Prabal Purusharthi Dr. Aambadker By Govt. Of Gujarat
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, (born April 14, 1891, Mhow, India—died December
6, 1956, New Delhi), leader of the Dalits (Scheduled Castes; formerly called untouchables)
and law minister of the government of India (1947–51).
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 in
2011, edited, introduced, and annotated by Aakash
Singh Rathore and Ajay Verma.
Prabal Purusharthi Dr. Aambadker
By Govt. Of Gujarat
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