Father of Indian Constitution: B. R. Ambedkar's Role and Social Reform

Ambedkar's Titles and Their Basis

Chief Architect of the Constitution and the Title Modern Manu

As chairman of the Drafting Committee and the member who piloted the draft through the House, Ambedkar is called the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, yet the document was shaped by many hands. The Constitutional Adviser B. N. Rau prepared the first draft, Assembly committees chaired by Nehru, Patel and Rajendra Prasad framed the main reports, and Ambedkar himself said that the credit did not really belong to him.

Manu is the ancient lawgiver associated with the Manusmriti, and "modern Manu" is a title for the lawgiver of the new Republic. The usage comes from the Hindu Code Bill. As Law Minister of a free and republican India, Ambedkar set out to turn Hindu personal law into progressive legislation through that Bill, and it was in this sense that he was called modern Manu. The title carries an irony worth remembering. On 25 December 1927 his followers had burnt the Manusmriti at Mahad as a protest against the caste order it justified, so the man who burnt Manu's code became the lawgiver of the modern state.

Early Life, Education and the Experience of Caste

Birth at Mhow and Education Abroad

Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891 at Mhow Cantonment, now officially Dr Ambedkar Nagar in Madhya Pradesh. He was the youngest child of Ramji Maloji Sakpal, an army officer of the rank of Subedar, and the family belonged to the Mahar caste, then treated as untouchable. He finished his schooling at Elphinstone High School in Bombay and graduated from Bombay University in 1912 with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science.

A scholarship from Sayajirao Gaekwad, the Maharaja of Baroda, took him in 1913 to Columbia University in New York, where he came under the influence of John Dewey and his philosophy of pragmatism. In 1916 he was admitted to Gray's Inn and enrolled at the London School of Economics, but lack of funds forced him back to India in 1917. He returned to London in 1920 with the help of Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur, was called to the bar in 1922 and completed his M.Sc. and D.Sc. at the LSE; his doctoral thesis was later published as The Problem of the Rupee.

How Caste Discrimination Shaped His Politics

His education was won against constant humiliation. At school in Bombay he was not allowed to drink water from the common tap, and in Waiting for a Visa, his autobiographical note, he recorded the rule as "no peon, no water". After he began practice in the Bombay High Court in 1923 the stigma followed him. Solicitors would not deal with him, and he was known as the "poor man's barrister".

These experiences explain the pattern of his later work. He treated untouchability as a problem of civil rights, of access to water, temples, schools and public office, and therefore as a problem for law and representation. The same pattern runs from the Mahad tank to the Poona Pact and, in the end, to Articles 15, 16 and 17 of the Constitution.

Social Reform Before 1947: Press, Satyagraha and Temple Entry

Mooknayak, Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha and the Call to Organise

Ambedkar began with organisation and the press. In 1918 he gave evidence before the Southborough Committee, which was preparing the franchise arrangements under the Government of India Act, 1919, and pleaded there for separate electorates for the depressed classes. In 1920 he started the Marathi fortnightly Mooknayak, the "Leader of the Dumb", and later ran Bahishkrit Bharat and Equality Janta to defend Dalit rights.

On 20 July 1924 he founded the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha in Bombay to improve the educational standards of the untouchables and to address their social and political problems. The movement's motto, "Educate, Agitate, Organise", set its method, which was schooling and self-help first, then agitation, then political organisation. In 1927 he also founded the Samaj Samata Sangh to preach social equality between untouchables and caste Hindus, with inter-caste dining and marriage in its programme.

Mahad Satyagraha of 1927 and the Manusmriti Dahan

The Mahad Satyagraha, also called the Chavdar Tale Satyagraha, was led by Ambedkar on 20 March 1927 to allow untouchables to use the water of a public tank at Mahad in Raigad district, Maharashtra. The legal position favoured him. The Bombay Legislative Council had resolved on 4 August 1923 that the depressed classes could use places maintained by the government, and the Mahad municipality had passed an order to this effect in 1924, but it could not be implemented.

That day about 5,000 men and women marched with him to the Chavdar tank and used its water. Upper-caste Hindus then "purified" the tank by pouring 108 pitchers of water into it, and the municipality, under pressure, withdrew its order.

