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NOT TO STOP UNTIL THE UNTOUCHABLES RECOVER MANHOOD
(Dr. Ambedkar’s Message to the Readers of Jai Bheem)
“ You have asked me to send you a message on my 55th birthday for your Special Number. It is an unfortunate fact that in India the political leader is placed on the same footing as the Prophet. Outside India, people celebrate the birthday of their Prophets. It is only in India that the birthdays of both Prophets as well as the politicians are celebrated. It is a pity that it should be so. Personally, I do not like the celebration of my birthday. I am too much of a democrat to relish man-worship which I regard as perversion of democracy. Admiration, love, regard and respect for a leader, if he deserves them, are permissible and should be enough for both, the leader and the followers. But worship of the leader is certainly not permissible. It is demoralising to both. But I suppose this is all beside the point. Once a political leader is placed on the same footing as the Prophet, he must play the role of the Prophet and give a message to his followers in the same way as Prophet did.
What message can I give to the Untouchables ? I cannot give them a message but I can tell them a tale from Greek Mythology and point out the moral. This tale is contained in a Homeric Hymn addressed to the Greek Goddess Demeter. This Hymn to Demeter relates how the great Goddess, in the course of her wanderings in search of her daughter, came to the court of Keleos. No one recognised the Goddess under the borrowed form of a humble wet-nurse ; and Queen Metoneira entrusted to her care her latest born child the infant Demophoon, afterwards known as Tripltolemos.
Every evening, behind closed doors, while the household was asleep, Demeter took little Demophoon out of his comfortable cradle and with apparent cruelty, though moved in reality by a great love and desires of bringing him eventually to