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Opinion How Congress brings Ambedkar and Sardar Patel on the same table

Until Rahul Gandhi, Congress didn’t realise that Patel and Ambedkar were not given their dues. The BJP helped Congress re-examine its nationalist roots and paved the way for research on these icons who have been relevant across caste and class lines

Rahul Gandhi’s engagement with the masses during his Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Manipur to Mumbai seems to have changed his understanding about Ambedkar and Patel.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

August 14, 2025 05:53 PM IST First published on: Aug 14, 2025 at 05:50 PM IST

In the Congress party’s recent national legal conclave on “Constitutional Challenges — Perspectives and Pathways”, photos of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and B R Ambedkar were prominently displayed. Notably, this is the first time that the pictures of these four — pillars of our freedom struggle and our modern nation-building — were displayed in the Congress office that too in a public meeting.

Except for Ambedkar, the rest of them are from the Congress party itself. However, Patel was slowly sidelined after Nehru took over the party. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were always considered the guiding lights of the Congress.

This was evident in the naming of the institutions — libraries, universities, airports, railway stations, and memorials — during Congress rule. The party made this mistake because it did not want to recognise the caste background of leaders like Ambedkar and Patel, and how their caste identities were shaping the electorate. Soon, the BJP appropriated Sardar Patel, which reached its peak when PM Modi built the tallest statue of Patel in Gujarat.

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Ambedkar was first revered by Dalits, and he then slowly emerged as a social justice icon. His image is now used to mobilise voters. However, until Rahul Gandhi, Congress didn’t realise that Patel and Ambedkar were not given their dues. The BJP helped Congress re-examine its nationalist roots and paved the way for research on these icons who have been relevant across caste and class lines.

Rahul Gandhi’s realisation during Yatras

Gandhi’s mass contact during his Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Manipur to Mumbai seems to have changed his understanding about Ambedkar and Patel.

Ambedkar emerged as one of the tallest national icons in the post-Mandal era, much to the chagrin of Hindutva intellectuals. Arun Shourie’s book Worshipping False Gods was written as a response to his ascent in the mass consciousness during this period. In the recent past, Shashi Tharoor, despite conflicting ideologies, also had to write a book on Ambedkar.

Shourie’s mindset could also be found in Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who in Parliament contemptuously said that it has become a fashion to say Ambedkar.

Immediately after that, Gandhi turned Ambedkar into his party’s icon with the slogan: Jai Bapu, Jai Bheem and Jai Samvidhan. He told Shah in no uncertain terms that Ambedkar had already joined Gandhi and Nehru in the nationalist imagination.

A new Congress in the making

Before 2014, PM Modi gave a call for a “Congress Mukt Bharat”. He started appropriating Gandhi, Ambedkar, besides Patel. Modi used Patel’s image both in Gujarat and outside the state. However, Patel, a Shudra/OBC, was the first rural man to connect the Congress nationalist movement with his Bardoli farmers’ agitation that was organised against increased land revenue taxes. It was only after that that Gandhi entered into the farmers’ struggles against the British. But Congress forgot to see the link between the farmers’ movements and Patel.

However, Rahul Gandhi brought Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar together and placed them on the party’s banner, along with their portraits on the walls of the new party office. His upholding of the caste census as “societal X-Ray and protection to the Constitution” during the 2024 elections also helped him make Patel and Ambedkar party icons. The erstwhile Congress leaders thought that caste discourse and secularism were contradictory. But that is a misplaced reading of the Indian social system.

This shift in the Congress under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi made the BJP fall short of the majority mark in the last Lok Sabha elections. “Pappu”, as Gandhi was scornfully called, has suddenly become a serious contender for the PM post.

While Modi turns 75 — the age that his party had set as an ideal retirement age for its leaders — Congress does not disappear from Indian politics. The Congress not only survives, but it appears to embrace a new phase after 140 years. That is a good sign.

The writer is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is The Shudra Rebellion