WHO’S WHO IN VICEROY’S COUNCIL 5
He jumped at the offer and it was arranged that he should go to the Columbia University of New York. During the months of waiting before sailing for America, the Gaekwar advised Ambedkar to try the profession of his fore-fathers and made him a Lieutenant in the Baroda State Forces.
At the Columbia University, he studied Economics, Sociology and Political and Moral Philosophy, securing his Master’s degree and a Doctorate in Philosophy. In 1917 he went to London and carried on research in the India Office Library and at the London School of Economics, besides joining Gray’s Inn.
Returning to India, he offered his services to the man who had helped him and was appointed a probationer in the office of the Accountant-General of Baroda.
Experiences In Baroda
Dr. Ambedkar had been several years abroad and made many friends, Indians, Europeans and Americans, who had not treated him as an untouchable. The feeling that he was one of the downtrodden had thus been erased from his mind. Now it all returned painfully as he went to Baroda to start work. Where was he, a Mahar, to stay ? He persuaded a Parsi innkeeper to board and lodge him. Luckily there were no other lodgers, but after ten days a number of Parsis armed with lathis called on him, asked what he meant by defiling a hostel reserved for their community and told him to quit by that very evening.
He appealed to two friends, one a Hindu and the other a Christian, for shelter. The first said, “If you come to my home my servants will go.” The second friend wanted to consult his wife, and Dr. Ambedkar, knowing that husband and wife came of orthodox Brahmin stock and that the latter still suffered from inhibitions regarding caste, decided to return to Bombay.
There he became Professor of Political Economy in the Sydenham College of Commerce. But he longed to complete his studies in England. He supplemented his salary by private tuitions, saved every pie he could and after a year or two rejoined the London School of Economics. He obtained the coveted D.Sc. at London for a thesis on “The Problem of the Rupee” and was called to the Bar. His desire to study at a German University took him to Bonn, but the fall in the exchange led him to return to India without a degree.