“I will fight till my last breath to have his statue installed,” said Vishwajeet Ratoniya in quiet anger. “Ambedkar struggled to give us a better life. He is our messiah. I am willing to sacrifice my whole life for him.”
The high court lawyer was talking about a 10-foot-tall graphite sculpture of Bhimrao Ambedkar that was meant to be erected in the compound of the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s Gwalior bench on May 14. Instead, it has been gathering dust in a room on the outskirts of the city after a group of upper-caste lawyers blocked its installation.
“We never opposed the temple in the court compound,” said Dharmendra Kushwah, another high court lawyer. “Then why are the upper castes opposing Ambedkar’s statue? He is god for those who were not allowed to enter temples or drink water in this country.”
Ratoniya and Kushwah are not the only ones charged up. The statue of Ambedkar – long hailed as the framer of the Indian Constitution – has split the bar down the middle. Dalit and backward-class lawyers are rallying to get the sculpture placed at the entrance of the court. But upper-caste lawyers have been pulling out rules and conventions to try to block the move.
In Gwalior, the lawyers’ quarrel has snowballed into a major political slugfest, with activists and politicians now involved.
An Ambedkarite chief justice
The lawyers campaigning for the statue say that they followed due process in planning its installation. “In February, when the chief justice of Madhya Pradesh visited Gwalior, we gave him a memorandum asking for an Ambedkar statue here,” said Ratoniya.
The chief justice works out of Jabalpur, which is the principal seat of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. On March 19, a court registrar from Jabalpur wrote to his counterpart in Gwalior informing him that the statue had been greenlit by the chief justice. Scroll has seen a copy of this letter.
Soon after that, officials in Gwalior began constructing a pedestal for the statue. But Pawan Pathak, president of the Gwalior Bar Association, alleged that the whole exercise was based on deceit.
“Some advocates gave the chief justice a fake memorandum claiming to represent the bar,” he told Scroll. “The statue was going to be installed on the basis of a letter which neither I nor any other bar association officials had signed.”
Thus began the fight over Ambedkar’s statue.
Advocate Anil Mishra, a leading upper-caste voice against the statue, went so far as to say that Justice Suresh Kumar Kait, who was the chief justice at the time, had acted in a biased manner since he was an Ambedarite.
“That man [Kait] tried to forcefully install the statue just because he is a Buddhist and claims to be a follower of Ambedkar,” Mishra said. “He circumvented the rest of the judiciary.”
This is not the first time Kait had come under fire from upper-caste lawyers. In 2024, the chief justice was falsely accused of demolishing a Hindu temple at his residence.
Face-off
On May 10, a week before the statue was supposed to be unveiled, Mishra and Pathak wrestled past security officials and hoisted the Indian flag on the newly built pedestal.
But this did not deter Dalit and backward-caste lawyers from bringing the statue to the complex four days later. In retaliation, upper-caste advocates staged a protest at the gates to block its entry. The two groups were locked in a stalemate all day, while the statue sat in the back of a lorry outside the court.
Kait told Scroll that he intervened at this point and asked for the statue to be taken back to the factory. “I told both sides that the installation of the statue should be like a festival,” he said. “We cannot go ahead with it if anyone is unhappy.”
Kait retired as chief justice on May 23. The issue has been hanging fire since then.
A proxy caste conflict
Supporters of the statue say it will inspire first-generation advocates from marginalised communities to be like Ambedkar. A Dalit from the region that is now known as Maharashtra, Ambedkar became independent India’s first law minister, they point out, and chaired the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly.
In 1956, Ambedkar and an estimated 360,000 other members of the Mahar group converted to Buddhism to protest against the oppressions of the caste system.
“If the son of a poor family pays his respects at the statue before entering the court, won’t it lift his spirits?” asked Ratoniya, the pro-statue lawyer. “Will he not be able to argue his case better?”
This is also why the statue shows Ambedkar in a lawyer’s robes instead of the suit in which he is usually depicted. “We wanted him to be shown in a lawyer’s clothes so that when advocates see it, they feel inspired to get justice for their people,” Kushwah said. “That is why most of the money for this statue was raised from advocates who believe in equality.”
But Mishra claimed that the statue had little to do with inspiring anyone, and more to do with Ambedkarite assertion.
“The Ambedkarites were making a show of their power,” he said. “During this dispute, they even threatened to destroy idols of Hindu gods. Yet, no action will be taken against them because they belong to a big vote bank. I feel that no political party wants the votes of us Savarnas [upper castes].”
