It was Winston Churchill who said that one mark of a great man is the power of making lasting impressions upon people he meets; and another is to have so handled matters that the course of after events are continually affected by what he did. If greatness consists of a combination of both and if it is to be measured by the lasting value of solid work done in the fields of thought and action, Dr. Ambedkar was beyond question one of the most outstanding man in Indian history.
He was born at Mhow in Central India on April 14, 1891 in the oppressed community of Mahars as youngest among fourteen children of his parent. His official name in the school register was Bhima Ramji Ambavadekar. He voluntarily took surname of Ambedkar for himself as a mark of love and respect to one of the teacher named Ambedkar of the Satara High School who loved very much and often fed him. He was in the fifth standard and only fourteen, when he was married to Ramabai who was then only nine.
His life story is living example of extreme suffering and humiliation. Barber refused to cut his hair, in fear of getting polluted. There was instance when cartman refused to associate with him and his brother in a bullock-cart and even they could not get drinking water for the whole journey. In school, he was forced to sit apart and could not mix with other boys or play games with them. The teachers would not touch his note-book. The Sanskrit teacher did not teach Sanskrit to him as he was untouchable. He was forced to take Persian as the second language in high school. Once when he was asked to write on the blackboard, his fellow colleagues feared that their food would be polluted by his presence near the board. They ran to the blackboard and hurled their tiffin-boxes aside before Ambedkar could reach and touch the blackboard. When he felt thirsty in the school he turned his mouth upward and then somebody would kindly pour drinking water into their mouths, as if through a funnel. Whenever he passed through the street he would announce by ringing the bell which was tied round his neck so that people should close their doors because an ‘achoot’ was passing.
Despite humiliation of highest order, as a student, he showed extraordinary passion for reading and an unquenchable thirst for knowing. As a boy from an untouchable Mahar family, he passed the Matriculation Examination which was a feat of admiration in those days. The occasion was celebrated and he was presented with a copy of a biography of Buddha by the author K.A.Keluskar. He continued his college education at Elphinstone College, with the help of a monthly scholarship of twenty five rupees offered by the ruler of Baroda. Prof Muller supplemented with the gift of books and clothes. Social humiliation did not altogether vanish even in Bombay and he was refused tea and water in the hostel. He did not mind these inconveniences and humiliating treatment rather concentrated his energy on studies and passed his B.A. Examination in 1912 with English and Persian as his subjects.
Dr. Ambedkar was aware that there would be always danger that a person with his kind of background who born in lowest caste would retreat into a corner and remained there struggling for bare existence, unless some great turn of circumstances propels him into a more favorable environment. He knew he had to create his own opportunities. He believed in action and used every opportunity, every talent and every minute that was available to him to further his ideals. Like Churchill, he was a self-created personality, who found ways to complete his missing parts. He resolved to exercise his “empty, hungry mind” by reading. During his study days, when his fellow colleague’s slept or played, he studied day and night. Of this period of self-study Churchill said years later which aptly applied on him also- “First we shape our dwellings and then our dwellings shape us.”
After his graduation, he joined the Baroda State Service. At that time, the idea of pollution by touch was so strong that even the peons in his office used to throw office files at him. He could not get residential accommodation in a decent locality. The social condition was unfavorable; hence he decided to resign from his post at the earliest opportunity. An opportunity came in his way when he was send to the USA for higher studies at the Columbia University by Maharaja of Baroda. He was the first Mahar to study in a foreign university. He remained abroad from 1913 to 1917 and again from 1920 to 1923.
In USA, he found a new world for himself based on status of equality. He was deeply influenced by the fact that the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the USA gave freedom to the Negroes. He was also impressed by the life of Booker T. Washington who disseminated education among the Negroes and broke the shackles of bondage which had crushed them for centuries.
