Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the leader of the de­pressed classes in India who played a key role in framing India’s Constitution, spent a lifetime fighting against the caste prejudices and injustices within the Hindu society. His life was one long battle for social reform that would secure the untouchables of India their long-denied rights and a changed status in society.

Born in Mahu (Madhya Pradesh) in the Mahar caste which traditionally constituted inferior village servants, Ambedkar was able to pursue higher education with help from the Gaikwad of Baroda and the Maharaja of Kolhapur. He completed his Ph.D. from Columbia University in New York and received a D.Sc. from the London University to become one of the best educated persons in Bombay.

He soon plunged into the great task ahead of him. Ambedkar was of the view that only the untouchables could reform their own social status. With adequate political representation, they could sort out their grievances. So he began to organise the untouchables by means of their own newspapers, social and cultural forums and conferences that would highlight the plight of the op­pressed classes in the Indian society.

In 1924, he founded the Depressed Classes Institute and in 1927, the Samaj Samata Sangh. He approached the Government of the time for polit­ical representation of the untouchables. Another area of attention for Ambedkar was education. For its spread among the low classes, he set up a network of colleges by the name of Peoples Education Society and founded hostels.

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Ambedkar made his mark as the leader of the untouch­ables in 1927. Following the outbreak of caste violence during the Mahad conferences of 1927 over the question of opening the town pond to the untouchables, he made a demand for separate electorates for the untouchables. And a dream came true with the signing of the Poona Pact which gave political representation to the depressed classes.

But when his persistent call for equal social status to the untouchables continued to be ignored, Ambedkar declared his rejection of Hinduism in 1935 and started considering conver­sion. He wrote the Annihilation of Caste (1936) emphasising the need to do away with the practice of hereditary priesthood in Hinduism. But it was only in the October of 1956, a couple of months before his death, that the ceremony for the untouch­ables’ conversion to Buddhism was conducted at Nagpur.

Ambedkar was the first untouchable leader to demand independence for India. This he did at the Depressed Classes Conference held at Nagpur in 1930. One of his best known political achievements is his great contribution to the making of the Indian Constitution.

He ensured that the Constitution provided for representation of the Scheduled Castes in legis­latures and services under the Government and entrusted the responsibility of educating them with the Government.

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The Indian Constitution also included anti-untouchability clauses and provided for a government officer to take due care of minority affairs. As the Law Minister in the first Union Cabinet, he introduced the Hindu Code Bill, which was supposed to make the Hindu law uniformly applicable all over India.

Ambedkar also founded three political parties. The Independent Labour Party was announced in 1936 to fight the 1937 elections—the first elections in which the untouchables were to have a certain number of seats. The Republican Party which was conceived in 1956 aimed at bringing together the untouchables, the economically deprived in the country and all other persons eager to usher in a better India.