Study traces rise of Sankalp Bhoomi as Gujarat's Ambedkarite public space

Counterview News 

A new academic study has drawn fresh attention to Sankalp Bhoomi, a modest memorial site in Vadodara's Sayaji Baug, arguing that the spot where B.R. Ambedkar spent five difficult hours in 1917 has quietly grown into one of Gujarat's most significant sites of Dalit political and cultural assertion.

The paper, titled "Dalits, Sankalp Bhoomi and Emergent Public Sphere: Redefining the Future as Present," is authored by Dhananjay Rai and Mahendra Parmar of the Department of Gandhian Thought and Peace Studies at the Central University of Gujarat. It has been published in the journal Society and Culture in South Asia.

The site's origins trace back to a painful episode in Ambedkar's early life. After completing higher studies at Columbia University on a scholarship from Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the progressive ruler of Baroda state, Ambedkar returned in September 1917 to take up a post in the Accountant General's office. He lasted only eleven days. 

Denied lodging because of his caste, and after briefly passing himself off as a Parsi to secure a room at an inn, he was thrown out once his identity was discovered. With hours to spare before his train to Bombay, he sat alone in Kamathi Baug, the public garden also known as Sayaji Baug. In his own account, published later as part of "Waiting for a Visa," Ambedkar described the isolation of that period at his Baroda workplace, recalling that he had longed for human company but found none, and instead turned to books to escape his loneliness, save for the unsettling presence of bats roosting nearby.

That patch of the garden went unmarked and largely forgotten for nearly nine decades. It was only in 2006, on the occasion of Ambedkar's 115th birth anniversary, that a body called the Sankalp Bhoomi Namakaran Samiti formally designated a banyan tree at the location as Sankalp Bhoomi, and fixed 23 September as Sankalp Diwas, a day of annual observance. The choice of a banyan tree was deliberate, the researchers note, drawing a symbolic line to the Bodhi tree of Buddhist enlightenment and to Ambedkar's later embrace of Buddhism. The Sankalp Bhoomi Trust was registered that same year, and by July 2006 the Vadodara Municipal Corporation, the trust, and political parties across the spectrum had jointly declared the site a piece of national heritage.

Momentum built gradually. In 2015 the Gujarat government sanctioned a grant of Rs 100 million for a memorial at the site, placing the Vadodara district collector in charge of execution. Political visits followed, most notably during the centenary commemorations in September 2017, when Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati visited and criticised mainstream parties for having neglected the site for decades. The same day, then Chief Minister Vijay Rupani laid the foundation stone for the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Sankalp Bhoomi Smarak. According to the paper, construction of the memorial remains unfinished and it has yet to be formally inaugurated, even though work is now said to be roughly 90 percent complete. In 2022, the chairman of the National Monuments Authority recommended that the site be declared a Monument of National Importance, a recommendation on which the Ministry of Culture has not yet acted.

What makes the site significant today, according to the authors, is less its physical monument than what happens around it every 23 September. Drawing on photographs and pamphlets from the 2024 and 2025 gatherings, the study describes Sankalp Diwas as a day of layered activity: stalls distributing Ambedkarite and Dalit literature, exhibitions of press cuttings and photographs documenting caste atrocities, campaigns promoting Buddhist conversion as a route out of caste oppression, and open platforms where political parties and Dalit organisations address the crowd. Members of the Swayam Sainik Dal and the Samata Sainik Dal, the latter founded by Ambedkar himself in 1927, offer a ceremonial salute at his statue, and the day typically ends with community meals organised by various groups for thousands of attendees.

The researchers frame the gathering as more than commemoration. Employing the sociologist Niklas Luhmann's distinction between a desired "present future" and an already-arrived "future present," they argue that Sankalp Bhoomi embodies something closer to "future as present," in which Ambedkar's unrealised ideals are pulled directly into contemporary action rather than deferred. They also situate the site against Jürgen Habermas's well-known theory of the public sphere, contending that Sankalp Bhoomi represents a distinctly Dalit, oppositional version of that concept, one shaped by material inequality rather than the idealised reasoned debate Habermas described.

The paper documents growing footfall since pandemic-era disruptions eased in 2022, along with a widening geographic draw beyond Vadodara into other parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra. It highlights the presence of women and first-generation learners as notable features of the crowd, alongside stalls offering career guidance and information from Dalit educational trusts. The authors describe this mix as evidence of what they term "knowledge production" and "spatial citizenship," phrases borrowed from discussions with colleagues acknowledged in the paper, capturing how the site functions as an informal but sustained platform for learning, memory and political voice.

Unlike Ambedkar's five more established memorial sites, including his birthplace in Mhow, his residence in London, the site of his Buddhist conversion in Nagpur, his final residence in Delhi and his cremation ground in Mumbai, Sankalp Bhoomi remains comparatively obscure nationally. The paper argues that its legitimacy rests not on any formal government recognition but on continuous public use, describing the site as sustained through ongoing presence, shared memory and yearly assembly rather than official sanction. The authors conclude that even though Ambedkar's own time at the spot lasted only a matter of hours, the site has since accumulated a far longer and more layered significance, becoming, in their reading, a living space where his legacy continues to be read, discussed and re-enacted rather than simply memorialised.