Great distortion of facts

Many people nowadays attribute the Constitution of India to Dr Ambedkar. This is especially so by those who avail of affirmative action benefits. This is a great distortion of facts. Dr Ambedkar was only the Chairman of the drafting Committee. The Constitution was the creation of the entire Constituent Assembly which debated each and every Article, word by word and agreed to pass the Constitution including the affirmative action provisions. When the President of the Assembly, Dr Rajendra Prasad is not given the credit for the Constitution, how can a person who was merely the Chairman of the drafting Committee be given the credit? Actually, Dr Ambedkar all his life rode on British shoulders. He was a Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council from 1942-46 when all the leading lights of the freedom struggle were being tortured in British jails. The British used him to avoid independence, just as they used the Muslim League and the princely states. Every freedom fighter was jailed by the British. Dr Ambedkar never spent a moment in British jails. How can someone who never opposed British rule, who never participated in the freedom struggle in any way, who welcomed British rule and openly allied with the British and enjoyed British office till the very advent of freedom, be the father of the Indian Constitution? It is a travesty of history that a narrative has been built around Dr Ambedkar being the father of the Indian Constitution. This was not so when Dr Ambedkar was alive. No one in those days gave him credit for either freedom or the Constitution because everybody knew the events fully, having lived through those days. It was only in the 90s when Sh Kanshi Ramji needed some new dalit idol that he created a narrative and resurrected Dr Ambedkar in this light. Babu Jagjivan Ram, the real leader of the dalits who spent years in British jails, today is forgotten and consigned to the dustbin of history, his sacrifices but a forgotten chapter in Indian history just as the contributions of the krantikaris were swept under the carpet to build up a Nehru narrative post independence.

Vijay Kumar