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Color speaks lots about politics, be it the traditional “purple” salute of the left events or the saffron gown worn by the right-wing leaders. Colors additionally lend themselves to spectacle. In 2018, former Union finance minister Arun Jaitley offered a pink financial survey report back to underline the gender-related considerations of the then authorities. In 2019, Nirmala Sitharaman wore a pink sari whereas presenting the funds. On this vibrant show of metaphors and symbols, there’s a new addition: The color blue.
Following Union Dwelling Minister Amit Shah’s alleged “insult” to Babasaheb Ambedkar within the Rajya Sabha, the Opposition embraced “blue”. On December 18, the chief of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, got here to Parliament carrying a blue t-shirt. For the reason that Bharat Jodo Yatra, he has largely been seen in his now-iconic white t-shirt, meant to signify his message of “love” (mohabbat) and “peace” within the “nafrat ka bazaar” (setting of hate). His sudden swap to blue didn’t go unnoticed.
As the color is related to the Dalit motion, the political messaging was clear. Gandhi was throwing a problem on the BJP that had alleged that Congress dishonoured Ambedkar by neither awarding him the Bharat Ratna nor giving him any political leeway to win elections.
Color of resistance
Although it’s not clear why blue was conceived because the image of the Dalit motion, Ambedkarite students say that it’s because of the color of the sky beneath which everyone seems to be equal. Just a few students assume that the recognition of the long-lasting Ambedkar statue in a blue three-piece go well with makes it the color of the Dalit motion.
Ambedkar carrying a go well with was a logo of Dalit emancipation — not many from his caste and social conditioning might have imagined aspiring to such heights. It’s stated that blue or navy fits had been extremely popular amongst US presidents. Ambedkar’s go to to Columbia College for his PhD broke the social and cultural limitations that denied Dalits their rights.
In 1942, when he floated the All India Scheduled Caste Federation, he selected blue as the color of his flag. It additionally had an Ashok chakra within the centre. Later, because the social gathering was dissolved and the Samata Sainik Dal (SSD), also referred to as the Republican Get together of India, got here into being, they stored the color of the flag intact. Based on the structure of SSD, “The flag of the Get together shall encompass Ashok Chakra in white color in Centre in opposition to a blue fabric in rectangle, size and breadth being in 3 to 2 proportion.”
In 2018, blue grew to become the bone of political competition when a statue of Ambedkar was demolished in Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh. Although a brand new statue was reinstalled the very subsequent day, it was painted saffron. For Bahujan Samajwadi Get together (BSP), the saffron sherwani-clad Ambedkar was all the things that he stood in opposition to. Inside hours, the BSP chief Hemendra Gautam painted it blue.
A 2017 paper titled ‘Cloth-Rendered Identification: A Research of Dalit Illustration in Pa. Ranjith’s Attakathi, Madras and Kabali’ factors out that Mahars embraced blue as their color of identification. Within the phrases of the authors Benson Ranjan and Shreya Venkatraman, “A Dalit wearing a blue-coloured go well with is making an assertion of energy to interrupt the caste barrier in a society that has traditionally prohibited his expression via clothes.”
The 12 months 2024 witnessed totally different dimensions of caste assertions because the consolidated opposition centred its Loksabha election marketing campaign on the caste census. To some extent, it labored as nicely, resulting in the BJP’s poor efficiency in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. The most recent row over Ambedkar alerts one other contest that’s “blue” in its essence.
Color of indigo
Curiously, past its connotation of Dalit politics, blue additionally symbolises a motion that formed the historical past of the anti-colonial motion in India. The Indigo motion in Bengal in opposition to the Britishers was an assertion of the peasants in opposition to the forceful indigo plantation. The blue dye extracted from the indigo plant since 1777 led to an unprecedented rebellion.
To grasp the importance of blue, one could take heed to the then lieutenant governor of Bengal, John Peter Grant, who stated, “If anybody thinks that such an illustration of robust feeling by a whole bunch of hundreds of individuals as we now have simply witnessed in Bengal has no which means of better significance than an strange industrial query regarding a selected blue dye, such an individual, for my part, is fatally mistaken within the science of the dye.”
The blue that shines within the backdrop of the Republican Get together of India’s flag additionally adorns India’s flag. Throughout a lecture on the India Worldwide Centre on ‘The Tradition of Indigo: Exploring the Asian Panorama-Elements of Plant, Product, Energy and Arts’ on November 29, 2008, former West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi stated, “There may be one commentary I want to make about ‘blue’. India’s nationwide flag is often described as a tricolour (tiranga), after its saffron (known as bhagwa, or the color of renunciation), its white and its inexperienced. However we neglect that our flag additionally carries a fourth color: The wheel of Ashoka’s Dhamma, which is a deep, navy blue. This wheel of legislation, which is central to the flag, reminds us additionally of the charkha, the spinning wheel that Gandhi made well-known the world over.”
Because the Congress celebrates 100 years of Gandhi’s presidency in Karnataka and adopts Jai Bhim as a foundational slogan, one can, it seems, discover a blue bridge between Gandhi and Ambedkar.
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