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Dr. B. R. Ambedkar A Biographical Sketch
* Who’s Who in Viceroy’s Council
Thirty years ago, a Mahar youth viewed the golden vista of opportunity opened up by education and decided that his life’s work should be a crusade against the social system which declared him and his kinsmen untouchables whose very shadows polluted high caste Hindus in their vicinity. Today, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar holds the portfolio of Labour in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, but he still feels that his first duty is to the millions in India who belong to the so-called Depressed Classes and that no considerations of personal well-being or ambition should come in the way of his leading them to emancipation.
Those who know of his attacks on the Hindu social system and of his differences with caste Hindu leaders will certainly feel that he is a much embittered man. But to one who has heard him tell of his career and antecedents, the wonder is that he is not even more bitter and that he has managed to crowd into a life devoted so largely to his crusade against untouchability so many interests, and to study a great variety of subjects with so much distinction.
One naturally asks : How did this untouchable manage to acquire any sort of education ? The answer is simple. His community—the Mahars—are cultivators, village servants and soldiers. They once supplied the Bombay Army of the East India Company with its manpower, just as the Dusads of Bihar and the Pariahs of Madras manned the armies of the Company in those Provinces. Then sepoys were given education in the Army, and Subedar Ramji Maloji Ambedkar, Dr. Ambedkar’s father, had once been a teacher in an Army school.
- Indian Information, March 1, 1943, pp. 194-95. This article was published under the caption ‘Personalities’. Name of the author is not printed on the article. —Ed.