B.R. Ambedkar

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar — born on 14 April 1891 in Mhow (present-day Dr Ambedkar Nagar, Madhya Pradesh) and known to his followers as Babasaheb — was born Bhimrao Ramji Sakpal into a Mahar family, one of the communities classified as "untouchable" under India's caste hierarchy. His father, Ramji Maloji Sakpal, served as a Subedar in the British Indian Army, and the family traced its Marathi roots to Ambadawe village in Ratnagiri district; Ambedkar later adopted the name of that ancestral village as his own surname. Despite his father's military standing, caste discrimination shaped his earliest years: as a child he was segregated in school classrooms, barred from touching shared water vessels, and denied access to spaces reserved for caste Hindus. He went on to become one of the most credentialed intellectuals of the twentieth century and the foremost theorist of anti-caste liberation in the Indian subcontinent.

A scholarship from the Gaekwar (ruler) of Baroda enabled Ambedkar to study abroad. At Columbia University in New York (1913–1916), under the mentorship of economist Edwin R.A. Seligman, he completed an M.A. in economics; his 1916 seminar paper "Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development" remains a foundational text of anti-caste scholarship. He then enrolled at the London School of Economics in 1916, studying social theory under L.T. Hobhouse while simultaneously reading for the Bar at Gray's Inn. His LSE doctoral thesis, "The Problem of the Rupee: Its Origin and Its Solution" — an analysis of British colonial monetary policy — was initially rejected in March 1923, reportedly as too radical, before being accepted in November 1923; it earned him a D.Sc. in Economics and was published that same year. He was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1923. He later returned to Columbia to complete his Ph.D. in economics in 1927, making him the first South Asian to hold dual doctorates from both Columbia and LSE.

Back in India, Ambedkar combined legal practice with unrelenting social advocacy. In 1920 he founded the weekly newspaper Mooknayak ("Leader of the Voiceless"), and in 1924 the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha, whose rallying motto — "Educate, Agitate, Organise" — became the animating principle of the Dalit movement. In 1927 he led the Mahad Satyagraha, asserting Dalits' right to draw water from Mahad's Chavdar Tank, and publicly burned a copy of the Manusmriti. The 1932 Poona Pact — signed at Yerwada Central Jail on 24 September 1932 between Ambedkar and Madan Mohan Malaviya — resolved a nationally charged dispute over separate electorates for the Depressed Classes: rather than the independent constituencies Ambedkar had won through the Communal Award, the Pact substituted 148 reserved seats within a joint Hindu electorate, a compromise Ambedkar accepted under the duress of Gandhi's fast unto death but which he later described as a defeat extorted from him. He founded the Independent Labour Party in 1936 — it won 11 reserved and 3 general seats in the 1937 Bombay elections — and served as Labour Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council (1942–1946).

Ambedkar was elected to the Constituent Assembly in December 1946 and appointed Chairman of its Drafting Committee on 29 August 1947. He guided the framing of India's Constitution, adopted on 26 November 1949, integrating fundamental rights, the explicit abolition of untouchability (Article 17), and constitutional provisions for affirmative action for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. He served simultaneously as India's first Law and Justice Minister (1947–1951) under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bombay State in 1952. He resigned from Nehru's cabinet in October 1951 when the government failed to pass his landmark Hindu Code Bill, which sought to reform Hindu personal law to guarantee women equal rights to inheritance, divorce, and property.

After more than two decades of publicly investigating which religion offered the best path of liberation from caste, Ambedkar publicly embraced Buddhism on 14 October 1956 at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur. He received the Three Refuges and Five Precepts in a formal ceremony and administered 22 additional vows to his followers — vows designed specifically to sever converts from caste-embedded Hindu practice and to reject any assimilation of the Buddha into the Hindu pantheon. An estimated 500,000 followers converted alongside him. Ambedkar identified four criteria that Buddhism uniquely satisfied: compatibility with reason and science; a moral code grounded in liberty, equality, and fraternity; refusal to sanctify poverty; and grounding in legal or moral sanction. He died at his home in New Delhi on 6 December 1956 — less than two months after his conversion, and just three days after completing his last major work, The Buddha and His Dhamma. The Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, was conferred on him posthumously in 1990. The Dalit Buddhist movement he inaugurated transformed the religious demography of Maharashtra, where Buddhist communities — predominantly Mahar converts and their descendants — now represent approximately 6% of the state's population and roughly 77% of India's total Buddhist population.