Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

‘The outcaste is a by-product of the caste system. There will be outcastes as long as there are castes. And nothing can emancipate the outcaste except the destruction of the caste system.’

—B.R. Ambedkar

The little boy was very excited about going to school with his elder brother, but his first day in school taught him lessons in reality that he never forgot.

He discovered that the teachers did not want to teach him, his classmates refused to sit beside him and no one would touch him because, he was told, he was born polluted. The two boys had to carry gunny sacks to sit on and listen from outside the classroom. No child played with them or shared their food and they were not even allowed to draw water from the school well. The thirsty boys would have to wait till someone was kind enough to pour water into their waiting hands. If no one did, they remained thirsty till they got home.

Little Bhimrao learnt that in Hindu society he was labelled ‘untouchable’—considered to be outside the formal Hindu caste system—and that he was being ostracized only because of his birth. It was a stigma he would fight for the rest of his life with single-minded passion and defiant rage. In Bhimrao the Dalits—the downtrodden untouchables—of India finally found the courageous, tough-talking, formidably knowledgeable and energetic leader who would demand and win them self-respect and equality.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891 at Mhow in central India. He was the fourteenth child of Ramji Sakpal and Bhimabai. They belonged to the Mahar caste, and in spite of being untouchable, the Mahars had a martial history. Mahars had fought in the army of Shivaji and they still joined the Indian army because it gave them opportunities for education and employment that were not open to them in Hindu society. Bhimrao’s father Ramji was a subedar major and taught at an army school. Even though he had very little money, Ramji ensured that his sons went to school.

After Ramji retired they came to live in a single room in a chawl in Bombay and he struggled to get Bhimrao educated. The boy was the first untouchable student in his school and college. He completed his graduation from Elphinstone College, Bombay, with the help of a scholarship from Sayajirao Gaekwad, the Maharaja of Baroda. Bhimrao loved books and realized early that the only way to overcome the inhumane caste system was through education. When some college pundits refused to teach him Sanskrit, he found an enlightened teacher who would do so. Later his knowledge of Hindu scriptures became so vast that he would often defeat supposedly learned orthodox Hindus in debate.

Ambedkar’s education was endangered when his father died right after his graduation and again Gaekwad came to his rescue. He sponsored Ambedkar’s postgraduate studies at Columbia University in the United States on the condition that Ambedkar would serve in the Baroda government for ten years when he came back. The atmosphere of intellectual freedom in America was a revelation to the young student; for the first time he could follow his dreams. He studied many subjects, got a Ph.D in Economics and even presented a paper at an anthropological seminar on ‘Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development’. Ambedkar then went to London, simultaneously studying at the London School of Economics and preparing for the Bar. He gained a Masters degree and also became a barrister by 1920. And this was the boy who was made to sit outside class, and refused lessons in Sanskrit.

Coming back to India in 1924 Ambedkar immediately joined the Baroda government and was appointed the Military Secretary to the Maharaja. Then the enthusiastic young man had his next encounter with reality when he realized that his brilliant academic career did not make the slightest difference to people. In society he was still a Mahar. At work, his colleagues ostracized him, his subordinates would throw the files onto his tables from a distance and no one would fetch him a glass of water. Even worse, he couldn’t find a room to rent as he wandered around Baroda, and even friends refused to give him shelter. In desperation he gave a false Parsi name and got a room in a Parsi dharamshala but the secret was soon out. As he wrote later, ‘On the second day of my stay, when I was just leaving for my office … a mob of some fifteen or twenty Parsis arrived with lathis accosted me, threatening to kill me, and demanded who I was. I replied, “I am a Hindu.” But they were not to be satisfied with this answer.’ Ambedkar was forced to resign from his job and return to Bombay.

He began his legal practice in Bombay High Court while also teaching law in a college, and soon with the encouragement of the Maharaja of Kolhapur, he began his activities as a social worker, writer and educationist. He started the fortnightly Mook Nayak (leader of the silent) and then the organization Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha to serve the cause of the Dalits. He knew that their salvation lay in education, and remembering his experience in Baroda, he set up students hostels, libraries and study circles. He began to travel widely, speaking at meetings and spreading the message of social equality as well as inter-caste marriage and dining. He was the first Dalit leader who came to his people with not just hope but also a path to win equality and soon his followers started calling him ‘Babasaheb’.

In 1927 Ambedkar’s first Satyagraha was at the Chavdar Taley, the only public tank in Mahad from which untouchables were not allowed to take water. Ambedkar and his followers drank the water and then burnt a copy of the Manusmriti as he believed that this ancient treatise was the source of all the inequalities in Hindu society. The Satyagrahis—peaceful protestors—were attacked by a mob armed with lathis, but they resolutely refused to retaliate. Ambedkar then took the battle to court and won the case ten years later. In another Satyagraha, he led his followers into the Kalaram Temple in Nasik.

The result of these Satyagrahas was that for the first time the Dalits began to question their treatment by society and realized they had the same rights as everyone else. They had to raise their heads, question, protest and fight, and take their destiny in their own hands because society was not going to do it for them. And Ambedkar was the best example of what this defiance and courage could achieve. If this Mahar boy could defy segregation, travel overseas and return a barrister, so could they. The Dalits were nearly a quarter of the population and Ambedkar made them realize that if they united they had a voice no government or political party could ignore. He made them conscious of their rights and taught them self-respect, and that was his greatest achievement.

