One trait which marked Babasaheb during his student days and, in fact, throughout his life was that he was a voracious reader. He had an insatiable thirst for books. He bought books by curtailing his daily needs. In New York he is said to have purchased about 2,000 old books. And it is recorded that at the time of the Second Round Table Conference in London, he bought so many books that they had to be sent to India in 32 boxes.


 It is important to record here one major influence on Dr. Ambedkar. While in the USA, he was drawn to the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the USA which gave freedom to the Black Americans. He saw at once the parallel of the situation for the Depressed Classes in India. On returning home, Babasaheb came to be greatly influenced by the life and work of Mahatma Phule, the votary of a classless society and women’s uplift. 


The need as well as the feasibility of reform impressed itself on Babasaheb’s mind and he decided to devote all his time and talents for the amelioration of his underprivileged brethren. Newspapers started by him such as the Mooknayak , Bahishkrit Bharat and Samata were at once recognised as authentic voices of the Depressed Classes. Likewise, institutions set up by him such as the Hitakarini Sabha and the Independent Labour Party of India became vehicles of change. During the same period, Gandhiji was pioneering his epic reform of Indian society which included the uplift of Depressed Classes whom Gandhiji had termed Harijans. 

 


 Babasaheb was elected to the Bombay Legislative Assembly in the elections under the Constitution of India Act, 1935. Babasaheb made effective contributions to the debates in the Assembly on a variety of subjects. His flair for legislative work became evident to the whole nation.



 Soon the Constituent Assembly of India afforded Dr. Ambedkar the opportunity to give the most notable and permanent shape to his social philosophy and to his undying faith in the dignity of human beings. Babasaheb was not in the Congress, but it must be said to the credit of the farsighted and objective leadership of the Indian National Congress that it requested Dr. Ambedkar to serve on the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly and made him its Chairman. 



 As Chairman of the Drafting Committee, Dr. Ambedkar anticipated every conceivable requirement of the new polity. Drawing from the examples and experience of other nations and the distinctive needs of our own society, he raised, brick by brick, the magnificent edifice which now stands as the Fundamental Rights in the Constitution of India. There were, of course, other luminaries on the Committee like Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, K.M. Munshi and N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar who also made vital contributions to the process of Constitution-making. But if there is one person who will be remembered as the pilot of the various provisions of the Indian Constitution, it will surely be Dr. Ambedkar. It devolved on Dr. Ambedkar to explain (to the Assembly), with a combination of tact and frankness, and utmost patience, the meaning and scope of the different provisions of the Draft Constitution. He had the rare gift of unravelling the most complicated legal concepts in a language which the laymen understood. Dr. Ambedkar, aided by the indefatigable Constitutional Adviser, B.N. Rau, performed this task matchlessly.



Dr. Ambedkar had a clear perception of the mutuality of the three pillars of State the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. He realized that the jurisdiction of each should be clear and untrammelled. At the same time, he had a sense of the importance of the role of citizens The following observation he made is significant: The Constitution is a fundamental document. It is a document which defines the position and power of the three organs of the State the executive, the judiciary and the legislature. It also defines the powers of the executive and the powers of the legislature as against the citizens, as we have done in our chapter dealing with Fundamental Rights. In fact, the purpose of a Constitution is not merely to create the organs of the State but to limit their authority, because, if no limitation was imposed upon the authority of the organs, there will be complete tyranny and complete  oppression.



 Jawaharlal Nehru chose Dr. Ambedkar to be the first Law Minister of independent India. This was a recognition of Dr. Ambedkar’s skills in the field of law and legislation as also a tribute to his vision of social justicea vision which was sought to be infused into the new Indian polity. But above all, this was a tribute to the success of Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar’s own campaigns against social injustice. Who could have dreamt that one born to a Mahar family would one day become not only a Law Minister but a Law-maker and be hailed as the modern Manu?



 In the four decades and more since Independence, much progress has been achieved in providing equality of opportunities to the people. Members of the Scheduled Castes find doors which had been closed to them for centuries, being opened. No legal bars exist today for self-expression or self-advancement. They are enrolling themselves in institutes of higher learning and entering public services. They have come to occupy high offices of State, both at the Centre and in the States. Judges, ambassadors and governors have been drawn from their ranks. And they have acquitted themselves creditably in all these positions of responsibility.



 And yet, much remains to be done on the social plane. The Annual Reports of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes list several violations of the law and several instances where, not withstanding the statute book, members of the Scheduled Castes have been discriminated against. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s work will be truly complete only when social discrimination is completely eliminated from our society. 



 Babasaheb Ambedkar always stressed the importance of constitutional methods to achieve social objectives. In an interesting observation, heonce described the methods of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha as the “grammar of anarchy”. The observation assumes importance in the context of public agitation in free India. It is one thing to utilise these methods in a struggle against an alien power. The right to rebellion is recognized against a government without people’s consent, be it alien or national dictatorship, but not in a democracy based on free and fair elections. Misdirected and volatile, such agitations invariably result in the loss of lives and public property.



 About 2500 years ago the Buddha had questioned the caste divisions in India. He said, “The only valid divisions are the divisions between those who are noble and wholesome and those who are ignoble and unwholesome”. The Tamil poetess Avvai had said, similarly, that there are only two castes in the world, namely, the charitable who give and are superior and the misers who do not and are, therefore, inferior. Throughout the course of Indian history, great sages and saints exposed the hollowness of these divisions and sought to bring all the communities of India together in a creative partnership. But caste, by virtue of its power structure, showed itself to be firmly entrenched. 



 Under the policy of “Divide and Rule”, the British rulers exaggerated caste distinctions and divided the people of India further to strengthen their hegemony over us. It was given to two great Indians of our time. Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, to repudiate caste and to proclaim the oneness of the Hindu community. Gandhiji did so by reminding the higher castes of their duty towards the Depressed Classes. Babasaheb Ambedkar did the same by reminding them of their inherent rights to equality with the higher and more powerful castes. One stressed the duties, the other stressed the rights together, they brought about a veritable revolution in social thought. 


 When Babasaheb passed away, in December 1956, Jawaharlal Nehru made a moving reference in the Lok Sabha. Describing Babasaheb as “a symbol of revolt”, he said: “I have no doubt that, whether we agreed with him or not in many matters, that perseverance, that persistence and that, if I may use the word, sometimes virulence of his opposition to all this did keep the people’s mind awake and did not allow them to become complacent about matters which could not be forgotten, and helped in rousing up those groups in our country which had suffered for so long in the past. It is, therefore, sad that such a prominent champion of the oppressed and depressed in India and one who took such an important part in our activities, has passed away.” 


 There can be no doubt that the day is not far off when Babasaheb Ambedkar’s dream of samata will become a reality.