Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar - III

Ideologies

• Ambedkar was influenced by John Dewey and his work on democracy.
• Ambedkar objected to the decision of the Congress and Mahatma Gandhi to call the untouchable community as Harijans.
• He argued for equality and also won wide support for introducing a system of reservations of jobs for members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in the civil services, schools and colleges.
• This was aimed at providing a voice to people who had suffered grave injustices through centuries.
• Ambedkar viewed the Shudras as Aryan and adamantly rejected the Aryan invasion theory.
• Ambedkar viewed Shudras as originally being "part of the Kshatriya Varna in the Indo-Aryan society", but became socially degraded after they inflicted many tyrannies on Brahmins.
• Ambedkar disputed various hypotheses of the Aryan homeland being outside India, and concluded the Aryan homeland was India itself.
• According to Ambedkar, the Rig Veda says Aryans, Dāsa and Dasyus were competing religious groups, not different peoples.
• Ambedkar opposed Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which granted a special status to the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and which was included against his wishes.
• During the debates in the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar demonstrated his will to reform Indian society by recommending the adoption of a Uniform Civil Code.
• He stressed investment in agriculture as the primary industry of India.
• To overcome the problem of the agrarian crisis, he professed nationalisation of land and the concept of public sector industries.
• All labour laws practised in India now were framed by Dr. Ambedkar, in the interest of the working class, when he was Union Labour Minister (1942-46).
• Ambedkar opposed the reorganisation of the States on linguistic lines and wanted smaller States for achieving overall development and effective administration.
• Ambedkar considered three persons as his gurus or masters.
  • His first Guru was Tathāgata Gautama Buddha,
  • Second was Saint Kabir and
  • Third was Mahatma Jyotirao Phule.
• Ambedkar considered these three to worship i.e. "Knowledge", "Modesty" ("Self-respect") and "Morality".
• Ambedkar believed that his life was complete by three masters (gurus) and by worshiping these three things.

His works 

• He was known to have knowledge of eleven languages, including Marathi (mother tongue), English, Hindi, Pali, Sanskrit, Gujarati, German, Persian, French, Kannada and Bengali.
• Ambedkar published his book Annihilation of Caste on 15 May 1936.
• After the Lahore resolution (1940) of the Muslim League demanding Pakistan, Ambedkar wrote a 400-page tract titled Thoughts on Pakistan, which analysed the concept of "Pakistan" in all its aspects.
• In his work “Who Were the Shudras?”, published in 1946, Ambedkar tried to explain the formation of untouchables.
• Ambedkar dedicated this book to Jyotirao Phule (1827–1890).
• He completed his final manuscript, "The Buddha or Karl Marx" on December 2, 1956.
• His book, "The Buddha and His Dhamma" was published posthumously in 1957, the text scripture for those who follow Navayana Buddhism.
• He wrote three scholarly books on economics:
  • Administration and Finance of the East India Company
  • The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India
  • The Problem of the Rupee: Its Origin and Its Solution
• Waiting for a Visa is his autobiography, the book is used as a textbook in Columbia University.

Some other famous books

• Rande, Gandhi and Jinnah, 1943
• Gandhi and the Emancipation of the Untouchables, 1943
• What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, 1945?
• The Cabinet Mission and the Untouchables, 1946
• States and Minorities, 1947
• The Untouchables: Who Were They are Why they Become Untouchables, 1948
• Thoughts on Linguistic States: A critique of the Report of the States Reorganization Commission, 1955
• Dictionary of Pali Language [Pali-English]

His Journals

• Bahishkrit Bharat,
• Prabhuddha Bharat,
• Equality Janta

Legacies

• Ambedkar National Memorial, the memorial for Ambedkar was established in his Delhi house at Alipur Road.
• Babasaheb's personal library "Rajgirh" in Bombay consisted more than 50,000 books and it was world's largest private library.
• Rajgruha is the former house of the leader B. R. Ambedkar in the Hindu colony of Dadar in Mumbai, India.
• It was named Rajgriha (now Rajgir) in reference to the ancient Buddhist kingdom.
• The Maharashtra government acquired the house in London where Ambedkar lived during his days as a student in the 1920s.

• In 2015, the house was converted into a museum-cum-memorial.
• The Ambedkar Memorial at Lucknow is dedicated in his memory.

• A proposal to build a grand memorial called Statue of Equality or "Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Memorial" was approved in 2015 to be located in Mumbai.
• Ambedkar's birthdate is an annual festival and a public holiday celebrated as Ambedkar Jayanti or Bhim Jayanti.
• The United Nations has celebrated Ambedkar Jayanti since 2016.
• His birth anniversary is also celebrated all over the world.
• On the anniversary of his birth and death, and on Dhamma Chakra Pravartan Din (14 October) at Nagpur, at least half a million people gather to pay homage to him at his memorial in Mumbai.
• Constitution Day, Previously as National Law Day, is celebrated in India on 26 November every year to commemorate the adoption of Constitution of India.
• The Government of India declared 26 November as Constitution Day on 19 November 2015 by a gazette notification due to Ambedkar 125^th Birth Anniversary (Which was in 2015).
• BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) is a mobile payment App developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
• It was named and released on December 30, 2016 after B. R. Ambedkar and is intended to facilitate e-payments directly through banks as part of the 2016 Indian banknote demonetization and drive towards cashless transactions.
• Ambedkar was voted "the Greatest Indian" in 2012 by a poll organised by History TV18 and CNN IBN.
• Based on a global survey called "The Makers of the Universe" a list of top 100 humanist people of the last 10 thousand years was made by Oxford University, in which fourth name was Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.
• In 2004, Columbia University honours Ambedkar in the course of its 250th birthday celebration.
• This University also referred him as "the founding father of modern India".
• Ambedkar is the only Indian whose statue is attached with Karl Marx in the London Museum.
• The credit of giving place to "Ashok Chakra" in the Indian Tricolour also goes to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.
• Everywhere in the world, Buddha's closed-eyed statues and paintings are visible, but Babasaheb, who was also a good painter, made the first painting of Buddha in which Buddha's eyes were opened.

• "Mahant Veer Chandramani", a great Buddhist monk who initiated Babasaheb to Buddhism, called him "the modern Buddha of this age".
• Granville Austin described the Indian Constitution drafted by Ambedkar as 'first and foremost a social document'.
• Nobel Prize winner Prof. Amartya Sen considered Dr. B. R. Ambedkar as his father in economics.
• The first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru said that, "Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar was a symbol of revolt against all oppressive features of the Hindu society."
• The highest number of statues in the world is of Babasaheb.
• The first Statue of Babasaheb was built in the year 1950, when he was alive and this statue is established in Kolhapur city of Maharastra.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -