hidden image

Thus Spoke Ambedkar

Dr Suryaraju Mattimalla Dr Suryaraju Mattimalla
19 Jan 2026

Oh my follower,
You named yourself mine.
To gain convenience
Personal, professional, political
Without ever touching
A spine stamped with ink.
You reduced my identity.
From a social theorist
To a mere political leader,
Misunderstanding my words
"Political power is the master key."
As ambition,
Not analysis.
I was never a politician first;
I was a political theorist.
A restless mind like Gopal Guru's,
Seeking dialogue over dogma,
Conversation over the Sanatan way of life
That crushes the individual.
Beneath inherited truth.
I learned individualism.
In Colombia's corridors,
At the LSE's walls.
I saw freedom of thought.
In Western Christian worlds
Not oppression,
But the courage to cherish individualism.
I wanted the same for my people:
Individualism unafraid,
Voices unthreatened,
Opinions spoken without
The shadow of intimidation.
I loved dialogue.
Debate, discussion,
Critical thinking,
Freedom of expression,
Like Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai
More than silenced mouths.
I loved truth.
Honest,
Reading a book,
Producing ideas,
I loved the factory of ideas.
That's what my Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai are producing now.
I did not have a Sundar Sarukkai in my days.
People like him were not around when I was growing up.
No patient voice trained in listening,
No guru who treated thought as something sacred.
I met him only later in life.
As an absence I could finally name.
There was no table for academic dialogue.
No place where ideas could sit together,
Not to conquer one another,
Like Arabs, the EU, and the UN conquered lands,
But to be handled with care.
The table was never meant for victory.
It was meant for shared thinking.
Degrees came to us from distant shores.
They arrived polished, stamped, and certified.
But thought itself never travelled.
It remained unvisited, unwalked, unexplored.
Titles shone brilliantly.
Yet the minds beneath them stayed unlit.

I look at civilisations.
Vast, crowded, and sacred in scale.
Sanatan, Sharia, systems, populations.
But size alone does not explain civilisations.
From Varanasi to the Indian Ocean
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea
From Antisemitism to the Holocaust
From the Holocaust to October 7
From October 7 to Bondi Beach
From Human to Untouchable
From Untouchable to Kanchikacherla Kotesu
From Karamchedu to Khairlanji
From the age of 609 CE to the present
From MENA to the UN,
From Scarf to Saree,
From Asylum to Mamdani
From Alien to Ruler
From Brown to Black
From Wheatish to Brown
From Aryan to Dravidian
From twice born to Shudra
From Ram to Mohammed
From Saraswathi to Aisha
From Sanatan to Sharia
From antiquity to the present
I see centuries weighed down.
By inherited certainty and
Sanatan and Sharia habits of mind.
Why does the labour of knowledge,
So often surrender to the noise of Hindu or Islamic ideologies?

Recent Posts

Communal hatred, seeded by colonial divide-and-rule and revived by modern majoritarianism, is corroding India's syncretic culture. Yet acts of everyday courage remind us that constitutional values and
apicture Ram Puniyani
16 Feb 2026
What appears as cultural homage is, in fact, political signalling. By elevating Vande Mataram symbolism over inclusion, the state is diminishing the national anthem, unsettling hard-won consensus, and
apicture A. J. Philip
16 Feb 2026
States are increasingly becoming laboratories of hate; the experiment will ultimately consume the nation itself. The choice before India is stark: reaffirm constitutional citizenship, or allow adminis
apicture John Dayal
16 Feb 2026
Mamata Banerjee's personal appearance before the Supreme Court of India has transformed a procedural dispute over SIR into a constitutional warning—questioning whether institutions meant to safeguard
apicture Oliver D'Souza
16 Feb 2026
This is a book by two redoubtable Jesuit scholars. Lancy Lobo is currently the Research Director of the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, while Denzil Fernandes was its former Executive Director.
apicture Chhotebhai
16 Feb 2026
The cry "Why am I poor?" exposes a world where fear of the other, corrupted politics, and dollar-driven power reduce millions to "children of a lesser god." Abundance will coexist with deprivation, an
apicture Peter Fernandes
16 Feb 2026
O Water! There is a facade of democracy. In which caste is appropriated As a religious tool, To strengthen the caste hierarchy For touching their water.
apicture Dr Suryaraju Mattimalla
16 Feb 2026
From Washington's muscle diplomacy to Hindutva's cultural majoritarianism, a dangerous erosion of values is reshaping global and Indian politics. When power replaces principle and identity overrides j
apicture Thomas Menamparampil
16 Feb 2026
In today's world, governance is not merely about policies. It is about performance. The teleprompter screen must glow. The sentences must glide. The applause must arrive on cue.
apicture Robert Clements
16 Feb 2026
From Godhra to Assam, a once-neutral word has been weaponised to stigmatise, harass, and exclude a section of the people. This is not a linguistic accident but a political design wherein power turns l
apicture A. J. Philip
09 Feb 2026