‘Ambedkar Odu’, a unique experiment of reading out B.R. Ambedkar’s writings on a digital platform to take them closer to common people, crossed a milestone of 100 hours of reading on the 131st birth anniversary of the chief architect of the Constitution on Thursday.
A total of 321 people have read out 470 writings of Ambedkar on a wide range of topics in the series.
Initiated by Kannada writer and scholar Arun Joladkudligi on September 7, 2020, the programme envisioned reading an Ambedkar’s article a day and uploading it on an online platform. On Thursday, the series received over eight lakh views on the YouTube channel where the audio recordings are uploaded.
“The idea was to make use of freely and easily available digital technology to disseminate Ambedkar’s thoughts. The link of the audio is also widely shared on social media platforms to reach out to a large audience. I spend about three hours every day on it,” Mr. Joladkudligi told The Hindu. Just as there are many viewers now, more people are also showing keen interest to participate as readers, he said.
The programme has involved many prominent people in Karnataka as readers, including writers Devanur Mahadeva, Nataraj Huliyar, H.S. Anupama, Sabiha Bhumigowda, and Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy; music director Hamsalekha; actors Ramesh Aravind, Kishore and Rangayana Raghu; filmmaker B. Suresh, and transgender artist Manjamma Jogati.
“It is possibly one of the biggest collections of recordings of Ambedkar’s writings in a regional language in India. It is a unique model to reach out to a wider audience and I hope that other Indian languages would adopt it. The model can also be used for disseminating the thoughts of other great personalities such as Kuvempu and Ram Manohar Lohia,” Mr. Joladkudligi said.
The audio archive can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/user/joladarun
