Life is Nothing without Determination and Self-respect: The Legacy of Dr B R Ambedkar

BA, MA (twice), PhD, MSc, Barrister-at-law,DSc, LLD, DLitt 

Born in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (14 April 1891 – 6 December 1956) was the last child of Ramji Maloji Sakpal and Bhimabai Sakpal. Bhimrao’s father was a Subedar in the British Indian army. The family belonged to the Mahar caste and had come to Madhya Pradesh from Maharashtra. They were treated as untouchables. After his father’s retirement in 1894, the family moved to Satara, also in the Central Provinces. His family name was Sakpal but his teacher in school, Krishna Keshav Ambedkar, gave him his own surname "Ambedkar" in the school records. Thereafter, he came to be known as Ambedkar. Shortly after they moved to Satara, Bhimrao’s mother passed away. Four years later, his father remarried and the family shifted to Bombay.

Although he first attended an army school, Ambedkar sat outside the class on a gunny sack, separate from the children of the Brahmin and the upper classes, and was given little attention or help by teachers. Discrimination followed him wherever he went. At Satara, where he attended the local school, he was not allowed to even drink the same water as the other children. The peon would pour water from a separate vessel into his cupped hands, if he felt thirsty. No one else was prepared to do this. “The days the peon was on leave,” he recalls, “I would go thirsty.” No change of schools altered this fate. Later he would say,

“Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from co-mingling and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion; it is a state of the mind.”
In 1906, 15-year-old Bhimrao married Ramabai, a 9 year old girl. He passed his matriculation in 1908 from Elphinstone High School, being the only untouchable student in the whole school and went on to study at the Elphinstone College. One can only wonder at the quality of the merit he possessed that single-handedly swept away the centuries of stigma his birth carried. Who can deny what it must have felt like - that it would not have entered like iron into his soul? Yet he persevered - unshaken, focused and above all, unembittered.

He graduated in 1912, with a degree in Economics and Political Science from Bombay University. By this time, the news of his achievements had reached the Gaekwad ruler of Baroda, SahyajiRao III. His Highness came forward with the monetary help of a scholarship £11.50 per month for three years, which Ambedkar decided to use for higher studies in the USA. He had, no doubt, by this time realised education was the only way out of his predicament, the only access to empowerment. He enrolled in Columbia University in New York City to study Economics. He completed his Master’s degree in June 1915, after successfully completing his thesis titled ‘Ancient Indian Commerce’. In 1916, he completed his second thesis, National Dividend of India – A Historic and Analytical Study, for another MA. Ambedkar returned to India and as stipulated by the rules of the scholarship grant, he joined the service of the King of Baroda, as the Defence Secretary. But here too, he had to face humiliation for being an untouchable. 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 an untouchable.

Undeterred, he went on in 1916 to enrol in the London School of Economics, to work on his doctoral thesis, simultaneously enrolling for the Bar course at Gray's Inn. In 1922, he was called to the Bar. In 1923 he presented his thesis titled "The problem of the rupee: Its origin and its solution" whilst completing a D.Sc in Economics in the same year. His third and fourth Doctorates LL.D, Columbia, came in 1952 and D.Litt., Osmania, in 1953. In 1918, with the help of the former Governor of Bombay, Lord Sydenham, Ambedkar became a professor of political economy at the Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics in Bombay. At every step, however, ostracisation dogged him. He had to leave the job as the staff refused to share drinking water with him.

“If you believe in living a respectable life, you believe in self-help which is the best help.”
He decided to fight against the caste discrimination that plagued him throughout his life. In his testimony before the Southborough Committee in preparation of the Government of India Act in 1919, Ambedkar put forth the opinion that there should be a separate electoral system for the untouchables and other marginalised communities. It was an opinion forged through having spent countless years in the furnace of humiliation and social alienation. He began to contemplate the idea of reservations for Dalits and other religious outcastes.

“Be Educated, Be Organised and Be Agitated.”
Ambedkar began to find ways to spread awareness, to make people aware of the drawbacks of the prevailing social evils. With the help of Shahaji II, a progressive royal from the family of Shivaji, he started a newspaper called “Mooknayaka” (Leader of the Silent) in 1920. It is said that after hearing his speech at a rally, Shahu IV, an influential ruler of Kolhapur, invited him to share a meal. The incident was enough to create a huge socio-political uproar.