At the second Mahad conference, on 25 December 1927, his followers burnt the Manusmriti, a day remembered as Manusmriti Dahan Din. Caste Hindus had meanwhile filed a suit claiming that the tank was their private property. The courts held that a tank managed by the Government was open to the whole community and that a long exclusion of one group could not make it the private property of another, and in December 1937 the Bombay High Court affirmed the right of the untouchables to use it. The Government of India observes 20 March as Social Empowerment Day to commemorate the satyagraha.

Kalaram Temple Entry Movement of 1930

Temple entry followed. In 1930 Ambedkar launched the Kalaram Temple movement at Nashik after three months of preparation. About 15,000 volunteers assembled, forming one of the greatest processions the town had seen, but when they reached the gates the temple doors were closed against them.

The two campaigns show the limits he met. At Mahad the law was already on his side and the struggle was to make it real; at Kalaram the doors stayed shut even before a disciplined procession.

Annihilation of Caste: The Undelivered Lahore Speech of 1936

The Jat-Pat Todak Mandal, a society of Hindu reformers at Lahore working to break up the caste system, invited Ambedkar to give the presidential address at its 1936 annual conference. He wrote it as an essay, Annihilation of Caste, but the organisers asked for changes, he refused, and the conference was cancelled. He published the text himself.

Its central argument is that caste damages ethics and public life. Three lines carry the argument.

• Target: "The enemy, you must grapple with, is not the people who observe Caste, but the Shastras which teach them this religion of Caste."
• Division of labourers: Caste is not a division of labour but a division of labourers, because occupation is forced and not chosen.
• Public spirit: "Caste has killed public spirit. Caste has destroyed the sense of public charity. Caste has made public opinion impossible."

He also held that inter-caste dining alone is not enough; the religious notions on which caste rests must be destroyed. In July 1936 Gandhi answered in his weekly Harijan with articles titled "A Vindication of Caste", arguing that Ambedkar had chosen the wrong interpretations of the Shastras. Annihilation of Caste remains the starting point for any discussion of caste.

Round Table Conferences, Communal Award and Poona Pact

Separate Electorates and the Round Table Conferences

In 1928 Ambedkar placed his submissions before the Simon Commission, and he was invited to the Round Table Conferences of 1930 to 1932 in London as the representative of the depressed classes. At the Second Round Table Conference of 1931 he argued that Gandhi and the Congress did not really represent the lowest castes, and the conference ended without agreement. In the words he used against Gandhi's opposition to separate electorates: "Here is a class which is undoubtedly not in a position to sustain itself in the struggle for existence." The depressed classes, he argued, needed political safeguards of their own.

On 16 August 1932 the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald announced the Communal Award, which extended separate electorates to the depressed classes. Gandhi, then in Yerwada Central Jail, began a fast unto death against it because he feared that separate electorates would divide the Hindu community.

Poona Pact of 1932: What Was Agreed

The deadlock ended with the Poona Pact, signed on 24 September 1932 at Yerwada by 23 persons, with Madan Mohan Malaviya signing for the Hindus and Ambedkar for the depressed classes. Gandhi did not sign, but his son Devdas Gandhi did. The pact gave up separate electorates and kept joint electorates, with reserved seats, so Ambedkar yielded on the form while winning many more seats.

Gandhi wanted the depressed classes kept inside the general electorate, and Ambedkar wanted their representation assured. The pact met both demands, and its terms were these.

• Primary election: Depressed-class voters on the general roll of a constituency chose a panel of four candidates for each reserved seat.
• Final election: The general electorate then chose among the four, so the seat stayed within the joint electorate.
• Central Legislature: 18 per cent of the general seats for British India were reserved for the depressed classes.
• Duration: The primary elections were to end after ten years unless ended earlier by mutual agreement.
• Services and education: No disability was to attach to depressed-class members in local body elections or public appointments, fair representation was to be sought, and part of each province's education grant was set aside for them.

Temple entry was taken up in the months that followed, and 8 January 1933 was observed as Temple Entry Day.

Gandhi and Ambedkar: Divergent Approaches, Common Goal

Gandhi and Ambedkar wanted the same end, the uplift of the depressed classes, but by different routes. Gandhi treated untouchability as a social evil that Hindus had to remove, and he opposed separate electorates because he believed they would permanently separate the depressed classes from other Hindus. Ambedkar looked to political representation, law and education, and held that the caste system and the scriptures behind it had to go; in the end he left Hinduism. Even so, the two respected each other. Gandhi described Ambedkar as a "patriot of sterling worth", and Ambedkar acknowledged Gandhi's sense of purpose and dedication to the nation.

