B. R. Ambedkar
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, (born April 14, 1891, Mhow, India-died December 6, 1956, New Delhi), leader of the Dalits (Scheduled Castes) and law minister of the government of India (1947-51). He inspired the Dalit Buddhist movement and campaigned against social discrimination towards the untouchables (Dalits). He was British India's Minister of Labour, Chairman of the Constituent Drafting committee, independent India's first Minister of Law and Justice, and considered the chief architect of the Constitution of India.
Born of a Dalit Mahar family of western India, he was as a boy humiliated by his high-caste schoolfellows. His father was an officer in the Indian army. Awarded a scholarship by the Gaekwar (ruler) of Baroda (now Vadodara), he studied at universities in the United States, Britain, and Germany. He entered the Baroda Public Service at the Gaekwar's request, but, again ill-treated by his high-caste colleagues, he turned to legal practice and to teaching. He soon established his leadership among Dalits, founded several journals on their behalf, and succeeded in obtaining special representation for them in the legislative councils of the government. Contesting Mahatma Gandhi's claim to speak for Dalits ( or Harijans , as Gandhi called them), he wrote What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (1945). In 1947 Ambedkar became the law minister of the government of India. He took a leading part in the framing of the Indian constitution, outlawing discrimination against untouchables, and skillfully helped to steer it through the assembly. He resigned in 1951, disappointed at his lack of influence in the government. In October 1956, in despair because of the perpetuation of untouchability in Hindu doctrine, he renounced Hinduism and became a Buddhist, together with about 200,000 fellow Dalits, at a ceremony in Nagpur. Ambedkar's book The Buddha and His Dhamma appeared posthumously in 1957, and it was republished as The Buddha and His Dhamma: A Critical Edition i 2011, edited, introduced, and annotated by Aakash Singh Rathore and Ajay Verma.
In 1990, the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, was posthumously conferred upon Ambedkar. Ambedkar's legacy includes numerous memorials and depictions in popular culture.
Untouchables, also called Dalit, officially Scheduled Caste, formerly Harijan, in traditinal Indian society, the former name for any member of a wide range of low-caste Hindu groups and any person outside the caste system. The use of the term and the social disabilities associated with it were declared illegal in the constitutions adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India in 1949 and of Pakistan in 1953. Mahatma Gandhi called untouchables Harijans ("Children of the God Hari Vishnu," or simply "Children of God") and long worked for their emancipation. However, this name is now considered condescending and offensive. The term Dalit later came to be used, especially by politically active members, though that too occasionally has negative connotations. The official designation Scheduled Caste is the most common term now used in India. Kocheril Raman Narayanan, who served as president of India from 1997 to 2002, was the first meember of a Scheduled Caste to occupy a high office in the country. Many different hereditary castes have been traditionally subsumed under the title untouchable, each of which subcribes to the social rule of endogamy ( marriage exclusively within the caste community) that governs the caste system in general.
While practicing 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 improvements, 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.
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. He led a Satyagraha in Mahad to fight for the right of the untouchable community to draw water from the main water tank of the town. 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. Thus annually 25 December is celebrated as Manusmrirti Dahan Din (Manusmriti Burning Day) by Ambedkarites and Dalits.
The modern constitution of India formally recognized the plight of the untouchables by legally establishing their ethnic subgroups as Scheduled Castes ( a population of some 170 million in the early 21st century). In addition, the designation Scheduled Tribes (about 85 milliom) was given to the indigenous peoples of the country who fall outside of the Indian social hierarchy. Besides banning untouchability, the constitution provides these groups with specific educatioanl and vocational privileges and grants them special representation in the Indian parliament. In support of these efforts, the Untouchability (Offenses) Act (1955) provides penalties for preventing anyone from enjoying a wide variety of religious, occupational, and social rights on the grounds that he or she is from a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe. Despite such measures, the traditinal divisions between pure and polluted caste groups persist in some levels of Indian society, making full emancipatio of these groups slow to come about.