A leader and father figure to the most marginalized groups of the Indian subcontinent, Dr. B R Ambedkar continues to shape the visual language and voice of resistance of the milieu. On the Day of Baba Saheb’s birth anniversary, let’s look at the myriads of depictions and iconography of Dr. Ambedkar, celebrating the legend.
Ambedkar is a central figure of Dalit and other oppressed communities’ emancipation project hence anchors the visual language of their resistance and revolution. Ambedkar’s depictions span public statuary, sculptural installations, paintings, graphic narratives, folk and digital art, and curated iconographic projects that place Ambedkar’s image at the centre of their visual strategy.
Public statues and their visual conventions
Public statues are the most ubiquitous depictions of Ambedkar and have generated a sophisticated iconography that contemporary artists constantly reference and contest.
Sudhir Mehra’s study of Ambedkar statues traces one of the earliest full-length statues with a book to a cement and concrete figure at Harsul, Maharashtra, sculpted by Ramachandra Bandu Sasamkar in the early 1960s.
The statue shows Ambedkar in a three-piece suit holding a book, visually encoding his identity as an educated modern intellectual and signalling the emancipatory role of education. These early works, often by non-Dalit sculptors such as Brahmesh Wagh, established what Mehra calls the “master signifier”: the suited body with book and raised index finger, which has since been endlessly replicated and reinterpreted.
From the 1990s onwards, Ambedkar’s public statues diversified in posture, material and scale, paralleling the consolidation of Ambedkarite political cultures. Bronze and stone statues replaced earlier cement figures, signalling both the growing resources of Dalit communities and the state’s belated recognition of Ambedkar as a national leader.
In the Mayawati era, monumental complexes such as Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal and the Ambedkar Park in Noida and Lucknow introduced new formats: seated “king-like” Ambedkar statues inspired by Daniel Chester French’s Lincoln Memorial; family-group sculptures including Ramabai and a dog; and bald, explicitly neo-Buddhist Ambedkar figures raised high on pedestals flanked by elephants.
Though commissioned as state memorials, these works are authored sculptures that re-stage his image as sovereign, head of a family, and quasi-Buddhist teacher, expanding the visual repertoire beyond the standing lawgiver.
Sculptural installations and contemporary art interventions
Beyond state memorials, contemporary artists have used sculpture and installation to re-situate Ambedkar’s image in new geographies and conversations.
Riyas Komu’s “Fourth World” (2019, Nirox Sculpture Park, South Africa)
Riyas Komu’s installation Fourth World at the Nirox Sculpture Park, in the Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg, consists of four concrete plinths aligned to the cardinal directions.
Two plinths facing east and west carry bronze statues of Ambedkar, described as the first Ambedkar statues on the African continent, while the other two plinths remain empty. In these sculptures Ambedkar is “immaculately attired in a double-breasted suit”, but unlike the standard Indian street statues he is neither holding a copy of the Constitution nor pointing towards a distant future.
One hand appears to grasp a microphone stand, the other is raised and open as if addressing an audience, shifting the emphasis from didactic pointing to dialogic speech and situating Ambedkar in a global conversation on oppression and equality.
Riyas Komu’s “Dhamma Swaraj” (2018, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi)
In the triptych painting Dhamma Swaraj (2018), shown in Komu’s solo exhibition Holy Shiver at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, the artist juxtaposes repeated, spectral images of Ambedkar and Gandhi across three large canvases.
The work fuses “Dhamma” and “Swaraj” in its title and uses semi-transparent, overlapping portraits to evoke ideological dialogue and tension between the two leaders while still relying on recognisable photographic likenesses of Ambedkar.
Babasaheb and the Dhamma chakra by Siddhesh Gautam
Siddhesh Gautam, aka Bakery Prasad is a Delhi-based multidisciplinary visual artist, writer and designer. In the artwork, Ambedkar is seen carrying the wheel of Dharma and it is set in the background of Sanchi stupa.
Arun Mascarenhas’s “Annihilation of Caste” drawing (2015)
Designer and sculptor Arun Mascarenhas created a small drawing titled Annihilation of Caste as a social-media publication for Ambedkar’s 124th birth anniversary in 2015.
The drawing reuses the standard pose of a standing Ambedkar in suit, but instead of constitution, he is holding Annihilation of caste, the most radical critique of Hindu caste system.
Graphic narratives and picture books
Graphic narratives and illustrated children’s books have become key sites for reimagining Ambedkar’s figure for new generations while keeping him literally visible on the page.
“Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability” (2011)
The graphic novel Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability, written by Srividya Natarajan and S. Anand and illustrated by Durgabai and Subhash Vyam in the Pardhan Gond style, interweaves Ambedkar’s childhood and political life with present-day caste violence.
Ambedkar appears throughout as a stylised but recognisable figure whose body is integrated into Gond visual motifs, allowing the book to function both as a biography and as an experiment in indigenous visual storytelling.
Dalit-Bahujan folk, calendar and digital art
Dalit and Bahujan artists working in folk idioms and digital media have developed striking portraits of Ambedkar that both inhabit and subvert popular visual culture.
Malvika Raj’s Madhubani painting of Ambedkar’s life
Patna-based Madhubani artist Malvika Raj created a large painting narrating Ambedkar’s life in the Madhubani style, which was presented to and displayed at the University of Edinburgh on his 125th birth anniversary.
On a canvas roughly 3.5 by 2.5 feet, she places a central portrait of Ambedkar looking at scenes from his life, sitting separately in a classroom, meeting Gandhi, receiving Buddhist initiation, marriage, the Mahad Satyagraha and more, rendered in grey against a white ground to emphasise the hardships of his life.
Dalit-Bahujan calendar art and poster imagery
Research on Dalit-Bahujan calendar art in North India highlights how mass-produced posters and calendars place literal images of Ambedkar alongside other icons such as Buddha and Dalit saints, creating dense montages of leaders, slogans and symbols.
These images, often derived from studio photographs, circulation posters, or statue photographs, are digitally recomposed into domestic devotional objects that make Ambedkar’s portrait omnipresent in Dalit homes and neighbourhood shops.
The Indian Saint Project (2015–ongoing)
The Indian Saint Project, developed by academics and artists including Michal Erlich, Noy Haimovitz, Tamir Erlich and Khinvraj Jangid, creates digital hand-painted lightbox portraits of Indian saints, gurus and social reformers.
The project’s dedicated Ambedkar painting depicts him at the Mahad Satyagraha of 1927, immersed in water as Dalits assert their right to drink from a public tank.
He is shown in a Western suit, immersed waist-deep, pointing upward towards the moon, while the dominant blue of his clothing and the background references the colour that has become emblematic of Ambedkarite resistance.
“Unity of Mind, Spirit and Society” by Kartik Kambar and Basavaraj Talawar
In the project Unity of Mind, Spirit and Society by Kartik Kambar and Basavaraj Talawar, part of Kochi Biennale 2025-26, two paintings place Ambedkar alongside Basava, the twelfth-century Bhakti philosopher, and the Buddha.
This list is in no way exhaustive. Many artists have portrayed Ambedkar through metaphors and sysmbols which will be discussed in a different article. Dr. Ambedkar and his ideas continues to shape the intellectual, visual and aesthetic considerations of Indians.
Sources
The Iconography of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: The Symbolic Means in Visual and Design Culture by Arun Mascarenhas
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