The common ground appears in the Constitution. Gandhi's demand to end untouchability and Ambedkar's demand for guaranteed representation both became constitutional text: Article 17 abolishes untouchability, and Article 330 reserves seats for the Scheduled Castes in the House of the People. The pact shows both sides of the relationship, a sharp conflict and then a compromise.

Ambedkar's Political Parties and Legislative Work

Independent Labour Party, Scheduled Castes Federation and the Viceroy's Council

In 1936 Ambedkar founded the Independent Labour Party, active mainly in Bombay and the Central Provinces. In the 1937 elections under the Government of India Act, 1935, it did well in Bombay, and as Leader of the Opposition in the Bombay Legislative Assembly he became known as an effective parliamentarian. He took up the khoti system of the Konkan, where khots, the government revenue collectors, exploited farmers and tenants; in 1937 he tabled a bill to abolish it by creating a direct relationship between the government and the farmers.

Earlier, as a nominated member of the Bombay Legislative Council from 1926, he had introduced bills for peasants, workers and untouchables, though orthodox opposition stopped them. From 1942 to 1946 he served as Labour Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, and he also sat on the Defence Advisory Committee. These years gave him the administrative experience that later informed his work on the Constitution.

In 1942 the Independent Labour Party and the Madras Scheduled Castes Federation were merged to form the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, an all-India party for the interests of the Scheduled Castes. It did not fare well in the general elections of February 1946. He planned to replace it with the Republican Party of India but died before it was formed; the Republican Party of India was founded after his death, in 1957.

Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly

Election to the Assembly: Bengal, Partition and Bombay

Ambedkar was first elected to the Constituent Assembly in July 1946 from the Bengal Legislative Assembly. After Partition many Bengal members, including him, lost their membership because their constituencies went to Pakistan. The Bombay Legislative Congress Party then chose him to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of M. R. Jayakar, so he sat for the Bombay Presidency.

At first his aim was limited. He told the Assembly that he came in with "no greater aspiration" than to safeguard the interests of the Scheduled Castes. During British rule he had been a political opponent of the Congress, and he described his later selection for the Drafting Committee as a surprise. On the advice of Mahatma Gandhi he was invited at Independence to join the first Cabinet as Law Minister.

The Drafting Committee: Appointment, Members and Work

The Drafting Committee was appointed by a resolution of the Constituent Assembly on 29 August 1947 and held its first meeting the next day. It was charged with preparing a Constitution in accordance with the decisions of the Assembly on the reports of its committees, such as the Union Powers Committee, the Union Constitution Committee, the Provincial Constitution Committee and the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal Areas. The Assembly had also directed that on certain matters the Government of India Act, 1935, should be followed.

The committee sat for 141 days. B. N. Rau's draft, prepared as a text for the committee to work upon, had 243 articles and 13 Schedules. The first Draft Constitution presented by the committee to the Assembly had 315 articles and 8 Schedules; consideration raised it to 386 articles, and the final Constitution has 395 articles and 8 Schedules. Ambedkar sent his covering letter on the draft on 21 February 1948, and the draft was before the public for eight months before the Assembly took it up.

Three Stages: Draft, Consideration and Adoption

The Assembly met for 165 days over eleven sessions. The first six sessions were spent on the Objectives Resolution and the reports of committees; the seventh to the eleventh took up the Draft Constitution, and the Assembly spent 114 days on it. About 7,635 amendments were tabled, of which 2,473 were moved.

• Introduction and general discussion: On 4 November 1948 Ambedkar introduced the draft and moved that it be taken into consideration.
• Clause-by-clause consideration: From 15 November 1948 the Assembly took the articles one by one, beginning with Article 1.
• Third reading and adoption: Ambedkar's motion that the Constitution as settled be passed was taken up on 17 November 1949, he replied on 25 November, and the Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949. Members signed it on 24 January 1950, and it came into force on 26 January 1950.

Why Ambedkar Is Called the Father of the Constitution, and Its Limits

Several facts support the title. The Drafting Committee did the actual wording of the Constitution, and Ambedkar was its chairman. T. T. Krishnamachari explained in the Assembly that of the seven members nominated, one had resigned and been replaced, one had died and had not yet been replaced, one was away in America, another was engaged in State affairs, and one or two were far from Delhi, so that "the burden of drafting this Constitution fell on Dr. Ambedkar".