After Columbia University, he joined London School of Economics and Political Science as a graduate student. Lateron he admitted to Gray’s Inn to qualify as a barrister. However, after spending a year in London, he had to come back to India as his scholarship grant was stopped by Maharaja of Baroda. Before departure, he got permission of the London University to resume his studies within a period not exceeding four years.
After returned to India, he was made Military Secretary to the Maharaja of Baroda. However, he continued to face hardship at Baroda. He did not get good accommodation to live and even drinking water in office. Circumstances compelled him to leave Baroda and he went to Bombay. In Bombay, he once again tried to start his life. Initially, he took tuitions and provided advice to dealers in stocks and shares. But, finally he joined as Professor of Political Economy in Sydenham College, Bombay. Social stigma remained continued. Finally, he resigned to resume his studies in Law & Economics in London. At London, he worked harder than before. He spend entire days in libraries even without a break for lunch, because he could not afford lunch. He resolutely avoided all kinds of diversions such as excursions, theatres and restaurants.
After completion of his studies, in June 1923, he started practice as a lawyer in the Bombay High Court. In the initial stage he had not even enough rupees to obtain his Sanaa to practise in the High Court. The stigma of untouchability continued to dog him and solicitors refused to have any working relationship with him on the usual ground that he was an untouchable. The other caste-Hindu barristers would not even take tea at his table. He was forced to confine himself to mofussil work. He supplemented his income from the practice of law by working as a part-time professor of law at the Batliboi’s Institute of Accountancy and as an examiner at Bombay University.
Despite success, his mind was restless. He wanted to do something extra-ordinary for voice-less people. He had firm opinion on political and social issues. He was so deeply hurted by the treatment of the upper castes that in his Presidential address over a provincial conference of the depressed classes at Yeola in Nasik, he stated “….I was born in Hinduism but I will not die as a Hindu….” He was convinced that the untouchables would never receive just treatment in Hindu Dharma and Hindu Society. He rejected renunciation. He was convinced that such soothing nomenclature like calling untouchables Harijans (Children of God) meant nothing. He asked the people not to forget that “whitewashing does not save a dilapidated house. You must pull it down and build anew.” He was also in firm opinion that “Institutions and individuals have no right to defend the interests of Depressed Classes if they are not run by untouchables.” Newspapers started by him, such as the Mooknayak, Bahishkrit Bharat and Samata, came to be recognised as authentic voice of the depressed classes, while institutions set up by him, such as the Hitkarini Sabha and the Independent Labour Party of India, became engines of change. He once stated, “Devoid of power and knowledge the non-Brahmins and the Depressed Classes cannot make any progress.”
In 1927, he led the Mahad March at the Chowdar Tank at Colaba, near Bombay, to give the untouchables the right to draw water from the public tank where he burnt copies of the ‘Manusmriti’ publicly. This marked the beginning of the anti-caste and anti-priest movement. The temple entry movement launched by Dr. Ambedkar in 1930 at Kalaram temple, Nasik is another landmark in the struggle for human rights and social justice. He did not hesitate to tender evidence before Simon Commission because he felt that the interest of the depressed classes must be promoted by presenting the case for separate electorates for those classes. On 24th September 1932, Dr. Ambedkar and Gandhiji reached an understanding, which became the famous ‘Poona Pact’. According to this Pact, in addition to the agreement on electoral constituencies, reservations were provided for untouchables in Government jobs and legislative assemblies. It opened up opportunities of education and government service for them and also gave them a right to vote.
When Gandhiji started his new weekly the Harijan, he paid a remarkable tribute to Dr. Ambedkar: “Dr. Ambedkar is bitter. He has every reason to feel so. He has received a liberal education. He has more than the talents of the average educated Indian. Outside India, he is received with honour and affection, but in India, among Hindus, at every step he is reminded that he is one of the outcastes of Hindu society…This is the caste Hindu’s shame, not his, but I would like him to feel that there are today thousands of caste Hindus who would listen to his message with the same respect and consideration that they would give to that of any other leader and that in their estimation there is no person high and no person low.”
