It was a very moving and inspiring experience, being at Chaityabhoomi in Dadar, Mumbai, at midnight of December 6, last week, on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s mahaparinirvan diwas (death anniversary). It was especially moving to hear Buddhist prayers being chanted in the inner chamber of the Chaityabhoomi, under the dome, where Dr Ambedkar’s family, heirs, friends, bhikkus (monks), allies and followers offered prayers from midnight onwards. There was a short marchpast by the uniformed Samata Sainik Dal, SSD, founded by Dr Ambedkar to safeguard the rights of the oppressed. Outside Chaityabhoomi, followers from all over India waited patiently to pay their respects in an orderly queue that was so long, we couldn’t see the end of it—even at 2 am.

Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Babasaheb Ambedkar, was a legal luminary, economist, journalist, social reformer, and chief architect of the Constitution of India. He aimed to annihilate caste on many fronts, including by editing newspapers, proposing Bills as a member of the Bombay Legislative Assembly; practising as a lawyer, and teaching at the Government Law College, to direct action, such as at the Mahad Conference in 1927, when he and a large group of “low castes” broke social codes by drinking water from the Chavdar lake in Mahad, Maharashtra. He also led an estimated 5,00,000 followers in a mass conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism in Nagpur in 1956, to escape Hinduism’s caste system’s “threat to freedom.”