Ambedkar Jayanti 2022, Why Young India Needs to Read and Know About Ambedkar

 

Ambedkar Jayanti commemorates the birth of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar on 14 April, an Indian jurist, politician, philosopher, anthropologist, historian, and economist who was a key architect of the Indian Constitution.

The Life of Ambedkar

Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar was an Indian politician and economist who played a fundamental role in the creation of India’s constitution. As a proponent for widespread human rights in India, Ambedkar sought to eliminate India’s caste system. Ambedkar had close ties to the London School of Economics. Ambedkar eventually became the first law minister of India.

Early Life

Ambedkar was the son of an officer in the Indian Army. Despite his father’s ranked status as an officer, Ambedkar and his family belonged to the lowest caste in India. Ambedkar was considered to be an Untouchable.

As an Untouchable, Ambedkar faced a great deal of discrimination during his childhood years. Despite being seriously disadvantaged, Ambedkar studied very hard while he was in school. Ambedkar’s hard work caused him to score very highly on the high school entrance examinations.

Untouchables rarely get the opportunity to study at the high school level, so this was a very important moment in Ambedkar’s life. The community of Untouchables where Ambedkar lived celebrated his success and honoured him with gifts and kind words. This was just the beginning of Ambedkar’s growing fame.

The boy who suffered bitter caste humiliation became the first Minister for Law in free India, and shaped the country’s Constitution. Dr. Ambedkar's struggle against Brahmanical Patriarchy, his radical proposals for the Hindu Code Bill, and his suggestions for a radical restructuring of property relations, alert us to his challenging of the status-quo. Dr. Ambedkar, perhaps India’s most radical thinker, transformed the social and political landscape in the struggle against British Colonialism, by making the downtrodden politically aware of their own situation. Ambedkar famously said to Dalits something that bears immense importance even today – “Educate, Agitate, and Organise”.. .