A grand desire led to compiling 'Mastering Babasaheb'. This book is intended to embrace not just the colossal admiration for Babasaheb but also the indomitable thoughts of the same learned Doctor. It is to make the people turn the entire pages of 'Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches' (BAWS). To turn the pages first; to understand his thoughts next; and eventually to embrace his path after self-contemplation.
The first 17 Volumes of BAWS comes down to 13,930 (approx.) pages in total. The count includes the cover, frontispiece, endpaper, and text. With a daily reading of 40 pages, one can complete the collected works of Babasaheb in 1 year. It means taking 6 to 10 minutes to flip each page and a dedicated reading of 4 to 6.5 hours accordingly.
This book series is essentially for those who are staggered by the aforesaid calculations. A middle path of condensing BAWS and at the same time ensuring that the Compendium does not leaves out any of his essential thoughts was followed.
It is possible to limit the selected writings and speeches of Babasaheb to a single book. Such attempts have already been effectively accomplished by many. But still such compilations have compelled the editors to leave out the corpus of high standard of arguments placed by Dr. Ambedkar on various subjects. Hence, it was decided not to pick and choose among his best. Rather a stern approach of sequencing all his thoughts and arguments as it appears in each Volume of BAWS was employed and this had inevitably led to a book series. However, intrusion can be found in one aspect and that is shuffling the order of the 17 Volumes while compiling. This had been done keeping one eye on the precedence while presenting his works and the other eye on the theme. As a result, this volume which is the first of 'Mastering Babasaheb' is a compilation of Volume 1, 5 and 9 of BAWS respectively.
It should be borne in mind that the polemical tone that can be traced in Volume 9 is founded upon adequate arguments and hard to be successfully refuted if one goes through the Volume completely.
While 'Mastering Babasaheb' would acquaint the readers with the complete works of Dr. Ambedkar it is earnestly hoped that this compilation would hold the people and lead them to that grand desire of turning the entire pages of 'Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches'- to turn the pages first; to understand his thoughts next; and eventually to embrace his path after self-contemplation.
The compilation of 'Mastering Babasaheb' was done by A.B. Karl Marx Siddharthar. He is the author of 'UNCASTE' otherwise subtitled as 'Understanding Unmarriageability: The Way Forward To Annihilate Caste'.
