Light falls on a hand-sculpted pedestal with two busts, backs to each other. Below one is the inscription “Dr Rohith Vemula”, a reminder of the unfulfilled dream of the doctoral scholar who died by suicide at the Hyderabad Central University in January 2016.
This sculpture, by Kailash Khanjode, was among the most striking of artworks inspired by Ambedkar and reflecting anti-caste movements on display at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale which concluded on March 31.
On the other side of the pedestal is Pochiram Kamble. Thirty-eight years before Vemula’s death, Kamble was burnt alive by rioters in August 1978.
This was the year the Maharashtra legislature in 1978 passed a resolution to rename the Marathwada University after BR Ambedkar, sparking violent opposition from upper castes. Dalit localities in the region were attacked.
An inscription above Kamble’s bust reads “Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar University” and another below that says “Jai Bhim”. A Marathi report notes that Kamble had died chanting “Jai Bhim”.
Circling from Kamble to Vemula and back again, the sculpture seems to present caste prejudice as unchanging and continuous.
Khanjode’s sculpture is part of a larger art project, Ginning Justice, by Rohit Athavale and Sachin Banne, depicting Mumbai’s caste and religion-segregated housing, and the history of labour in the cloth mills that were started by Kolhapur royal Chhatrapati Rajarshi Shahu in 1906. A cotton gin or engine separates fibres from seeds, hence the name “Ginning justice”.
Tiles put together depict the very literal divisions in housing in Mumbai and urban India. On the walls outside the venue were more tiles: some depicting the Buddha and Ambedkar, while fragments of some tiles were painted with the silhouettes of the millions who labour and work in India’s cities.
In between the faceless silhouettes were some that strikingly seemed to resemble Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, the 19th century anti-caste ideologues of Maharashtra.
In the Unity of Mind, Spirit and Society by Kartik Kambar and Basavaraj Talawar, two paintings place Ambedkar alongside Basava, a 12th century philosopher of the Bhakti movement, and the Buddha.
Behind the rich, deep-blue palette is the Buddhist dhammachakra, which also represents Ambedkar setting in motion the “wheel of justice” towards emancipation.
The display note states that the artists, Kambar and Talawar, situate the three figures within a “continuum anti-caste thought and ethical reform in South Asia”.
At the centre of Prabhakar Kamble’s installation Vichitra Natak, or The Theatre of the Absurd, is a tombstone marking the “annihilation of caste”. It is a reference to the title of a speech Ambedkar was stopped from delivering at a convention in Lahore in 1936. The text was later released as a booklet under the title Annihilation of Caste.
Kamble’s installation aims to depict how caste is upheld through everyday objects, such as water pots. In one corner are a bunch of hooks that resemble those used in butcher shops to hang meat.
Spread out in parts on the adjoining wall is a painting of an Ambedkar statue in a steel cage. In some parts of the country, statues of the chairman of India’s Constituent Assembly, which drafted the Constitution, are often unironically secured behind metal bars to prevent deliberate destruction or damage.
Shrujana N Sridhar displays Ambedkar’s constitutional philosophy using Buddhist prayer wheels, and then adds a more revolutionary touch. On the floor are clay fragments bearing lines from the Manusmriti, which can be stepped on, “turning scripture into residue”.
The Constitution lights up the whole display.
Finally there is The People’s Orchestra by Rutuja Sonawane, an art installation on the Swar Samrat brass band, which was started 50 years ago by her father Bhagwan Sonawane in the village of Satana in Maharashtra.
The display note states that the musicians played a repertoire of original compositions rooted in Ambedkarite teachings, many of which were written by Sonawane.
The biennale may have ended but the art continues on the walls of Fort Kochi.
April 14 is Ambedkar Jayanti.
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