Rajendra Prasad, presiding, said that the Assembly could never have made a decision so right as when it put Ambedkar on the Drafting Committee and made him its Chairman, and Mahavir Tyagi called him "the main artist" who unveiled the picture for the public to see and comment upon.

Ambedkar himself drew the limits of the title. The credit, he said, belonged partly to Sir B. N. Rau, who prepared a rough draft; part of it to the members of the Drafting Committee, who sat for 141 days; and a much greater share to S. N. Mukherjee, the Chief Draftsman, whose ability to put the most intricate proposals in the simplest and clearest legal form could rarely be equalled.

He gave the Congress Party credit for the discipline that let the committee pilot the draft with "the sure knowledge as to the fate of each article and each amendment". The main committees were chaired by Nehru, Patel, Prasad and Ambedkar, men who did not agree on many things but worked together. Ambedkar was thus the chief architect of the draft and its steersman in the Assembly, while the Constitution was the work of the whole Assembly.

Debt to the Government of India Act, 1935

Ambedkar did not hide that much of the Draft Constitution came from the Government of India Act, 1935. "As to the accusation that the Draft Constitution has produced a good part of the provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935, I make no apologies. There is nothing to be ashamed of in borrowing. It involves no plagiarism." What he regretted was that the provisions taken from the Act related mostly to the details of administration.

Rau had also studied the political systems of other countries and prepared background papers, and the committee worked from the text he prepared. With the 1935 Act and Rau's text as a base, the Assembly finished its work in two years, eleven months and seventeen days. The Assembly still changed the design of the State sharply: Ambedkar said he wanted "a strong and united Centre" much stronger than the Centre created under the 1935 Act.

Ambedkar's Constitutional Ideas

Parliamentary Democracy and Federalism: Responsibility and an Indestructible Union

Introducing the draft, Ambedkar explained why India chose the parliamentary system. A democratic executive must be both stable and responsible, and no system gives both in equal degree. The American and Swiss systems, he said, give more stability but less responsibility; the British system gives more responsibility but less stability. In a parliamentary executive, the executive depends on a majority in Parliament and so is more responsible. In America responsibility is assessed once in two years by the electorate; in England it is assessed daily by members of Parliament, through questions, resolutions, no-confidence motions, adjournment motions and debates, and periodically by the electorate. The Draft Constitution chose responsibility.

Ambedkar described the Indian system as a dual polity with a single citizenship, unlike the United States, where there is also a citizenship of the State. The Constitutions of the Union and of the States are a single frame from which neither can get out, since no State has the right to frame its own Constitution. The system can work as a federation in normal times and as a unitary system in emergencies, a power no other federation possesses.

He explained the word Union in Article 1 as deliberate. The Drafting Committee wished to make clear that the federation was not the result of an agreement among States and that no State therefore had a right to secede: "The Federation is a Union because it is indestructible."

In his closing speech he answered the charge that the States had been reduced to municipalities. The basic principle of federalism, he said, is that legislative and executive authority is partitioned between the Centre and the States by the Constitution itself, and the Centre cannot by its own will alter the boundary of that partition. He admitted that the Centre had overriding powers but argued that they were confined to emergencies, because in a crisis the residual loyalty of the citizen must be to the Centre.

Fundamental Rights, Article 17 and the Abolition of Untouchability

Article 17 gives constitutional form to his life's work: "Untouchability" is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden, and enforcing any disability arising out of it is an offence punishable in accordance with law. It sits in the Right to Equality with Article 15, which bars discrimination on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, including a bar on any disability about the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats and roads maintained from State funds, and Article 16, which guarantees equality of opportunity in public employment. The reference to wells and tanks is the Mahad tank written into the Constitution.

Ambedkar also answered critics who said that the fundamental rights were hollow because they could be limited. He argued that the real distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental rights is that the latter are created by agreement between parties while fundamental rights are the gift of the law, and that rights are not absolute in America either, where the courts impose limits on them.

Article 32: The Heart and Soul of the Constitution

During the debate on the right to constitutional remedies, Ambedkar said: "If I was asked to name any particular article in this Constitution as the most important, an article without which this Constitution would be a nullity, I could not refer to any other article except this one. It is the very soul of the Constitution and the very heart of it." Article 32 guarantees the right to move the Supreme Court for the enforcement of the rights in Part III and empowers the Court to issue directions, orders or writs, including habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari.

