Dr. Ambedkar National Memorial

At the time of Ambedkar's birth centenary in 1991, Ambedkarites demanded that the government acquire the house to build a memorial. More than a decade later, in 2003, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government purchased the site to build a memorial. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee laid the foundation of the "Babasaheb Dr Ambedkar Parinirvan Sthal" at the site, planning to build a memorial and a museum. He conceived the site as a "pilgrimage where people from home and abroad would come to seek inspiration and learn how to eradicate social injustice." After the BJP lost the election in 2004, Vajpayee's project was stalled. The NDA government had set up a 100 crore fund, which the new Congress-led UPA government directed towards other projects. The building remained a makeshift memorial managed by the government-run Dr. Ambedkar Foundation. In 2007, Ambedkarites submitted a memorandum to the government demanding better maintenance of the site, but the memorial remained neglected. Subsequently, the government had the bungalow whitewashed, its galleries cleaned-up, and its lawns beautified. However, the project to develop the new memorial remained on hold. In 2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directed a high-level committee to work on the new memorial. The committee submitted its report in 2012, and the work was assigned to Central Public Works Department in 2013. No actual work on the memorial commenced, and the Ambedkarites accused the UPA government of neglecting the memorial because of Ambedkar's contentious history with the Congress. In 2012, journalist Neha Bhatt of Outlook described the building as neglected: it had untended grounds, no fans, and no drinking water. Few people visited the memorial, so many of the rooms remained locked. The glass showcase containing a limited edition copy of the constitution was empty, as the copy had been locked away because of security concerns. The visitors book had several comments requesting a better memorial. • Illustration — Atal Behari Vajpayee inaugurating the project in 2003 • Illustration — Narendra Modi laying the foundation stone in 2016 • Illustration — Narendra Modi inaugurating the new Memorial in 2018 After BJP returned to power in 2014, the Narendra Modi-led government announced plans to build a new memorial at the site. Modi accused the previous Congress-led government of closing the files related to Vajpayee's project, and delaying the construction of the new memorial for several years. In July 2015, the Government granted 99.64 crore for the construction of the new memorial. Journalist Mayank Austen Soofi, who visited the memorial in 2015, before the construction of the present-day memorial started, described it as "deserted". The memorial had a museum with a large bust of Ambedkar, wall panels depicting milestones of Ambedkar's life and excerpts from his speeches, and a copy of the Constitution of India kept in a glass case. It also had a small library, which the Foundation's editor Sudhir Hilsayan described as "just for show". There was no librarian: the books were locked inside glass almirahs, and the caretaker of the memorial did not have the keys. The library was not air-conditioned, and the only tubelight was installed by the few student visitors who pooled in the money to buy it. Modi laid the foundation stone of the present-day memorial on 21 March 2016. In 2018, the Modi government completed the project conceived by Vajpayee. Modi inaugurated the memorial on 13 April 2018 on Ambedkar's birth anniversary. BJP's critics accused it of attempting to appropriate Ambedkar through such memorials.