When elections to the provincial legislatures were conducted under the 1935 Act, he launched Independent Labour Party and won 15 seats. In July 1942, the British Indian government picked him up as a member of the Executive Council of the Governor-General and he was put in charge of labour. When Beverley Nichols visited India in 1945, he took opportunity of meeting most of the great figures in India’s public life; and he described Dr. Ambedkar as “one of the six best brains in India.”
He got elected to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal, not from his native Maharashtra. Lateron, he was nominated by the Constituent Assembly as a member of its drafting committee, which had the wisdom to elect him as its chairman. He won universal acclamation as the ‘Architect of the Indian Constitution’. On November 25,1949 after two years of immense work, he presented to India something that outlined how the nation would function. Dr. Pylee rightly called him as a “Modern Manu” and “the father or the Chief Architect of the Constitution of India.” After Independence, he joined Nehru Cabinet as independent India’s first law minister. But soon he was totally disillusioned with Nehru Government and resigned from it in September 1951.
He preached, by his own example, that ‘worth’ and not ‘birth’ shapes the life of an individual in any country. He believed that self-respect and human dignity were of paramount importance in a free republic. As he told his followers two years before his death, “Ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is a battle for freedom. It is a battle for the reclamation of human personality.” He regarded three great men as his preceptors. The first was Kabir, the second was Jyotiba Phooley and the third was the Buddha. Kabir took him to the Bhakti (devotion) cult; Phooley inspired him to strive for and amelioration of the masses, their education and economic uplift; and the Buddha gave him mental and metaphysical satisfaction and sowed the way leading to the emancipation of the untouchables by resorting to the path of mass conversion. His approach and thinking towards social integration was based on Pragmatism often called as instrumentalism philosophy of John Dewey. This philosophy stand on the premise that life is a series of problems to be solved looking forward to results with hope & promise rather looking backward.
Hinduism haunted him all his life- like a ghost, and he was constantly wrestling with it one way or the other. He was attracted towards Buddhism because of its moral basis of equality, justice and wide basis of humanitarianism. While talking over the British Broadcasting Corporation, London, in May 1956, he said, “Buddhism gines three principles in combination which no other religion does. It teaches Prajna (understanding) as against superstition; Karuna (love) and Samata (equality). Lateron he said that there were two mottos before him means ‘I am surrendering myself to the person possessed of knowledge’; and the other is means ‘I am surrendering myself to Sanghs- Guilds. Sangh means social life; to him Buddha was a great socialist of his times. On 24 May 1956, on the occasion of Buddha Jayanti, he declared in Bombay, that he would adopt Buddhism in October. On October 14, 1956 he embraced Buddhism along with many of his followers.
He was a voracious reader and had a powerful thirst for books. Despite his hectic political and social life, he did not let his academic-intellectual life sufferer. He was a prolific writer, he wrote several books. He built a bungalow in Bombay and named it ‘Rajgriha’ (Buddha’s palace). He had his own library where he stayed, took his meals and even slept in that library. He used to say, ‘For a man like me who is socially boycotted, these books took me to their hearts.’ He described his love of books as the love of a lover for his beloved.
The Greek dramatist Sophocles said: “Call no man happy till he dies.” No man can be assessed until at least five to ten years have lapsed after he has gone. P. B. Gajendragadkar in his autobiography wrote that Dr. Ambedkar was a man of outstanding intelligence, who can easily be compared to Tilak, was not appreciated fully in his life-time, and, just as in earlier days Maharashtra could not appreciate Agarkar and Phule, so in Ambedkar’s time he was not appreciated.
Above-all, his life was par excellence, a life with a theme, a life dedicated to the great thinker’s ideal:
To see as far as one may;
To feel the great forces that lie behind every detail;
To hammer out as solid and compact a piece of work as one can;
And to leave it unadvertised
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