B. R. Ambedkar

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born in 1891 into the Mahar community, then treated as untouchable. He was among the first Dalits to attend Elphinstone College in Bombay and earned doctorates from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. From the 1920s he led campaigns against untouchability and founded political parties for labourers and the Scheduled Castes. After independence he became India's first law minister and chaired the committee that drafted the constitution. He resigned in 1951 after the Hindu Code Bill was blocked, converted to Buddhism in 1956 and died that December.

Ambedkar is revered in India as the father of the constitution and the foremost champion of the Dalits, and the BBC describes him as India's most revered leader after Gandhi. The reservations and anti-discrimination guarantees he championed remain central to Indian law, though untouchability and caste discrimination persist despite being outlawed in 1950. His sharpest clash was with Gandhi, who fasted in protest against separate electorates for the depressed classes and forced the 1932 Poona Pact compromise of reserved seats instead. Orthodox Hindu leaders resented his attacks on scripture, and Ambedkar himself later voiced frustration with how the constitution was being worked.