Prime Minister Narendra Modi was accused of snubbing British Dalits after failing to visit Ambedkar House in London on Thursday, to unveil a statue of B.R. Ambedkar in the house’s garden.
There were hopes that during his trip to London the Prime Minister would visit the newly refurbished house during a 90-minute window on Thursday afternoon, the Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance, which was one of the campaigning groups that raised funds for the house, said.
“Around 50 guests from the Ambedkarite, Ravidassia, Valmiki, Dalit organisations campaigning to outlaw caste discrimination in the U.K. took the opportunity to submit a joint memorandum to the PM,” said a spokesperson for the organisation.
'He has no respect for Ambedkar'
“PM Modi’s no-show at the house signifies that he has no respect for Dr. Ambedkar or the Dalit diaspora. We wanted to call on him to tackle the injustices and impact of the caste system.”
The memorandum was submitted instead to Rajkumar Badole, the Minister for Social Justice, Maharashtra, who attended the event.
“A silent protest by a group of Ambedkarites who had hoped to ask the Indian Prime Minister about the escalating violence against Dalits and minorities in India since he came to power apparently led to Mr. Modi cancelling his visit and calling off the inauguration ceremony abruptly,” said a representative of CasteWatchUK, which had organised a separate protest outside the venue. “It is an insult to Ambedkar and a snub to Dalits. As such it exposes the hypocrisy of PM Modi.”
Official sources suggested that a visit to Ambedkar House, in North London, had been mulled earlier on in the planning of the Prime Minister’s visit but had never been on the final agenda of the trip, particularly as the journey to the house would not have have been practical on a day of tight meetings during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit.
India completed the acquisition of the three-storey house in the Chalk Farm neighbourhood of North London in 2015. Ambedkar lived in the house, at 10 King Henry’s Road, while a student in the 1920s.