Ambedkar was nominated to the Bombay Legislative Assembly in 1926 and he brought forward many bills for the welfare of the depressed classes, but the bills were all defeated because of opposition by orthodox Hindu members. Meanwhile, he had become a lecturer at the Government Law College and would go on to become its principal. He attended all three Round Table Conferences as the representative of the Depressed Classes and here he came into conflict with another leader who was championing the cause of the people he called Harijans—Mahatma Gandhi.

Ambedkar and Gandhi could never agree on the correct path for the emancipation of the Dalits. Ambedkar felt that the only way the Dalits could make their voice heard was if they had separate electorates—electoral seats where only Dalits voted for Dalits. Gandhi was fighting to keep Dalits within the Congress’s fold, because he knew the government was trying to divide the people to weaken the national freedom movement. When earlier the Muslims had been given separate electorates, it had led to the demand for a separate homeland and Gandhi was nervous about further seats being reserved for any community. Both of them were correct in their own way, but it led to feelings of uncertainty and distrust that once led Ambedkar to say bitterly, ‘Mahatmas have come and Mahatmas have gone, but the untouchables have remained untouchables.’

When the government announced separate seats for the Depressed Classes in the Communal Award of 1932, Gandhi went on a fast in Yeravada Jail. Ambedkar faced a lot of pressure from other leaders to give in to Gandhi and he also began to fear that if Gandhi died, then his people would face violent reprisal from other Hindus. So he was forced to abandon the plan and negotiate the Poona Pact with the Congress. In the Pact, more seats were reserved within the general category for Dalits, with the promise of Congress support. It was a decision Ambedkar would regret for the rest of his life as he never received the full support of the party during elections or for important legislations, not even as Law Minister in independent India.

Meanwhile, his social work was going apace, and he established a number of schools and colleges including the Siddhartha College in Bombay. By this time he had come to the conclusion that it was not possible for his people to gain equality within Hindu society and he began to look for a truly egalitarian religion. To his anguish and amazement, he found that converts to Islam, Christianity and Sikhism had carried their earlier inequalities and some form of caste system with them. If the Christians had separate churches, Muslims and Sikhs did not intermarry with the Dalit converts. This was the time when he began to study Buddhism.

When India became independent, the Constituent Assembly was set up to frame the Constitution of the new nation. In recognition of Ambedkar’s great scholarship in jurisprudence and constitutional law, he was appointed the Chairman of the Drafting Committee. He was also the first Law Minister of the country.

Creating a new constitution was a very long and complex process and by the end it was mainly the work of Ambedkar and B.N. Rau, the legal advisor to the Constituent Assembly. Through four months of discussions and debates, he patiently explained the clauses to the members and successfully piloted the Constitution through the Assembly. The new Constitution was inaugurated on 26 January 1950. Though once again Ambedkar was ambivalent about his achievement and wrote with his usual bluntness, ‘People always keep on saying to me, “O, 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 would face his greatest disappointment when the Hindu Code Bill was never tabled in Parliament in spite of the promise of support from Prime Minister Nehru. In spite of indifferent health, he had worked relentlessly for months on drafting a bill that would create uniform laws for all Hindus and guarantee the rights of women. However, most of the Congress members opposed it and Nehru bowed to their pressure. Bitter and disillusioned, Ambedkar resigned from his post and could not win another election because orthodox Hindus would not vote for him. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha and was a member for the rest of his life.

This was the time when he decided to convert to Buddhism, the only religion that he found to be truly enlightened and egalitarian. He had once said, ‘Unfortunately for me, I was born a Hindu untouchable. It was beyond my power to prevent that, but I declare that I will not die a Hindu.’ On 14 October 1956 he and thousands of his followers became Buddhists at Nagpur and over the years it has led to a revival of Buddhism in India. It was his final rejection of a religion that never gave his people the true equality he had worked for. The next year, on 6 December 1956, Ambedkar died in Delhi. He was cremated at Dadar, Maharashtra, and the stupa on the site named Chaitanya Bhumi has become a pilgrimage for Dalits.

For all his great contributions to the nation Ambedkar was awarded the Bharat Ratna only in 1990. The delay would not have surprised him. Today his statue stands in the Parliament House in New Delhi as testimony to his work, but the iniquities of the caste system remain. What he did achieve was to make enlightened Indians realise how the caste system was one of the causes of the economic and social backwardness of the country and that no country could progress when large sections of its people were denied their rights. The Constitution at least gave equality to all in the eyes of the law.

India has changed since his death. Today Ambedkar’s people proudly call themselves Dalits and not Harijans, and they do not bow to or accept any form of discrimination. They have gained the courage to stand up and protest and demand their rights, and they have learnt the power of the ballot box. Society no longer condones caste and segregation. Yet even today politics is caste-based and Dalits face discrimination. Dr Ambedkar’s dream of a truly egalitarian Indian society has still not come true.