Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (14 April 1891 – 6 December 1956) was an Indian economist, jurist, social reformer and political leader who chaired the committee that drafted the Constitution of India. Ambedkar served as Law and Justice minister in the first cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru.
Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891 in the military cantonment of Mhow. He was the 14th and last child of Ramji Maloji Sakpal, an army officer who held the rank of Subedar. In school, Ambedkar and other untouchable children were segregated and given little attention or help by teachers. They were not allowed to sit inside the class. If the peon was not available to give water then he had to go without water – hia writings as “No peon, No Water”. He was required to sit on a gunny sack.
Ramji Sakpal retired in 1894 and the family moved to Satara two years later. His Marathi Brahmin teacher, Krishnaji Keshav Ambedkar, changed his surname from ‘Ambadawekar’ to his own surname ‘Ambedkar’ in school records.
In 1897, Ambedkar’s family moved to Mumbai where Ambedkar became the only untouchable enrolled at Elphinstone High School. In 1907, he passed his matriculation examination and in the following year he entered Elphinstone College, University of Bombay. By 1912, he obtained his degree in economics and political science from Bombay University, and took up employment with thye Baroda state government.
In 1913, at the age of 22, Ambedkar was awarded a Baroda State Scholarship of £11.50 (Sterling) per month for three years under a scheme established by Sayajirao Gaekwad III (Gaekwad of Baroda) that was designed to provide opportunities for postgraduate education at Columbia University in New York City. He passed his M.A. exam in June 1915, majoring in economics. He presented a thesis, Ancient Indian Commerce. In 1916, he completed his second master’s thesis, National Dividend of India – A Historic and Analytical Study, for a second M.A. On 9 May, he presented the paper Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development before a seminar conducted by the anthropologist Alexander Goldenweiser.
In October 1916, he enrolled for the Bar course at Gray’s Inn, and at the same time enrolled at the London School of Economics where he started working on a doctoral thesis. In June 1917, he returned to India because his scholarship from Baroda ended. He got permission to return to London to submit his thesis within four years. He returned at the first opportunity, and completed a master’s degree in 1921. His thesis was on “The problem of the rupee: Its origin and its solution”. In 1923, he completed a D.Sc. in Economics which was awarded from University of London, and the same year he was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn. Ambedkar received his Ph.D. degree in economics at Columbia in 1927. Ambedkar was among a handful of Indian students to have done so at either institution in the 1920s.
Ambedkar was appointed Military Secretary to the Gaikwad but had to quit in a short time. Thereafter, he worked as a private tutor, as an accountant, and established an investment consulting business, but it failed when his clients learned that he was untouchable. In 1918, he became professor of political economy in the Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics in Mumbai.
In his early career, he was an economist, professor, and Barrister. His later life was marked by his political activities; he became involved in campaigning and negotiations for partition, publishing journals, advocating political rights and social freedom for Dalits, and contributing to the establishment of the state of India. In 1956, he converted to Buddhism, initiating mass conversions of Dalits.
Ambedkar went on to work as a legal professional. In 1926, he successfully defended three non-Brahmin leaders who had accused the Brahmin community of ruining India and were then subsequently sued for libel. The victory was resounding, both socially and individually, for the clients and the doctor.
While practising law in the Bombay High Court, he tried to promote education to untouchables and uplift them. His first organised attempt was his establishment of the central institution Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha, intended to promote education and socio-economic improvement, as well as the welfare of “outcastes”, at the time referred to as depressed classes. For the defence of Dalit rights, he started many periodicals like Mook Nayak, Bahishkrit Bharat, and Equality Janta.
Ambedkar had been invited to testify before the Southborough Committee, which was preparing the Government of India Act 1919. At this hearing, Ambedkar argued for creating separate electorates and reservations for untouchables and other religious communities. In 1920, he began the publication of the weekly Mooknayak (Leader of the Silent) in Mumbai with the help of Shahu of Kolhapur, that is, Shahu IV (1874–1922). He was appointed to the Bombay Presidency Committee to work with the all-European Simon Commission in 1925. Ambedkar also served on the Defence Advisory Committee and the Viceroy’s Executive Council as Minister of Labour.
By 1927, Ambedkar had decided to launch active movements against untouchability. He began with public movements and marches to open up public drinking water resources. He also began a struggle for the right to enter Hindu temples. In a conference in late 1927, Ambedkar publicly condemned the classic Hindu text, the Manusmriti (Laws of Manu), for ideologically justifying caste discrimination and “untouchability”, and he ceremonially burned copies of the ancient text. On 25 December 1927, he led thousands of followers to burn copies of Manusmriti. In 1930, Ambedkar launched the Kalaram Temple movement after three months of preparation. About 15,000 volunteers assembled at Kalaram Temple satyagraha making one of the greatest processions of Nashik. When they reached the gates, the gates were closed by Brahmin authorities.
In 1932, the British colonial government announced the formation of a separate electorate for “Depressed Classes” in the Communal Award. Mahatma Gandhi fiercely opposed a separate electorate for untouchables, saying he feared that such an arrangement would divide the Hindu community. Gandhi protested by fasting while imprisoned in the Yerwada Central Jail of Poona.
