child hood of Bhimrao Ambedkar
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Cultural India
Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, politician and social reformer. This biography profiles his childhood, life, career, and achievements.
Cultural India : Reformers : Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
Born: 14 April, 1891
Place of Birth: Mhow in Central Provinces (currently Madhya Pradesh)
Parents: Ramji Maloji Sakpal (father) and Bhimabai Murbadkar Sakpal (mother)
Spouse: Ramabai Ambedkar (1906-1935); Dr. Sharada Kabir rechristened Savita Ambedkar (1948-1956)
Education: Elphinstone High School, University of Bombay, Columbia University, London School of Economics
Associations: Samata Sainik Dal, Independent Labour Party, Scheduled Castes Federation
Political Ideology: Right winged; Equalism
Religious Beliefs: Hinduism by birth; Buddhism 1956 onwards
Publications: Essays on Untouchables and Untouchability, The Annihilation of Caste, Waiting for a Visa
Passed Away: 6, December, 1956
Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, popularly known as Babasaheb Ambedkar, was a jurist, social reformer and politician. He is also known as the Father of Indian Constitution. A well-known politician and an eminent jurist, his efforts to eradicate social evils like untouchablity and caste restrictions were remarkable. Throughout his life, he fought for the rights of the dalits and other socially backward classes. Ambedkar was appointed as India’s first Law Minister in the Cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru. He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honor, in 1990.
Childhood & Early Life
Bhimrao Ambedkar was born to Bhimabai and Ramji on 14 April 1891 in Mhow Army Cantonment, Central Provinces (Madhya Pradesh). Ambedkar’s father was a Subedar in the Indian Army and after his retirement in 1894, the family moved to Satara, also in Central Provinces. Shortly after this, Bhimrao’s mother passed away. Four years later, his father remarried and the family shifted to Bombay. In 1906, 15 year old Bhimrao married Ramabai, a 9 year old girl. His father Ramji Sakpal died in Bombay, in 1912.
Throughout his childhood, Ambedkar faced the stigmas of caste discrimination. Hailing from the Hindu Mahar caste, his family was viewed as “untouchable” by the upper classes. The discrimination and humiliation haunted Ambedkar at the Army school. Fearing social outcry, the teachers would segregate the students of lower class from that of Brahmins and other upper classes. The untouchable students were often asked by the teacher to sit outside the class. After shifting to Satara, he was enrolled at a local school but the change of school did not change the fate of young Bhimrao. Discrimination followed wherever he went. After coming back from the US, Ambedkar was appointed as the Defence secretary to the King of Baroda but there also he had to face the humiliation for being an ‘Untouchable’.
Answer:
Ambedkar (1891-1956) had shared his experiences from childhood on two previous occasions: in a speech that justified religious conversion at a public rally in Thane in 1936; and, in the first of the six parts that make up Waiting for a Visa, an excursus in autobiography undertaken around 1946-47 to give “foreigners” “an idea of the way untouchables are treated by the caste Hindus.”
On both occasions, Ambedkar recalled an incident which had given him “a shock (he had) never received before” and made him question the untouchability that he had become used to.
In 1901, Ambedkar’s father, Ramji Sakpal, who worked as a cashier in Goregaon, asked him to visit him for the summer holidays. The nine-year-old Ambedkar, his elder brother and one of his nephews, decided to take the train from Satara, where they lived with Sakpal’s sister. They were excited: this was their first rail experience. They had bought “new shirts of English make, bright bejeweled caps, new shoes, new silk-bordered dhoties” for the journey. They drank “lemonade” at the train station. The train ride was great fun.
There was no one to receive them at the rail station in Masur. (Sakpal had not received the letter with the date of their visit.) The station-master, who was initially kind to the forlorn travelers, had turned cold on learning that they were Mahars. Their nice clothes and manner of speaking, Ambedkar surmises, had misled him into thinking that they were Brahmins.
Only one among the owners of bullock carts agreed to carry them. His ondition however was that the passengers themselves drive the cart while he walked alongside. They reached Goregaon the following morning famished and demoralized: everyone had refused them water on the way. Waiting for a Visa grippingly narrates these experiences.