Demolition of Ambedkar's Mumbai office was actually ordered by Dalit trust that controls the plot

When news about the demolition early on Saturday morning of a historic building in central Mumbai that had been used by Dalit leader BR Ambedkar to print anti-caste literature broke on Facebook, many people immediately assumed that the Maharashtra government had played dirty.

After all, both parties in the alliance that rules Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena, have a long history of antagonism with lower caste groups.

As it turns out, the demolition of Ambedkar Bhavan in the Dadar neighbourhood had actually been ordered by the People’s Improvement Trust, an organisation established in 1944 to drive initiatives for Dalit education and welfare.

On Sunday, the Dalit-dominated Republican Party of India conducted an unruly march to protest the demolition. The police have also registered cases of of rioting, wrongful assembly, dacoity and trespassing against six to ten persons.

Ambedkar, the Dalit icon and the architect of India's Constitution, bought the land on which the building had stood in 1930 and set up a printing press at the site in 1947. The Bhavan functioned as a library and had a collection of anti-caste literature and held some of Ambedkar’s manuscripts. It was here that he also founded the Buddhist Society of India in 1955 to spread knowledge about Buddhist teachings across the country.

There are two buildings on the site. The People’s Improvement Trust operates out of one building while Prakash Ambedkar, Ambedkar’s grandson, operates a printing press out of an adjoining one.

Many conflicting reports as to what exactly transpired on Saturday have emerged.

Prakash Ambedkar, the President the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangha, one of the Republican Party of India's splinter groups, has alleged that the trust did not follow proper procedure to carry out the demolition and has not received permission from either the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority or the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. According to a report in The Hindu, he has also lodged an FIR against the trustees of the People’s Improvement Trust.

He told Scroll.in that the printing press and Ambedkar's manuscripts had been damaged in the demolition and left vulnerable to the rain. He alleged that the demolition was a case of "land grabbing" and questioned the authority of the trustees to carry out the demolition. "The People's Improvement Trust has a right over the meeting place which is one building but have no right over the adjoining area which belongs to me," he said.

Madhukar Kamble, one of the five trustees of the People’s Improvement Trust, told the Times of India that the buildings were demolished because the municipal corporation had served a notice of eviction calling the structure dilapidated and unsafe. Kamble also said that a proposal to demolish the Bhavan and build a 17-storey tower in its place had been approved in April. In fact, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had unveiled a plaque at ceremony to mark the reconstruction project.

Kamble has given two separate statements about the damage caused. In one he stated that everything was done according to procedure and nothing was harmed. However, when he was presented with proof of the damage done to the printing press and the books inside the premises, he said, “We have not done anything deliberately and in case anything has got damaged, we will repair the same. All the important things related to the life of Dr Ambedkar will be kept in the new, grand building of 17 floors.”

According to a Facebook post by the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, an organistion that seeks to protect the housing rights of the urban poor, around 200-300 security guards “like big bullies, sporting a T-shirt depicting a tall building (which is supposed to be a new building) bearing Babasaheb’s [Ambedkar] photo had come to demolish the Bhavan”. The post also pointed out that since the Bhumi Poojan (a Hindu ceremony conducted to calm deities before building any structure) for the planned construction took place in April and the municipal corporation’s notice was issued in June, the demolition was pre-meditated and not necessitated by the notice of eviction.

Both the police department and the municipal corporation were quick to point out that they had no role to play in the demolition. The municipal corporation said in a statement that while they were aware of the demolition and the proposed 17-storey building, they had had no role to play in the demolition. N Ambika, deputy commissioner of police, zone IV too denied knowledge of the incident. “We did not provide any protection at the time of demolition. We were not even made aware of it,” he said.

Ambedkar Bhavan has long been a meeting place to discuss Dalit issues and has been central to multiple Dalit agitations. Recently, following the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula and the subsequent protests in Hyderabad University, the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice was set up at the site. Vemula‘s family had even converted to Buddhism at the Bhavan.