B. R. Ambedkar: the scholar who chaired the drafting of India's Constitution

A school where he could not drink from the common tap

Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891 in the military cantonment of Mhow, in present-day Madhya Pradesh. His family belonged to the Mahar caste. His father served in the British Indian Army and, according to the London School of Economics, insisted that his sons be educated.

School was not easy. The Supreme Court of India's biography of Ambedkar notes that his education was achieved in the face of significant discrimination. In his autobiographical notes he recalled that he was not allowed to drink water from the common tap at school. ClearIAS adds that children like him were not allowed to sit inside the classroom.

He kept studying. He passed his matriculation in 1907, joined Elphinstone College in Bombay, and in 1912 graduated from Bombay University with a degree in economics and political science. LSE records that he was the first in his community to graduate from high school.

“An idea needs propagation as much as a plant needs watering.”

— B. R. Ambedkar, via Columbia University

New York and London

In 1913 Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the Maharaja of Baroda, awarded him a scholarship to study at Columbia University in New York. There he wrote a master's thesis on the administration and finance of the East India Company and received his MA in 1915. Columbia notes that he studied under the philosopher John Dewey and that he later said Columbia was where he first experienced social equality.

From New York he went to London, registered at the London School of Economics to study economics and enrolled at Gray's Inn to study law. Money ran out, and in 1917 he had to return to India. He taught political economy at Sydenham College in Bombay, saved what he could, and with help from Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur and a loan from a friend he went back to London in 1920.

This time he finished. He was called to the bar in 1922, and LSE awarded him a master's degree in 1921 and a doctorate in 1923. His thesis was published as The Problem of the Rupee. Columbia awarded him its PhD in 1927.

From reformer to Law Minister

Back in India he founded the Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha to spread education among excluded communities, and in 1927 he led the Mahad Satyagraha for equal access to public water. In the early 1930s he attended the Round Table Conferences in London on India's constitutional future.

He was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1946. On 15 August 1947 he took oath as independent India's first Law Minister, and on 29 August 1947 he was made chairman of the Drafting Committee. LSE points to his influence on the Constitution's emphasis on liberal democracy, its federal structure, its safeguards for minorities and its abolition of untouchability.

He served as Law Minister until 1951 and later became a member of the Rajya Sabha. In 1952 Columbia gave him an honorary doctorate. His health declined in 1955, and he died in his sleep in Delhi on 6 December 1956. In 1990 he was awarded the Bharat Ratna.

The skills and habits that made the difference

The first was persistence with study itself. When his money ran out in London he did not give up the degree; he went home, taught, saved and returned three years later to complete it.

The second was depth across subjects. He trained in economics, political science, history and law, and that range is visible in the Constitution's mix of rights, federal design and financial provisions.

The third was writing. From his Columbia thesis to The Problem of the Rupee, he put his arguments on paper in full, with evidence, so that others could test them.