Senior Cabinet Ministers and leaders of Modi Government accompanied by Hindu priests and Sanskrit scholars from Varanasi will break bread with "untouchables" to mark the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Baba Saheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar on Monday. Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Minister for Social Justice Thawar Chandra Gehlot and lok Sabha MP Udit Raj will also dine with former women manual scavengers as part of the series of programmes being organised for social assimilation by Sulabh International which led a movement against manual scavenging and untouchability three decades ago.
Besides sharing food with hundreds of former scavengers from Delhi, Alwar, Tonk and Ghaziabad districts, a mass marriage ceremony will also be organised and will be solemnised by several priests arriving in the national Capital on Monday from Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sulabh International founder Dr Bindeshwar Pathak will also felicitate several affected people on the occasion of Ambedkar's anniversary. Rajnath
Singh will also administer oath to all to solemnly pledge to break the barrier of untouchability to promote social engineering. Ambedkar's anniversary has become a political contention with both the ruling BJP and Opposition claiming to be the real heir of Ambedkar's ideology. Congress too has announced a year-long Baba Saheb's Anniversary celebration, the committee to oversee which is chaired by party President Sonia Gandhi. The programme will start from Mhow, Madhya Pradesh - the birth place of Ambedkar. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) too has planned a grand event at several places on April 14th.