Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891 in the military cantonment town of Mhow (now Dr. Ambedkar Nagar, Madhya Pradesh). Overcoming severe institutional untouchability, he pursued advanced studies across continents, earning doctorates from Columbia University in New York and the London School of Economics, as well as qualifying for the Bar at Gray's Inn, London.

Returning to India, Ambedkar launched rigorous civil rights campaigns to secure basic civic entitlements for depressed communities. He led the historic Mahad Satyagraha in March 1927 to assert the right of untouchables to draw water from the public Chavadar Tank, and subsequent movements for access to public temples.

As a brilliant constitutional thinker, Ambedkar represented the depressed classes at the Round Table Conferences in London (1930–1932). Following Indian independence, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed him Independent India's first Minister of Law and Justice, and the Constituent Assembly elected him Chairman of the Drafting Committee.

Ambedkar embedded fundamental rights, universal adult suffrage, the legal abolition of untouchability (Article 17), and protective representation mechanisms directly into the Constitution. In October 1956, at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur, he embraced Buddhism along with hundreds of thousands of followers, inaugurating the modern Buddhist revival in India.