‘The Ambedkar Bookmobile’ Exhibit

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This past fall, Indian artist Smita Rajmane and filmmaker Somnath Waghmare mounted an exhibition in the Milstein lobby, titled “The Ambedkar Bookmobile,” about caste in India. The exhibition highlighted traditional music used to resist caste discrimination. Exhibition events included a screening of Waghmare’s film Chaityabhumi, which features some of the music and focused on a pilgrimage made to Bombay by members of the Dalit, the lowest stratum in the caste system. 

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The project was led by Professor Anu Rao, as part of the Ambedkar Initiative, which builds on the legacy of B.R. Ambedkar, a Columbia graduate who helped shape democracy in India with an anti-caste ideology. The initiative, as well as the Race, Caste, and History course taught by Rao last fall, explores radical democratic thinking through the prism of Ambedkar’s philosophy. 

For some of Rao’s students, like Columbia graduate student Divyashree Ashok Kumar Malhari and her research partner Barnard junior Ana Victoria Serna, the exhibition provided a deeper perspective to class content. 

“Class is something you can shake off in the U.S. — not so in India,” says Ashok Kumar Malhari, adding that the course and the exhibition allowed her to step back from experiencing pain and begin to rationalize. “Here we have this idea of belonging, having allies in a foreign space, and being able to hold that space and feel seen.” 

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Serna, who focuses on decolonization in the Philippines, began to draw connections between diverse radical ideologies. 

“My research project with Diva [Divyashree] was the development of urban sociology in Bombay, which seems esoteric and not related to my focus, but after reading Ambedkar’s writings on the subject, you start to see how that type of work could be co-opted by groups elsewhere in the world,” she says. “As a Filipino and Colombian, the installation gave me a lot of hope.”