How things have turned around! It was not that long ago — in 1997, to be precise — that a leading BJP ideologue was made to feel encouraged to launch a skillfully vicious attack on Baba Saheb. Arun Shourie, the rising star in the BJP’s firmament, had produced a book titled “Worshiping False Gods - Ambedkar, and the facts which have been erased”. With his characteristic brilliant acidic pen, Shourie “exposed” Ambedkar as undeserving of any honour, leave alone national veneration. He bemoaned bitingly: “Indeed, no one is idolised these days the way he is. His statue is one of the largest in the Parliament complex. His portrait in the Central Hall of Parliament is larger than life. The Bharat Ratna has been conferred on him posthumously, a national holiday has been decreed in his honour. Postage stamps have been issued in his honour. Universities have been named after him. His statues — dressed in garish blue, holding a copy of the Constitution — have been put up in city after city: it is a fair guess that by now they far outnumber those of Gandhiji. Politicians, activists and other notables flock to these on several anniversaries of his — on the anniversary of his birth, on the anniversary of the day on which he converted to Buddhism, on the anniversary of his parinirvana, the term which must compulsorily be used now for his death.”

After this breathtaking assault on Ambedkar’s iconic reputation, Shourie was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha seat from Uttar Pradesh. He was immediately inducted into the Vajpayee government and became the Prime Minister’s most favourite minister. That was the time when the BJP strategy of electoral mobilisation was predicated on an upper-caste consolidation. The party was still on a post-Babri Masjid demolition roll.