Following the fast, congressional politicians and activists such as Madan Mohan Malaviya and Palwankar Baloo organised joint meetings with Ambedkar and his supporters at Yerwada. On 25 September 1932, the agreement, known as the Poona Pact was signed between Ambedkar (on behalf of the depressed classes among Hindus) and Madan Mohan Malaviya (on behalf of the other Hindus). The agreement gave reserved seats for the depressed classes in the Provisional legislatures within the general electorate. Due to the pact the depressed class received 148 seats in the legislature instead of the 71, as allocated in the Communal Award proposed earlier by the colonial government under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. The text used the term “Depressed Classes” to denote Untouchables among Hindus who were later called Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under the India Act 1935, and the later Indian Constitution of 1950.
In 1935, Ambedkar was appointed principal of the Government Law College, Bombay, a position he held for two years. He also served as the chairman of the Governing body of Ramjas College, University of Delhi, after the death of its Founder Shri Rai Kedarnath. Settling in Bombay, Ambedkar oversaw the construction of a house, and stocked his personal library with more than 50,000 books.
In 1936, Ambedkar founded the Independent Labour Party, which contested the 1937 Bombay election to the Central Legislative Assembly for the 13 reserved and 4 general seats, and secured 11 and 3 seats respectively.
Upon India’s independence on 15 August 1947, the new prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Ambedkar to serve as the Dominion of India’s Law Minister. Jagjivan Ram’s wife Indrani Jagjivan Ram wrote in her memoir that Ambedkar persuaded her husband to ask Mahatma Gandhi for his inclusion in Nehru’s cabinet in independent India. Initially, Jagjivan Ram consulted Vallabhbhai Patel before asking Gandhi to recommend Ambedkar to Nehru for inclusion in cabinet, adding that Ambedkar had “given up his antagonism to Congress and Gandhiji”.
Ambedkar was ultimately included as the law minister of India in the First Nehru ministry after Gandhi recommended his name to Nehru. Two weeks later, he was appointed Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution for the future Republic of India.
On 25 November 1949, Ambedkar in his concluding speech in constituent assembly said:”The credit that is given to me does not really belong to me. It belongs partly to Sir B.N. Rau the Constitutional Advisor to the Constituent Assembly who prepared a rough draft of the Constitution for the consideration of the Drafting Committee.” On 27 September 1951, Ambedkar resigned from Nehru’s cabinet ministry after Hindu code bill was defeated in the parliament.
Ambedkar contested in the Bombay North first Indian General Election of 1952, but lost to his former assistant and Congress Party candidate Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar. Ambedkar became a member of Rajya Sabha, probably an appointed member. He tried to enter Lok Sabha again in the by-election of 1954 from Bhandara, but he placed third (the Congress Party won).
Ambedkar expressed his disapproval for the constitution in 1953 during a parliament session and said “People always keep on saying to me “Oh you are the maker of the constitution”. My answer is I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.” Ambedkar added that, “I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody.”
Ambedkar published his book Annihilation of Caste on 15 May 1936. It strongly criticised Hindu orthodox religious leaders and the caste system in general, and included “a rebuke of Gandhi” on the subject. Later, in a 1955 BBC interview, he accused Gandhi of writing in opposition of the caste system in English language papers while writing in support of it in Gujarati language papers. In his writings, Ambedkar also accused Jawaharlal Nehru of being “conscious of the fact that he is a Brahmin”.
In his work Who Were the Shudras? Ambedkar tried to explain the formation of untouchables. He saw Shudras and Ati Shudras who form the lowest caste in the ritual hierarchy of the caste system, as separate from Untouchables. Ambedkar oversaw the transformation of his political party into the Scheduled Castes Federation. It did not fare well in the 1946 provincial elections, but in Bengal, it managed to elect Ambedkar to the Constituent Assembly by winning support from Congress legislators.
Ambedkar also criticised Islamic practice in South Asia. He criticized distinctions within Islam and described the religion as “a close corporation and the distinction that it makes between Muslims and non-Muslims is a very real, very positive and very alienating distinction”. He condemned child marriage and the mistreatment of women in Muslim society. No words can adequately express the great and many evils of polygamy and concubinage, and especially as a source of misery to a Muslim woman. Take the caste system. Everybody infers that Islam must be free from slavery and caste. […] [While slavery existed], much of its support was derived from Islam and Islamic countries. While the prescriptions by the Prophet regarding the just and humane treatment of slaves contained in the Koran are praiseworthy, there is nothing whatsoever in Islam that lends support to the abolition of this curse. But if slavery has gone, caste among Musalmans [Muslims] has remained.
Ambedkar viewed Christianity to be incapable of fighting injustices. He wrote that “It is an incontrovertible fact that Christianity was not enough to end the slavery of the Negroes in the United States. A civil war was necessary to give the Negro the freedom which was denied to him by the Christians.”
Ambedkar opposed conversions of depressed classes to convert to Islam or Christianity added that if they converted to Islam then “the danger of Muslim domination also becomes real” and if they converted to Christianity then it “will help to strengthen the hold of Britain on the country”.
Ambedkar also suggested that the communities he worked with were twenty times more oppressed by Congress policies than were Indian Muslims; he clarified that he was criticizing Congress, and not all Hindus.
After the Lahore resolution (1940) of the Muslim League demanding Pakistan, Ambedkar wrote a 400-page tract titled Thoughts on Pakistan, which analysed the concept of “Pakistan” in all its aspects. Ambedkar argued that the Hindus should concede Pakistan to the Muslims. Thoughts on Pakistan “rocked Indian politics for a decade”. It determined the course of dialogue between the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress, paving the way for the Partition of India.
