Essays

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (April 14, 1891 or 1892 - December 6, 1956) was the most prominent Indian Untouchable leader of the 20th century. He was born in Mhow in central India, the fourteenth child of parents who belonged to the very lowest stratum of Hindu society, known as Untouchables or Dalits. He helped spark a revival of Buddhism in India, a movement which is now known as neo-Buddhism.

Ambedkar's father had acquired a certain amount of formal education in both Marathi and English. This enabled him to teach his children, especially Bhimrao and to encourage them in their pursuit of knowledge. In 1908, when Ambedkar passed the matriculation examination for Bombay University, this event was such an uncommon achievement on the part of an Untouchable boy that it was celebrated with a public meeting. Four years later, Ambedkar graduated with a degree in Politics and Economics. Soon afterwards, he entered civil service in Baroda State, the ruler of which had awarded him a scholarship.

From 1913 to 1917 and again from 1920 to 1923, Ambedka studied in the West, and, when, at the age of 32, he finally returned to the country of his birth, it was as one of the most highly qualified men in public life. During his three years at Columbia University he studied economics, sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology and politics.

He was awarded a Ph.D. for a thesis which he eventually published in book form as The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India. His first published work, however, was a paper on Castes in India. After completing his studies ill America, Ambedkar left New York for London, where he was admitted to the London School of Economics and Political Science and to Gray's Inn. A year later, his scholarship came to an end,

In 1920, having taught in a Bombay college and started a Marathi weekly called Mooknayak or 'Leader of the Dumb', Ambedkar was able to return to London and resume his studies there. In the course of the next three years he completed a thesis on The Problem of the Rupee, for which the University of London awarded him a D.Sc. At this time, he was admitted to the bar. Before permanently ending his residence in England, Ambedkar spent three months in Germany, where he engaged in further studies in economics at the University of Bonn.

Back in India, Ambedkar established himself in Bombay mid pursued an active career. He built up his legal practice, taught at a college, gave evidence before various official bodies, started a newspaper and was nominated to the Bombay Legislative Council, in whose proceedings, he at once took a leading part. During the years immediately following his return to India, Ambedkar helped to form the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha or Depressed Classes Welfare Association, the objects of which were to promote the spread of education and culture among Untouchables and low caste persons, to improve their economic condition and to provide a voice for their grievances.

Between 1927 and 1932, Ambedkar led his followers in a series of non-violent campaigns to assert the right of the Untouchables to enter Hindu places of worship and to draw water from public tanks and wells. Two of these campaigns were of special importance: the campaigns against the exclusion of Untouchables from the Kalaram Temple in Nasik and from the Chowdar Tank in Mahad. The Chowdar Tank campaign also saw the ceremonial burning of the Manusmriti or 'Institutes of Manu', the ancient Hindu law book that Ambedkar believed bore much of the responsibility for the cruel treatment that the  Untouchables had suffered.

Unpopular as Ambedkar's activities had already made him with the Caste Hindus, during 1931 and 1932 he became more unpopular still. In his own words, he became the most hated man in India. The cause of the trouble was Ambedkar's continued insistence on the necessity of separate electorates for the Depressed Classes. Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party were opposed to separate electorates for the Depressed Classes and Ambedkar and Gandhi had clashed on the subject at the Second Round Table Conference, when the Gandhi went so far as to challenge Ambedkar's claim to speak for the Untouchables.

Ambedkar's arguments did, however, convince the British Government, and when Ramsay MacDonald published his Communal Award, the following year the Depressed Classes were given the separate electorates for which they had asked. Gandhi's response was to go on a fast to the death for the abolition of separate electorates for the Depressed Classes. Since he was the acknowledged leader of the independence movement his action created consternation throughout India. Ambedkar was reviled as a traitor and threats were made against his life. But though unmoved by the pressure that was brought to bear on him Ambedkar was not unwilling to negotiate and eventually agreed to replace separate electorates with joint electorates and a greatly increased number of reserved seats. This agreement was embodied in a document that became known as the Poona Pact, the signing of which by Ambedkar marked his

emergence as the undisputed leader of the Depressed Classes.

He also began to think there was no future for the Untouchables within Hinduism and that they should change their religion. In the same year Ambedkar was appointed principal of the Government Law College, Bombay, built a house for himself and his books and lost his wife Ramabai. They had been married in 1908, when he was sixteen and she was nine and she had borne him five children, of whom only one survived.

In the course of the next few years he founded the Independent Labour Party, took part in the provincial elections that were held under the Government of India. Act, 1935, was elected to the Bombay Legislative Assembly, pressed for the abolition of agricultural serfdom, defended the right of industrial workers to strike, advocated the promotion of birth control, and addressed meetings and conferences all over the Bombay Presidency. In 1941 he was appointed to the Defence Advisory Committee and in the following year joined the Viceroy's Executive Council as Labour Member, a post he occupied for the next four years. During the same period he transformed the Independent Labour Party into the All-India Scheduled Caste Federation, founded the People's Education Society and published a number of highly controversial books and pamphlets. Among the latter were Thoughts on Pakistan, What Congress and Gandhi have Done to the Untouchable:'., and Who Were the Shudras?

In 1947, India achieved independence and Ambedkar, who had already been elected a member of the Constituent Assembly, was invited by J. Nehru, the first prime minister of the country, to join the Cabinet as Minister for Law. A few weeks later the Assembly entrusted the task of framing the Constitution to a Draft Committee and this committee elected Ambedkar as its chairman. For the next two years, he worked on the Draft Constitution, hammering it out article-by-article and clause-by-clause practically single- handed. Despite ill health, Ambedkar completed the Draft Constitution by the beginning of 1948 and later that year introduced it in the Constituent Assembly. Thereafter he piloted it through its three readings and in November 1949 it was adopted by the Assembly with very few amendments.

In 1954, he twice visited Burma, the second time in order to attend the third conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists in Rangoon. In 1955 he founded the Bharatiya Bauddha Mahasabha or Indian Buddhist Society and installed an image of the Buddha in a temple that had been built at Dehu Road, near Poona. Addressing the thousands of Untouchables who had assembled for the occasion, he declared that henceforth he would devote himself to the propagation of Buddhism in India. He also announced that he was writing a book explaining the tenets of Buddhism in simple language for the benefit of the common man. The work in question was The Buddha and His Dhamma, on which he had been working since November 1951 and which he completed in February 1956. Not long afterwards Ambedkar announced that he would be embracing Buddhism in October of that year. Arrangements were accordingly made for the ceremony to be held in Nagpur, and on 14 October 1956 the Untouchable leader took the Three Refuges and Five Precepts from a Buddhist monk in the traditional manner and then in his turn administered them to the 380,000 men, women, and children who had come to Nagpur in response to his call. In Delhi he took part in various Buddhist functions, attended the Rajya Sabha, and completed the last chapter of his book The Buddha and Karl Marx. He died on 6 December 1956. Although Ambedkar had been a Buddhist for only seven weeks, during that period he probably did more for the promotion of Buddhism than any other Indian since Ashoka. At the time of his death three quarters of a million Untouchables had become Buddhists, and in the months that followed hundreds of thousands more took the same step - despite the uncertainty and confusion that had been created by the sudden loss of their leader.