Great men created History, One man changed it- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Directed by Jabbar Patel, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar is a movie which walks us through the history of India from a period of around 1916 to 1956. The director has beautifully sketched the life of the oppressed class in India in the Pre-Independence era in this masterpiece, and how various leading political parties dealt with this issue. The movie shows the true history of our nation which includes the struggle of Dr Ambedkar for the upliftment of the downtrodden. The brutality of Hindus upon untouchables and the denial of their human rights reflects the hypocrisy of Hindu. The untouchables were not allowed to drink water from public wells and were refused to be provided with lodging. Dr Ambedkar himself had to suffer these humiliations when he returned to India after finishing his education in America to serve Baroda state.

Through the prism of the important events that shaped Ambedkar’s life, the movie also portrays Ambedkar’s role in independent India as its first law minster and his work as the chairperson of the Constitution Drafting Committee after independence. With highlighting discrimination in every frame of the historical background of untouchability, the movie links class and caste discrimination to politics and society. Ambedkar is seen in different lights- as a brilliant scholar, as an economist and professor, determined on proving his worth, a frustrated ‘Mahar’ which is an untouchable caste, unable to find shelter, a father wrecked by the misery of losing four of his children, a leader of the depressed and oppressed class, an opponent of Gandhi and the Congress party’s claims to represent the Indians, and charismatic speaker. Ambedkar saw the caste system as an unequal mode of organization of social relations, with the pure and the impure at either extreme. He argued that this system was sanctified through religious codes that forbade intermixture of castes and confined social interaction to a regulated structure.

Caste system was very much stringent and rigid institution of early Indian society which was responsible for the pathetic condition of lower castes and they were treated as suppressed, untouchables. Dr. Ambedkar made valuable contribution to the social and political issues and denounced the outrageous attitude of the Brahmanical Hinduism towards the untouchables and worked towards the liberation of oppressed class from the maltreatment of the higher groups. Through his writings and speeches, he spread awareness among the people about the social, economic and political problems of the untouchables.

The influence of Ambedkar is quite evident from our constitution that establishes equality to all the citizen and made the violation of this vital law an punishable offence.