A Plan

The recent violence in Mumbai and other areas in protest of the desecration of an Ambedkar statue got me thinking on the issue. It seems odd that Babasaheb is the target of all vandals in the country. Ofcourse there are the odd freaks who go after non-entities like Thackeray's dead wife but more often than not it is the scholarly bloke with a book stuffed under his armpit who is pigeoned upon. So much so that newspapers can save on newsprint by just saying "Statue desecrated" and we'd know the rest. Looking at recent trends maybe we can even have a cricket-like scoring sheet for such events. It could go "Statue desecrated 25-200-30-50" to be read as 'Statue desecrated. Twenty five dead, two hundred injured, thirty vehicles stoned and fifty torched". It must be really boring being a reporter and having to write the same stuff over and over again.

Coming back to the issue, I began my analysis of the problem by delving into the roots. Firstly, I wanted to know why Ambedkar was so unpopular among the masses. Strangely, being the father of the infamous reservation system only makes him honourable in our country. He does pop up very frequently in school text books and board exams but that only infuriates the educated. Since awareness is not one of our countrymen's strengths I concluded that his image is not his problem. There must be something in the statues themselves that triggers trouble. Sure, those hollow spectacles are extremely tempting but if that was the problem why don't we see the Mahatma or Bose being vandalized? Actually that points us to the answer.

There aren't too many Gandhi and Bose statues around. You'd probably need a guide to find them. Ambedkar memorabilia on the other hand are everywhere. Every slum, junction, park has one. There are simply too many of them standing around waiting to be meddled with. If an orinary citizen had a sudden urge to pee on a statue, chances are high that he'd be wetting Ambedkar's shoes. It's simply a matter of availability and hence probability. Sounds improbable, but it has to be true. As Holmes says, once we remove the impossible what remains, however improbable, has to be the truth.

Now that we have our root cause identified, we only have to find a solution for it. Before I get to the long term solution, there are a couple of things we need to fix quickly. Firstly, we need to make our buses fire-proof and stone-proof. Atleast five local buses burn everytime a group of ten or more disturbed individuals get together. While that may be a reassuring statistic for manufacturers, to us tax payers it is absolutely apalling. Maybe buses could be bulit out of materials that stink like a skunk as they burn or some similar variant could be employed. Secondly, stones should not be left lying on roads. All those reports on stone pelting left me wondering where all the stones came from. We're talking about riots in cities and not on the lunar surface. Its time corporations got their act together and rid the streets of these potential projectiles.

As for a long term strategy, we have many options. We could have more Gandhi statues installed in every city. But then we'd run the risk of increased satyagrahas and dharnas. Another option would be to build a protective mesh around Ambedkar statues but that would make him look like a jailbird. He might deserve it for what he has started off but something tells me that it won't be terribly popular. So my proposal is this - let us collect all his statues from around the country and dump them in the Indian ocean. That will definitely put an end to the descration saga. With any luck, we'll see the pied piper effect with many of his devotees taking to the water after him. The downside to it is that the level of the ocean might rise by a few inches (we are talking about all Ambedkar statues here) but necessary adjustments can be made. The resulting space in public areas could be taken up by busts of lesser known people like freedom fighters, martyrs and men of wisdom. Sounds like a plan, doesnt it?