A museum with many personal effects of revolutionary leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar became a place of pilgrimage for hundreds of admirers on Wednesday, the 119th birth anniversary of the father of the Indian constitution.
Located in the premises of Symbiosis Society on Senapati Bapat Road, the museum spread on a two-acre plot has the bed on which Ambedkar breathed his last, his footwear and clothes, utensils, travelling kit, the chair on which he was seated when he presented the Constitution of India to the Parliament and his Bharat Ratna medal. An urn containing his ashes has also been kept in the museum.
Besides this, the museum has 1,000 books belonging to Ambedkar, his violin, study table, a silver ink-pot presented to him by Lord Mountbatten, spectacles, the fur cap he wore during the fourth conference on Buddhism held in Nepa, and manuscripts of many his books.
The museum also receives a throng of visitors on Ambedkar’s death anniversary on December 6, and on January 1, the anniversary of the first victory of the Mahar regiment over the Peshwas, said Sanjeevani Mujumdar, the society’s honorary secretary and wife of Symbiosis founder SB Mujumdar.
“Dr Ambedkar’s widow Mai Ambedkar actually wanted to have a museum of his belongings in Delhi. But because of space restraint, she couldn’t realise her dream. It was around this time that she met SB Mujumdar a couple of times in Mumbai in 1984-85, and after a couple of meetings with our family, she decided to give away these priceless belongings for the museum,” she said.
The museum was constructed in the 1990s on a barren piece of land. The building is also used by the society for literacy programmes for its lower staff, character-building classes for children from neighbouring slums, and as a study centre.