In 1926, Ambedkar applied his legal skills to fighting cases of caste discrimination in courts. He won a resounding victory in defending three non-Brahmin leaders, who had accused Brahmins of ruining India, and were afterwards sued for libel. This established the basis of his future battles. While practising law in the Bombay High Court, he spoke of education for the upliftment of untouchables. His first organised attempt was his establishment of a central organisation, the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha, which was set up to promote education and socio-economic improvement, as well as the welfare of "outcastes", which were referred to as depressed classes then.

“So long as you don’t achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.”
By 1927, Ambedkar launched full-fledged movements for the rights of the outcastes. He demanded public drinking water sources open to all and the right for all castes to enter temples. He openly condemned Hindu scriptures advocating discrimination and arranged symbolic demonstrations to enter the Kalaram Temple in Nashik. He publicly condemned the classic Hindu text, the Manusmriti (Laws of Manu), for justifying caste discrimination and "untouchability", ceremonially burning copies of the ancient text. On 25 December 1927, thousands of his followers burnt copies of Manusmriti.

In 1932, the Poona Pact was signed between Dr Ambedkar and Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, representative of the Hindu Brahmins, relinquishing reservation of seats for the untouchable classes in the Provisional legislatures, within the general electorate. These classes were later designated as Scheduled Classes and Scheduled Tribes. Ambedkar objected to the decision of the Congress and Mahatma Gandhi to label them as Harijans. He would say that even the members of untouchable community are same as the other members of the society.

“Lost rights are never regained by the appeals to the conscience of the usurpers but by relentless struggle. Goats are used for sacrificial offerings not lions.”
In 1935, Ambedkar was appointed principal of the Government Law College, Bombay, a position he held for two years. His wife Ramabai died after a long illness the same year. It had been her longstanding wish to go on a pilgrimage to Pandharpur, but Ambedkar had refused to let her go, telling her that he would create a new Pandharpur for her instead of Hinduism's Pandharpur which treated them as untouchables. At the Yeola Conversion Conference in Nasik, Ambedkar announced his decision to convert to a different religion. In 1956, he finally renounced Hinduism and formally converted to Buddhism, his religion of choice.

“Religion is for man not man for religion. Though I was born a Hindu, I solemnly assure you that I will not die as a Hindu.”
When the time came for the Constituent Assembly to appoint a committee that would draft independent India’s Constitution, it was his reputation as a scholar and his vision that led to his appointment to this post. He was a wise constitutional expert, who studied the constitutions of about 60 countries before beginning to draft the constitution of free India.

“Constitution is not merely a lawyer’s document, it is a vehicle of Life and its spirit is the spirit of the Age.”
He emphasised on bridging the gap between all classes of society. According to him, it would be difficult to maintain the unity of the country if the differences among the classes were not met. He put particular emphasis on religious, gender and caste equality. The text prepared by Ambedkar provided constitutional guarantees and protections for a wide range of civil liberties for individual citizens, including freedom of religion, the abolition of untouchability, and the outlawing of all forms of discrimination. Ambedkar argued for extensive economic and social rights for women. He was successful in receiving support of the Assembly to introduce reservation for members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in education, government jobs and civil services. India's lawmakers hoped to eradicate the socio-economic inequalities and lack of opportunities for India's depressed classes through these measures.

“Equality may be a fiction but nonetheless one must accept it as a governing principle.”
After the work of drafting the Constitution was over, he suffered deterioration of health. He had developed diabetes in 1948, and it began to tell on his general wellbeing. He was bedridden for five months in 1954 due to the side-effects ofmedication and poor eyesight. His health worsened during 1955, however defying all odds, he continued working on “The Buddha and His Dhamma” during these days. Three days after completing the final manuscript, he passed away in his sleep on 6 December 1956.

In his address to the Indian parliament in 2010, US President Barack Obama remembered Ambedkar's extraordinary contributions to India in the following words: "No matter who you are or where you come from, every person can fulfil their God-given potential. Just as a Dalit like Dr Ambedkar could lift himself up and pen the words of the constitution that protects the rights of all Indians."
In 1990, the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, was posthumously conferred upon Ambedkar, now respectfully called ‘Babasaheb.’

“In believing we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realise that we are not yet a nation in the social and psychological sense ………..the better for us.”
“We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic rights we will have inequality. We must remove this contradiction or else who suffer from this inequality will blow up the structure.”
This blog will be incomplete if I don’t include this one last quote from this extraordinary man:

"I measure the progress of community by the degree of progress which women have achieved. Let every girl who marries stand by her husband, claim to be her husband’s friend and equal, and refuse to be his slave. I am sure if you follow this advice, you will bring honour and glory to yourselves.”
Image credit: neworldencyclopedia.org