Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji (1891–1956)

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was a statesman, scholar, human rights advocate, educator, barrister, first law minister of the Republic of India and architect of its constitution. Born into the untouchable Mahar subcaste, he became the widely revered leader of India’s more than 100 million hereditary outcastes, the social and psychological emancipation of whom remained his lifelong objective. Strongly influenced by Anglo-American liberalism and pragmatism, Ambedkar was a staunch constitutionalist and social democrat. Locating the source of untouchability within the caste system itself, he became a militant critic of Hinduism, eventually affirming Buddhism as the universal ethical teaching that he felt could lead all of India into modernity.