Two Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholars have planned to revive the “political school”, envisaged and founded by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.
Shivshankar Das and Kshipra Uike, who have completed their Ph.D. from the JNU, are camping in Nagpur for over a year now, and have started consultations with “intellectuals” to re-establish the political school.
Mr. Das, who completed his Ph.D. in Political Science from JNU, said: “The school, named as ‘Training School for Entrance to Politics’, was established by Dr. Ambedkar in 1956. The first batch of the school consisted of 15 students. Unfortunately, its first batch turned out to be the last batch as the school was closed after Dr. Ambedkar’s death in 1956.”
He said, “The school was functional only for eight months. Dr. Ambedkar was in search of a good principal for the school. He was also going to address the trainees on oratory skills on December 10, 1956, but he passed away four days before that. The much-cherished objective of the school was the training upcoming political leaders by inculcating Buddhist outlook in them. He wanted to train them in different subjects of social sciences and to equip them with parliamentary legislative procedures and behaviours.”
According to Ms. Uike, the school has a tragic history because it died despite being started by Dr. Ambedkar, whereas the Republican Party of India, which was only proposed by him, was received as a celebrated idea by his followers. For Dr. Ambedkar, the school was an entry point into the proposed political party, the RPI. “The over-enthusiastic politicians underestimated and neglected his thought of political school. As the time passed, neither any faction of the RPI, nor any other political groups such as Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) valued or noticed it in any way,” Ms. Uike alleged.
