974 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
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*OBITUARY REFERENCE—DEMISE OF DR. B. R. AMBEDKAR
The Prime Minister (Shri Jawaharlal Nehru) :
Mr. Deputy Chairman, I deeply regret to inform the House that a Member of this House who had played a very leading part in many matters passed away a short while ago. I refer to Dr. Ambedkar. Dr. Ambedkar for many, many years had been a very controversial figure in Indian public affairs, but there can be no doubt about his outstanding quality, his scholarship, and the intensity with which he pursued his convictions, sometimes rather with greater intensity than perhaps required by the particular subject, which sometimes reacted in a contrary way. But he was the symbol of that intense feeling which we must always remember, the intense feeling of the supressed classes in India who have suffered for ages past under our previous social systems, and it is as well that we recognise this bidden that all of us should carry and should always remember, It may be that some of us thought, as I have just said, that he overdid the expression of that feeling, but I do not think that, apart from the manner of utterance or language, anybody should challenge the rightness of the inetnsity of his feeling in that matter which should be felt by all of us and perhaps even more so by those who have not in themselves or in their groups or classes had to suffer from that. He was that. Therefore he became this symbol. But we in Parliament remember him for many other things and more particularly for the very prominent part he played in the making of our Conbstitution, and perhaps that fact will be remembered even longer than his other activities. I am quite sure that every Member of this House will want
- P. D., Vol. 10-C, 6th December 1956, pp. 1769-70.