The two-day session of Parliament devoted to the contribution of Dr BR Ambedkar in making of the Constitution would ultimately prove to be a battle between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata party for making and appropriating different political iconographies. Right since his ascendancy to national politics late in 2013, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been arduously creating counter-icons to the Nehru-Gandhi family. Even when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, he launched a project to build the world’s tallest statue in memory of India first deputy prime minister and home minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel at Kevadia in Gujarat. This decision to host a two-day session of Parliament to commemorate Ambedkar on 26 November — the day he commended the Constitution to the country in 1949 which was adopted two months later on 26 January, 1950 (Republic Day) — is the second such serious attempt. Curiously enough, leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, on Friday walked into a well-laid trap during the discussion when he raised serious doubts about the intention of the government in hosting the session. “We are aware that you intend to re-write history. “But are you shifting Republic Day from 26 January to 26 Novermber” he asked of the Prime Minister who was sitting through the debate. [caption id=“attachment_2523930” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at the Rajya Sabha on Friday. PTI[/caption] Azad in his speech pointed out that the government has been deliberately ignoring the contribution of India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru who was the main strength behind the drafting of a progressive and secular constitution. “Ambedkar authored the constitution alright but it was Nehru who set the tone for it with his enormous contribution to the preamble. Why then are we not making a mention of Nehru? This is called intolerance,” he taunted leader of the house and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley whose eloquent speech on Ambedkar’s contribution did not refer to Nehru even once. This was exactly as the BJP wanted the Congress party to appear: as being so Nehru-obsessed that even in the matter of drafting the constitution it has to lay claim to Nehru’s critical role. Seeing the prey bite his bait, Arun Jaitley was quick to retort: “Why is there so much grudging admiration for Ambedkar?” Though Azad was quick to understand the political significance of Jaitley’s retort, he tried to deflect it by saying that the BJP had been trying to divide even the historical figures who eminently contributed to making of India a constitutional democracy. But the manner in which Azad led the debate between the two icons – Nehru and Ambedkar – would certainly be inimical to the Congress’s political interests. In fact the two-day debate appeared to be a calculated strategy of the Sangh Parivar which seems determined to appropriate Ambekar’s iconography. The story of Ambedkar’s bitter run-in with Nehru and his subsequent resignation from the cabinet forms a perfect historical backdrop for the BJP to raise a political iconography which runs counter to the Nehru-Gandhi family. Given the fact the Ambedkarism as a political ideology holds sway over a significant section of the 25 per cent Dalits of India, the Sangh Parivar’s political project cannot be dismissed as a casual political philandering. The Sangh Parivar has been on this project (of appropriating the Ambekar iconography) immediately after the emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as a major political force in wake of the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), exactly a year later on December 6, 1993, included Ambedkar as an icon in its pantheon in order to co-opt Dalits into its fold. Though the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati combine proved to be far more attractive to Dalits than the Sangh Parivar in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP’s consistent attempts to win over Dalits bore positive results in 2014 Lok Sabha elections and voted for Modi. On the face of it, the two-day session has apparently given a fillip to the BJP to build a political iconography which is distinctly different from the one perpetuated by the Congress. This is the precise reason why Arun Jaitley also referred to Indira Gandhi’s bitter rival and former Prime Minister Morarji Desai for restoring to the constitution the clause that gurantees fundamental rights suspended during the emergency. By all indications, there is a strong possibility that the chasm between the ruling party and the Opposition would further widen at the end of this session despite overtures by Modi to reach out Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh.