B.R. Ambedkar

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar lived from 14 April 1891 to 6 December 1956 and was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and politician who chaired the committee that drafted the Constitution of India, building on the debates of the Constituent Assembly of India and the first draft of Sir Benegal Narsing Rau; he later served as Law and Justice minister in the first cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru. After graduating from Elphinstone College at the University of Bombay, Ambedkar studied economics at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, receiving doctorates from each in the 1920s and training in law at Gray's Inn, London, one of only a handful of Indian students to have done so at either American or British institution in that decade; at Columbia he came under the influence of John Dewey and his philosophy of pragmatism. His early career was as an economist, professor and lawyer, but his later life was marked by political activity: campaigning and negotiating around partition, publishing journals, and advocating political rights and social freedom for Dalits, the group into which he had himself been born and whose exclusion under caste Hinduism shaped his thought throughout. In 1956 he renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism, initiating mass conversions of Dalits and inspiring the Dalit Buddhist movement that continues today; India posthumously conferred its highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, on him in 1990, and his followers use the salutation Jai Bhim and the honorific Babasaheb, meaning respected father, to honor him.