Dr B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) was the Dalit (untouchable) who helped write the constitution of India. He is a hero to Dalits and Sudras, who live at the bottom of the Indian caste system.
He has no US counterpart: no Black man or Native helped to write the US constitution – it was White men all the way.
Reservations (affirmative action) was something he wrote into the constitution. It requires the government to reserve places in government employment and at universities for “backward” groups like the Dalits. It was only meant to last ten years (till 1960), but everyone wanted to be “backward”, so it became a way to win elections: count more people as “backward” and promise more places.
“Dalits” was a term he pushed. It means “broken men” in his native Marathi. He thought it was better than calling oneself “untouchable”.
Growing up Dalit, he was not allowed to drink from certain wells, eat with his schoolmates or learn Sanskrit. But with the help of British policy and an Indian prince, he became one of the best educated men in all of India.
Columbia University: He studied in the US from 1913 to 1927, becoming the first Dalit ever to get a PhD (in economics). At Columbia he learned to see history as the march of progress, of the power of equal rights to bring that progress, and of democracy to deliver those rights. From the example of Booker T. Washington he learned the value of compromise to secure what his people needed most to be free: education.
Caste: He did his doctoral thesis at Columbia on the Indian caste system. He did not see caste as a necessary division of labour. Nor did he see it as something that lighter-skinned Indo-Aryans forced on the conquered, darker-skinned Dravidians. It was worse than that. It came from people wanting to be like the Brahmans, the religious elite who kept themselves apart from everyone else. Copying the Brahmans wound up creating castes that kept themselves apart from each other. It left the Brahmans on top and society too divided to overthrow them or the caste system itself.
Gandhi: not a fan. He sometimes opposed him. Upper-caste Gandhi thought he could represent the Dalits. Ambedkar thought otherwise.
Writing the constitution: As a Dalit who was also one of the top legal minds in India, he was needed to write a constitution that could hold India together – especially after the Partition when Muslims formed what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh, leaving as many as 2 million people dead.
Legacy: In the 62 years since his death, castes have weakened overall and India has held together, as a liberal democracy no less. That is partly thanks to him.
Warning: He warned that without fraternity – treating everyone with dignity (not a feature of the caste system) – that liberty and equality “will be no deeper than coats of paint.”
In his last years he converted to Buddhism, which has no castes.
– Abagond, 2018.
See also:
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Abagond 
@abagond
Born 1891. Born 104 years after the US constitution. How old was he when he proposed what he proposed. 1927 graduate. India Constitution 1949. 162 years after the birth of freedom in the US.
Can you name any US Blacks that were prominent enough to be a part of the Constitution Convention and how do you know that some Blacks did not impact the opinions of the member of the convention?
Could you research the period and see what voice the Blacks had in the northern states?
Could you discuss the Constitution Convention and the meeting they held.
Our Constitution 1787. What is the history of the Blacks during that period and how did they have make themselves known. I believe Blacks in both the north and south were working to change the “labor” system.
The United States seemed to be a leader in changing the view that sub Saharan Blacks were of a lower caliber then the European White. (Almost all English).
While it is true that there were no Blacks at the convention, the treatment of slaves was a large part of the discussion, with the final agreements being decided by the vote of southern states which were at that time a majority. Thus instead of giving the south a full count the north demanded that each slave be counted as 3/5th of a citizen.
The 3/5th count reduced the number of representative the south could have in the House of Representatives thus reducing their influence.
Places in the world like India and China and the entire far east were not even a part of the thoughts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(United_States)#Historical_context
“Most accepted the desire among the slave states to count slaves as part of the population, although their servile status was raised as a major objection against this. The Three-Fifths Compromise assessing population by adding the number of free persons to three-fifths of “all other persons” (slaves) was agreed to without serious dispute.[6]:119″
Could you provide write-up on the situation in the sub Saharan nations during the period 1621 until 1865.
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Reblogged this on League of Bloggers For a Better World.
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Fascinating. I had no idea he helped write the Indian constitution!
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJ6oBENENo)
interesting opinions by Arundhati Roy on Ambedkar vs Gandhi
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“Muslims violently broke away”
This incorrect and misleading. This statement ignores the 1934 Allahabad address, 1940 Lahore resolution, 1946 elections where Muslims voted for the Muslim league, 1947 when the British drew boundaries and declared a “partition” and then ignores the partition violence where both sides were murdering each other. It’s just Islamophobic propaganda and fake news.
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@ Sardar LeBron Khan
I now have:
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