The reasoning is that a right without a remedy is a promise on paper. By making the remedy itself a fundamental right, the Constitution allows a citizen to go straight to the Supreme Court. The right to equality, in contrast, states what is protected; it is Article 32 that makes the protection enforceable.

Directive Principles as Instruments of Instructions

Ambedkar introduced the Directive Principles as a novel feature in a Constitution framed for parliamentary democracy, noting that the only other such constitution to contain them was that of the Irish Free State. Critics called them pious declarations without binding force. He admitted that they have no legal force but denied that they have no binding force at all. They are like the Instruments of Instructions issued to governors under the 1935 Act, with one difference, namely that they are instructions to the Legislature and the Executive.

His argument was political. Whoever captures power, he said, "may not have to answer for their breach in a Court of Law. But he will certainly have to answer for them before the electorate at election time." The Draft, he added, provides only a machinery of government and is not a contrivance to install any party in power, so the Directive Principles bind every party that governs. Article 46, on the educational and economic interests of the Scheduled Castes, is one of the Directive Principles.

Reservation, Representation and the Scheduled Castes

After the Partition violence Ambedkar no longer argued for separate electorates. The Constituent Assembly recommended that untouchability be abolished, that Hindu temples be thrown open to all castes, and that seats in legislatures and jobs in government offices be reserved for the lowest castes. The provisions that carry this are scattered through the Constitution.

• Article 15(4): Permits special provision for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes of citizens and for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
• Article 16(4): Permits reservation of appointments or posts in favour of any backward class of citizens that, in the State's opinion, is not adequately represented in the services.
• Article 46: Directs the State to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and to protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.
• Article 330: Reserves seats in the House of the People for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
• Article 335: Requires the claims of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes to be taken into consideration in appointments, consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration.
• Article 340: Empowers the President to appoint a Commission to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes.

The logic of the Poona Pact continued in this scheme, which gives representation through reserved seats within a common electorate and not through separate electorates.

Social Democracy, Equality and Fraternity

Ambedkar held that political democracy cannot last unless social democracy lies at its base, and he defined social democracy as a way of life that recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. They are not separate items, he argued, but a union. Liberty without equality produces the supremacy of the few over the many, equality without liberty kills individual initiative, and without fraternity liberty and equality "could not become a natural course of things".

The fraternity idea is the most distinctive part of his thought. He said that India was not yet a nation in the social and psychological sense, because people divided into several thousand castes cannot be a nation, and that castes are anti-national because they separate social life and breed jealousy between castes. Fraternity is therefore the goal that his criticism of caste points towards, and it was a goal dear to his heart.

Constitutional Morality: The Speech of 4 November 1948

Grote's Idea and Ambedkar's Meaning of Constitutional Morality

Defending the details of administration that the Draft Constitution carried, which many constitutions leave to the legislature, Ambedkar drew on Grote, the historian of Greece, who held that the diffusion of constitutional morality, not merely among the majority but throughout the whole community, is the indispensable condition of government at once free and peaceable. By constitutional morality Grote meant "a paramount reverence for the forms of the Constitution", with these elements:

• Obedience within forms: Obedience to authority acting under and within the forms of the Constitution.
• Open speech: The habit of open speech and of action subject only to definite legal control, including criticism of authorities for all their public acts.
• Confidence in opponents: A perfect confidence in the mind of every citizen, amid the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the Constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own.

Why Constitutional Morality Had to Be Cultivated

Ambedkar made two connected points. First, the form of administration has a close connection with the form of the Constitution, and the Constitution can be perverted without changing its form, by merely changing the form of administration. Second, it is only where people are saturated with constitutional morality that the details of administration can safely be left to the Legislature. He then asked whether such morality could be presumed in India and answered that it is not a natural sentiment and has to be cultivated, and that "our people have yet to learn it". Democracy in India, he said, "is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic".

For this reason the Constitution writes the forms of administration into itself. Where habits of restraint are weak, rules must be written down, so that those who hold power cannot change the practice of government and keep the old label.

How Constitutional Morality Is Upheld

The speech and its context show what upholding constitutional morality involves, for officials and citizens alike.

• Acting within the forms: Those in power respect the procedures and limits of the Constitution, including the limits of their own office.
• Open criticism within the law: Citizens and the press may criticise public acts openly, but action stays subject to definite legal control.
• Fairness to opponents: Every side trusts that the same rules bind its opponents, so a political loss need not be a constitutional crisis.
• Answerability: The parliamentary system assesses the executive daily through questions and motions and periodically through elections, and the Directive Principles make a government answer before the electorate.

