In an iconic neighbourhood of Mumbai, lies a memorial where each year on December 6 — the date of Dr BR Ambedkar’s death anniversary — millions of Dalits gather to pay respects. Director Somnath Waghmare’s new documentary Chaityabhumi, named after this historic site, tracks the events that take place on the date, now observed as Mahaparinav Divas.
The film opens to a song by Rahul Telgote, that is both a dirge and a call to revolution. ‘Ambedkar’s people are scattered, so he must be reborn’, the song asks. It is a song that encapsulates the significance of the Chaityabhoomi as a place of coming together and assertion. But it is also a reminder that Ambedkar’s dream of a caste-liberated society still eludes us. The film tries to present the culture, Buddhist ties, and larger anti-caste history that the Chaityabhoomi is representative of.
For example, scholar and president of the All India Independent Scheduled Caste Association Rahul Sonpimple draws attention in the film to another site of equal significance, the Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur where Ambedkar and nearly half a million Dalits accepted Buddhism. As a person from Nagpur himself, Rahul highlights how, “from one’s birth to death ceremonies, one finds Ambedkar and the Buddha.” In that sense, Chaityabhumi is also a reminder that anti-caste ‘rituals’, whether it is gathering at Dadar or Nagpur annually, birth celebrations, or death rites, are acts of defiance in varying scales and a means to liberation.
The history of Dadar is complex and long. Not all of this history speaks of liberation. After all, Dadar is the birthplace of the Shiv Sena where the party continues to have its headquarters. Bal Thackeray himself lived there on Ranade Road where the Shiv Sena was founded in 1966. Seen from this perspective, much of the celebration of Shivaji Maharaj that Somnath’s documentary highlights through the songs and speeches he records at the Chaityabhoomi, is also a way to highlight the tussle over who can claim the erstwhile king. If he was simply an icon of Marathi pride or an early figure of the social justice envisioned later by Ambedkar, is an ongoing struggle, as many will recall. In this manner, the film organically urges us to look deeper at the footage the director presents us with. Like a chapter in a book, Chaityabhumi leads you to explore the vast overlaps between history, geography, religion, identity, and the fight for freedom from caste.
Perhaps this is why the director takes care to include a live rendition of a song proclaiming that history was by only “two kings on this Konkan land”—Shivaji, when he was crowned at Raigad Fort and the other when Ambedkar led the Mahar Satyagraha for Dalits to access public water, at the Chavdar Lake in 1927. To Dalits and others in the anti-caste movement, Shivaji represents a king who came neither from a Brahmin nor Kshatriya lineage and whose egalitarian rule opposed caste hierarchies. He has grown to become an icon of the movement in that respect. Simultaneously, the right wing, and the Shiv Sena in particular, have used him to mobilise Marathi (and dominant caste) pride. Further, the right wing projects him as a Hindu king.
The director’s focus on the music of Chaityabhoomi helps bring these many strings together, anchoring us as we are led back and forth between the past and present. It also reminds us that songs are the original record keepers. We’re pushed to consider the nature of music—its ability to fire up revolutionary zeal, offer comfort or serve as reminders.
It feels impossible not to think of the director's choice to centre music without the context of how such celebrations are viewed by dominant castes. Come Ambedkar Jayanthi on April 14 every year, the litany of complaints and demands for regulating the ‘noise and nuisance’ begin. But, as Somnath himself pointed out recently to Mooknayak, the city has no trouble adjusting to the pomp of Ganesh Chathurthi festivities.
We hear the echoes of this argument in defense of anti-caste celebrations in the musical play by Dhammarakshit Randive & Team. Somnath’s camera takes us up close into this performance as a singer asks “Why are you driving the people who come to the Chaityabhoomi crazy … especially the drums all day.” The answer, his co-performer gives, in a nutshell, is: “To wake people up”.
Further, it is also in Rahul’s explanation in the film that we’re asked to think of how the liberal/Left elite too do not want Ambedkar in the public memory. So while Chatiyabhumi is named for that groundbreaking site, it also feels like a declaration that Ambedkar has always existed in the public spaces and memories of the caste-oppressed.
The film is bankrolled by director Pa Ranjith’s Neelam Productions.