MUMBAI ¨C Vijay Surwade may have worked as a bank manager by day ¡ª but for five decades he spent his evenings building one of the world¡¯s biggest archives dedicated to India¡¯s pioneering Dalit rights campaigner B.R. Ambedkar.
His collection includes everything from documents and photos to Ambedkar¡¯s broken spectacles and dentures, all housed in shoe boxes and concertina files in Surwade¡¯s apartment in the western city of Kalyan, about 45 kilometers northeast of Mumbai.
It is among a number of informal archives collected by ordinary Dalit people who say their stories otherwise risk being lost, undermining their cultures and the fight against caste-based discrimination.
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