Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, (born April 14, 1891, Mhow, India—died December 6, 1956, New Delhi), leader of the Dalits (Scheduled Castes; formerly called untouchables) and law minister of the government of India (1947–51).
Born of a Dalit Mahar family of western India, he was as a boy humiliated by his high-caste schoolfellows. His father was an officer in the Indian army. Awarded a scholarship by the Gaekwar (ruler) of Baroda (now Vadodara), he studied at universities in the United States, Britain, and Germany. He entered the Baroda Public Service at the Gaekwar’s request, but, again ill-treated by his high-caste colleagues, he turned to legal practice and to teaching. He soon established his leadership among Dalits, founded several journals on their behalf, and succeeded in obtaining special representation for them in the legislative councils of the government. Contesting Mahatma Gandhi’s claim to speak for Dalits (or Harijans, as Gandhi called them), he wrote What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (1945).
In 1947 Ambedkar became the law minister of the government of India. He took a leading part in the framing of the Indian constitution, outlawing discrimination against untouchables, and skillfully helped to steer it through the assembly. He resigned in 1951, disappointed at his lack of influence in the government. In October 1956, in despair because of the perpetuation of untouchability in Hindu doctrine, he renounced Hinduism and became a Buddhist, together with about 200,000 fellow Dalits, at a ceremony in Nagpur. Ambedkar’s book The Buddha and His Dhamma appeared posthumously in 1957, and it was republished as The Buddha and His Dhamma: A Critical Edition in 2011, edited, introduced, and annotated by Aakash Singh Rathore and Ajay Verma.
Poona Pact, (September 24, 1932), agreement between Hindu leaders in India granting new rights to Dalits (low-caste Hindu groups then often labeled “untouchables”). The pact, signed at Poona (now Pune, Maharashtra), resulted from the Communal Award of August 4, 1932, a proposal by the British government which would allot seats in the various legislatures of India to the different communities in an effort to resolve the various tensions between communal interests. Dalit leaders, especially Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, supported the proposal, believing it would allow Dalits to advance their interests. Mahatma Gandhi, on the other hand, objected to the provision of an electorate for the Dalits separate from the Hindu electorate, which in his view would weaken India in its bid for independence. Though in prison, Gandhi announced a fast unto death, which he began on September 18.
Ambedkar refused to abandon his support for separate electorates until Gandhi was near death. He and the Hindu leaders then agreed to the pact, which declined separate electorates but gave increased representation to the Dalits within the Hindu electorate for a 10-year period. Ambedkar complained of blackmail, but the pact marked the start of the movement against “untouchability” within the Indian nationalist movement.
civil rights, guarantees of equal social opportunities and equal protection under the law, regardless of race, religion, or other personal characteristics.
Examples of civil rights include the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to government services, the right to a public education, and the right to use public facilities. Civil rights are an essential component of democracy; when individuals are being denied opportunities to participate in political society, they are being denied their civil rights. In contrast to civil liberties, which are freedoms that are secured by placing restraints on government, civil rights are secured by positive government action, often in the form of legislation. Civil rights laws attempt to guarantee full and equal citizenship for people who have traditionally been discriminated against on the basis of some group characteristic. When the enforcement of civil rights is found by many to be inadequate, a civil rights movement may emerge in order to call for equal application of the l
Unlike other rights concepts, such as human rights or natural rights, in which people acquire rights inherently, perhaps from God or nature, civil rights must be given and guaranteed by the power of the state. Therefore, they vary greatly over time, culture, and form of government and tend to follow societal trends that condone or abhor particular types of discrimination. For example, the civil rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community have only recently come to the forefront of political debate in some Western democracies.
The American civil rights movement
Civil rights politics in the United States has its roots in the movement to end discrimination against African Americans. Though slavery was abolished and former slaves were officially granted political rights after the Civil War, in most Southern states African Americans continued to be systematically disenfranchised and excluded from public life, leading them to become perpetual second-class citizens. By the 1950s the marginalization of African Americans, often taking an extremely violent form, had spurred a social movement of epic proportions. The American civil rights movement, based mainly in African American churches and colleges of the South, involved marches, boycotts, and extensive efforts of civil disobedience, such as sit-ins, as well as voter education and voting drives. Most of these efforts were local in scope, but the impact was felt at the national level—a model of civil rights organizing that has since spread all over the globe.
Civil rights movements across the globe
In the 1960s the Roman Catholic-led civil rights movement in Northern Ireland was inspired by events in the United States. Its initial focus was fighting discriminatory gerrymandering that had been securing elections for Protestant unionists. Later, internment of Catholic activists by the British government sparked both a civil disobedience campaign and the more radical strategies of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), resulting in the violent sectarian conflict that became known as the Troubles (1968–98).
A high-profile civil rights movement led to the end of the South African system of racial segregation known as apartheid. The resistance movement began in the 1940s and intensified in the 1950s and ’60s, when civil rights as a concept was sweeping the globe, but it was forced underground as most of its leaders were imprisoned, and it did not regain strength until the 1980s. International pressure combined with internal upheaval led to the eventual lifting of the ban on the African National Congress, the major Black party in South Africa, and the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990. Mandela later became the first Black president of South Africa, in 1994.
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