Constitution Day 2019: Remembering BR Ambedkar, Builder of India’s Constitution

The Constitution of India was adopted on November 26, 1949, an important landmark in the country’s journey as an independent, sovereign republic. The constitution came into force on January 26, 1950.

Constitution Day was first celebrated four years
ago in 2015, when the government decided to mark the day as a tribute to BR
Ambedkar, who played an important role in the framing of the Indian
Constitution. The constitution day is also known as the samvidhan divas.

Upon India’s independence in 1947, the new
Congress-led government invited BR Ambedkar to serve as the nation’s first Law
and Justice Minister. On 29 August, he was appointed Chairman of the
Constitution Drafting Committee, and was appointed by the Constituent Assembly
to write India’s new Constitution.

The draft of the constitution was prepared by a
committee chaired by BR Ambedkar, an iconic lawyer, scholar and leader who had
championed the cause of the down-trodden. November 26 was commemorated as
National Law Day, after a resolution by the Supreme Court Bar Association, a
lawyers’ body, in 1979.

A constitutional expert, BR Ambedkar had studied
the constitutions of about 60 countries. The text prepared by him provided
constitutional guarantees and a wide range of civil liberties for citizens
including freedom of religion, the abolition of untouchability, and the
outlawing of all forms of discrimination.

BR Ambedkar argued for extensive economic and
social rights for women, and won support for introducing a system of
reservations of jobs in the civil services, schools and colleges for members of
scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and Other Backward Class.

The Indian Constitution that has over 90,000 words
is the work of 271 men and women who were part of the constituent assembly that
drafted it. By all means the Constitution serves as a powerful emancipation
proclamation ending centuries of discrimination, economic, political and social
exclusion for millions of people.