For a civil servant, these habits mean rule-based, impartial decisions that opponents can trust and answerability for public acts, which together are the base of good governance and accountability. The idea runs straight into his closing warning of 1949 against methods outside the Constitution.

The Closing Speech of 25 November 1949

The Constitution Depends on Those Who Work It

In his reply on 25 November 1949, Ambedkar began with credit and then turned to a warning. "However good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot." The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly on its nature, because it provides only the organs of State, the Legislature, the executive and the judiciary, and what matters is the people and the political parties they set up as instruments.

He also answered the critics. The Communist Party, he said, condemned the Constitution because it rests on parliamentary democracy, and the Socialists wanted the freedom to nationalise property without compensation and wanted fundamental rights to be absolute. Quoting Jefferson that no generation can bind the next, he pointed out that the Assembly had made the Constitution easy to amend, since those dissatisfied need only a two-thirds majority in a Parliament elected on adult franchise.

Grammar of Anarchy: Constitutional Methods and the Limits of Civil Disobedience

To keep democracy "not merely in form, but also in fact", Ambedkar named three things. The first was to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving social and economic objectives, which meant abandoning the bloody methods of revolution and "the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha". His reasoning had two parts: "When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy."

He was not repudiating his own past. At Mahad in 1927 and Kalaram in 1930 he had led satyagraha when the law as practised left the untouchables no way to use a tank or enter a temple.

His condition for 1949 was that constitutional methods were open, and the Constitution itself was creating them, namely adult suffrage in Article 326, freedom of speech and the right to assemble peaceably in Article 19, and a remedy in the Supreme Court under Article 32.

Civil disobedience for social justice poses a dilemma with two sides. A movement for social justice may be right on the substance while the policy it opposes rests on genuine concerns, and the rule of law protects the weak as much as the strong. A modern answer follows from Ambedkar's reasoning. Dissent should first use the open channels, such as dialogue, peaceful protest within the law and judicial remedies, and the State should keep those channels open and responsive to real grievances, so that protest need not turn to anarchy.

Three tests help a democracy decide how to respond.

• Peaceful means: The Constitution protects assembly only when it is "peaceably and without arms".
• Proportion: The means should match the grievance and leave other citizens' rights intact.
• Openness: Both sides should stay open to dialogue and to review by the courts.

A State that meets peaceful protest with talks and judicial remedy, and a movement that accepts those channels, keep the dispute inside the Constitution.

Hero-Worship, Social Democracy and the Life of Contradictions

The second thing, Ambedkar said, was to heed John Stuart Mill's caution not "to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man". There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men, but there are limits to gratefulness. In India, where Bhakti or devotion plays a part in politics unequalled anywhere in the world, "in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship".

The third was not to be content with political democracy. On the social plane India has a society based on graded inequality, and on the economic plane there are some with immense wealth against many in abject poverty. "On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions." In politics there would be equality, in the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value; in social and economic life the structure would continue to deny one man one value.

If the contradiction was not removed soon, he warned, those who suffer from inequality would blow up the structure of political democracy. The speech ends with the warning that "without fraternity equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint".

Law Minister, Hindu Code Bill and Resignation

First Law Minister of India and the Hindu Code Bill

On 15 August 1947 Ambedkar took oath as the first Law Minister of independent India. In office he introduced the Representation of the People Bill in the Provisional Parliament on 9 May 1951, which provided for the conduct of free elections to Parliament and State Assemblies, the qualifications and disqualifications of membership and the control of corrupt practices.

His great project was the Hindu Code Bill, which sought to codify and reform Hindu personal law. A Hindu Law Committee under B. N. Rau reported in 1941 that the time had come for a Hindu Code; revived in 1944, it prepared a draft. The Law Ministry revised the draft in 1948 for the Constituent Assembly, which was also sitting as the legislature, and a select committee under Ambedkar made important changes. The revised Bill defined who was a Hindu and did away with caste in the law. Ambedkar moved it in the Provisional Parliament on 4 February 1951.

