PEOPLE of India will never forget Ambedkar’s historic role as the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, in arming them with valuable weapons like universal franchise and reservation, which have given the downtrodden a platform to take on the deeply entrenched structures of inequality, injustice and domination of the rich and the powerful.

In addition to his well-known contributions, Ambedkar has left behind many other potent ideas and insights, if only in brief outlines. We must develop these in accordance with our situations and use them as political weapons in the current struggle against obscurantism, statusquoism, intolerance, patriarchy, regional/ethnic chauvinism and all that, and also in our long-term struggle for a people’s democracy based on genuine liberty, equality, and fraternity.

He made a very important distinction between societal morality and constitutional morality. The former refers to the old, spontaneous, commonsensical morality of the dominant community -- as expressed, for example, in regressive attitudes towards women’s social and sexual freedom, LGBT rights, interfaith and intercaste marriages, beef-eating, and so on. Constitutional morality on the other hand is modern, consciously developed, progressive and based on principles enshrined in the Constitution such as egalitarianism, social justice, secularism and so on. As Ambedkar pointed out, “Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated.”

In these days of frequent and concerted attacks on rationalism, another ingredient of Ambedkar’s world outlook assumes special importance: his commitment to rationality and the scientific spirit. One of the reasons behind his attraction towards Buddhism lay in its spirit of investigation, argumentation, dialectical approach and enlightenment. While summarising the essential teachings of the Buddha, Ambedkar wrote, inter alia,

“Everyone has a right to learn. Learning is as necessary for man to live as food is … Nothing is infallible. Nothing is binding forever. Everything is subject to inquiry and examination.”