Cooped up at the back of Anil Mishra’s SUV, driving through the narrow lanes of Gwalior, my colleague Kritika and I had become a captive audience for the garrulous lawyer.
He would occasionally turn around to look at us while speaking, but he never really bothered to wait for our response. And, truth be told, I am glad that he didn’t because I remember feeling very conflicted about what was happening.
We were in the city to cover the controversy over the proposed installation of an Ambedkar statue in the premises of the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s Gwalior bench.
Anil Mishra was part of a group of mostly Brahmin lawyers who had blocked the statue on the pretext that due process had been flouted to rush through its installation in May.
In an interview he had given us in his chambers, Mishra had spoken at length about the technical grounds on which he was opposed to the statue.
But in the car, with Kritika’s camera locked away, the real reason for his opposition tumbled out. “This statue will never be erected anywhere in or around Gwalior,” Mishra declared. “Not even in a toilet.”
The casteist import of what he said was not lost on us. But we sat quietly at the back of the car,...
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