• Reforms proposed: A daughter's succession to her father's estate alongside the son, an end to the bar on inter-caste marriage and the introduction of divorce.
• Opposition: The motion to begin discussion was debated for over fifty hours, and discussion was postponed for over a year. Opposition came even from colleagues in the Cabinet.
• Resignation: In September 1951 he resigned from the Government. He had differences with Nehru and other colleagues on several issues, but the treatment of the Hindu Code Bill was the main ground he gave in his letter to the press.
• Four Acts: After the first general election, Nehru split the Code into four bills, which became the Hindu Marriage Act, the Hindu Succession Act, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act and the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act.

Out of office he stayed in public life. He lost the Bombay North seat in the first general election of 1952 to his former assistant Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar, and he became a member of the Rajya Sabha.

Conversion to Buddhism and Death

From the Yeola Declaration to the Nagpur Conversion of 1956

At the Yeola Conversion Conference near Nashik in October 1935, Ambedkar announced his intention to convert to another religion and urged his followers to leave the Hindu fold. In the following years he looked at other religions, turning first to Sikhism around 1938 to 1940, and in the 1950s he took part in Buddhist conferences abroad and founded the Bharatiya Buddha Mahasabha in 1955. On 14 October 1956 at a public ceremony in Nagpur he accepted the Three Refuges and Five Precepts from a Buddhist monk in the traditional manner, with his wife, and then initiated lakhs of his followers, giving them deeksha (initiation). He prescribed 22 vows for the converts.

His reading of Buddhism came to be called Navayana. He saw the Buddha as a margadata, a guide, not a saviour, and held that Buddhism stood for equality and morality. The conversion closed the path that began at Mahad, from reform within Hinduism to political rights and finally to exit from a religion he held to be the root of caste.

He completed his final work, The Buddha and His Dhamma, in 1956; it was published later. He died in his sleep at his home in Delhi on 6 December 1956, less than two months after the conversion and three days after completing the manuscript. The day is observed as Mahaparinirvan Diwas.

Writings, Honours and Legacy

Major Writings of B. R. Ambedkar

Ambedkar wrote as an economist, a critic of caste, a political analyst and finally a Buddhist teacher. His doctoral thesis on the rupee came first; Annihilation of Caste carried his case against the scriptures behind caste; his books on Pakistan and on the Shudras applied history to politics; and The Buddha and His Dhamma set out the faith he adopted in 1956.

Bharat Ratna, Constitution Day and Commemoration

Ambedkar was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, posthumously in 1990. On 19 November 2015, in the year of his 125th birth anniversary, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment announced that 26 November would be celebrated every year as Constitution Day, also called Samvidhan Divas, to promote constitutional values among citizens. In 2024 the country marked 75 years since the adoption of the Constitution.

Constitution Day recalls the adoption of the Constitution in 1949, and not the setting up of the Drafting Committee, which was on 29 August 1947. Social Empowerment Day, on 20 March, marks the Mahad Satyagraha.

Ambedkar in UPSC Prelims and Mains: Recurring Points

The facts tested most often in the Prelims papers are the seat he sat for (Bombay), the parties he founded, the committee dates, Article 32 and the Poona Pact. In the Mains papers he is a source of arguments in GS‑I (social reform, the freedom struggle), GS‑II (the making of the Constitution, constitutional morality, social justice) and GS‑IV (ethics and constitutional morality).

Sources

• Lok Sabha Secretariat: Constituent Assembly Debates, 4 November 1948
• Lok Sabha Secretariat: Constituent Assembly Debates, 25 November 1949
• Lok Sabha Secretariat: Eminent Parliamentarians Monograph Series, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1991)
• Legislative Department: The Constitution of India
• Supreme Court of India: Centenary of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's enrolment as an advocate
• Press Information Bureau: Constitution Day
• Press Information Bureau: 75 years of the Constitution
• Press Information Bureau: 20 March as Social Empowerment Day (2003)
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History Part III (Class XII), Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History Part III (Class XII), Framing the Constitution
• NCERT: Indian Constitution at Work (Class XI), Constitution: Why and How
• NCERT: Indian Constitution at Work (Class XI), Constitution as a Living Document
• NCERT: Democratic Politics (Class X)
• Wikipedia: B. R. Ambedkar
• Wikipedia: Poona Pact
• Wikipedia: Communal Award
• Wikipedia: Mahad Satyagraha
• Wikipedia: Annihilation of Caste
• Wikipedia: Hindu Code Bills
• Wikipedia: Constituent Assembly of India
• Wikipedia: Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha
• Wikipedia: Scheduled Castes Federation
• Wikipedia: Republican Party of India
• Wikipedia: Constitution Day (India)
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers