The Forum

Educate, Agitate, Organise. This was the motto of the Indian scholar BR Ambedkar who led an extraordinary life of activism and achievement. It put him in conflict with many other political forces in his native country, such as the Indian National Congress and Mahatma Gandhi. In India itself, Ambedkar's legacy is widely respected but in other countries he is not so well known. And yet, Ambedkar was not only a leading intellectual of his day, brilliant orator, lawyer, successful politician and an unmatched champion of those suffering the harshest discrimination: he was also someone who rose from a Dalit background to being put in charge of writing the first constitution of independent India. The Dalits are the lowest of the low in the Indian social hierarchy, often considered as being below the lowest caste.To tell Ambedkar's story Rajan Datar is joined by three distinguished Ambedkar scholars: Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and history at Ashoka University and author of Incarnations: India in Fifty Live