’s iconography, long before the present idolisation, and fill a political vacuum before his present veneration.