Mishra complained that his caste had been edged out. “Those people say they are 85% of the population so they can do anything they want to,” he said. “We Brahmins are just 2%.”
The upper-caste lawyers Scroll spoke to were quite open about the fact that their opposition to the Ambedkar statue was an assertion of their caste identity. “Haan, main hoon Manuwadi,” says Gaurav Vyas, one such advocate, in a widely circulated video. Yes, I am a follower of Manu.
Manu is a legendary figure credited with being the author of the ancient Hindu legal text, the Manusmriti. In the colonial period, anti-caste activists began to attack the book for its codification of the caste system. In 1927, Ambedkar even burnt the Manusmriti. Since then, the word “Manuwadi” is often used as a synonym for “casteist” by Ambedkarites.
Along with displaying caste pride, upper-caste lawyers are trying to discredit Ambedkar himself. Upper-caste lawyers Scroll spoke to claimed that BN Rau, constitutional advisor to the Constituent Assembly, was the real maker of the Constitution and that “Ambedkar had made no contribution at all”.
“Rau was a genius,” Mishra said, a portrait of Rau placed behind him. “But his name was suppressed by the Congress only because he was a Brahmin.”
But Dharmendra Kushwah said the attempt to use Rau to try and undercut Ambedkar was “nothing but caste enmity”.
“They started by claiming due process was not followed,” he said. “Now they are saying the Constitution was made by someone else!”
A snowballing issue
With a portrait of nineteenth-century Maharashtrian caste reformer Jotirao Phule behind him, Kushwah was clear that when it came to the politics of caste equity, the statue represented something larger.
“The time for our rule has come,” he said. “So long as the backwards and the Dalits were divided, we lagged behind. But now we are all one.”
Upper-caste lawyers also saw this as more than a tussle about a statue. For example, Mishra while speaking to Scroll demanded an end to caste-based reservations altogether.
The Chambal region, in which Gwalior city is located, is no stranger to caste conflict.
In April 2018, a Supreme Court ruling seen as diluting the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act had sparked nationwide protests. But in this area, the protests led to caste clashes in which over half a dozen people died. Most people Scroll spoke to in Gwalior said that the controversy about the Ambedkar statue has rekindled these tensions.
As a result, activist outfits and political parties have also jumped into the statue fray.
On June 11, the Bhim Army, an assertive Ambedkarite group from Uttar Pradesh, held a public meeting in support of the statue. Refused permission by the police to assemble in the city, over 2,000 supporters gathered by a highway on the outskirts of Gwalior to listen to Vinay Ratan Singh, one of the organisation's founders.
Speaking from the roof of a car, Singh announced that the Bhim Army would give the state’s new chief justice a month to decide on the statue’s fate before making their next move.
Even this was not enough, however – his supporters were eager to settle the matter right then. “Court chalo, bhai, court chalo!” the crowd chanted. Let us head to the court, brothers.
Targeting Manu
In a conversation after the rally, the Bhim Army leader explained the real significance of this statue. “I am here because of the debt I owe to Ambedkar,” Singh said. “He worked so hard for our rights. If we don’t fight for his statue, who will? The statue is a symbol of justice and equality.”
The Bhim Army, he said, will even take its movement to the Rajasthan High Court in Jaipur, where a statue of Manu is installed. “Manu was an opponent of women’s rights and an enemy of the Dalits,” he claimed. “We want his statue removed.”
Sushil Gautam, a Meerut-based Ambedkarite activist, said he was not surprised that the Bhim Army and its political arm, the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram), were taking up the issue.
“Starting a campaign like this is the best way for the Azad Samaj Party to establish itself in Madhya Pradesh,” he explained. “That is how the Bahujan Samaj Party grew too. It went from door to door fighting for statues of Ambedkar.”
Within a week of the Bhim Army’s rally, the issue entered mainstream political discussion. On June 17, the Congress party announced its support for the statue. “Today, the maker of the Indian Constitution is being insulted,” former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh told a news conference. “We will not accept this. We will do whatever we can to have Ambedkar’s statue installed in the court.”
Meanwhile, the statue in question was being guarded round-the-clock by over a dozen police officials when Scroll visited the workshop where it was fabricated.
Suneeta Rai, the artist who drew its eyes, complained that the police had taken all of the factory’s air coolers, leaving the workers to toil away in the heat. “It feels like an oven,” she grumbled.
“This factory does not have space for so many people,” her son said, complaining about the police personnel who were staying inside the workshop. “These problems take up a lot of my energy every day. I don’t know when this issue will get resolved. I did not sign up for this.”
