In May 2011, Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI) worked with the California State Assembly, in cooperation with Bhim Rao Ambedkar Sikh Foundation and All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees’ Federation (BAMCEF), for passage of a resolution honoring Dr. Ambedkarji’s 120th birth anniversary. The text of that resolution is displayed below.

Sacramento County Board of Supervisors followed suit in June 2011 by adopting an identical resolution. Shortly after, the City of Citrus Heights, in which Ambedkarites gathered on June 11, 2011 to joyously celebrate their hero’s birthday, also adopted the resolution. Click here to view news coverage of the celebration.

A Resolution In Honor of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Honoring the legacy of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who championed human rights for his people, the depressed classes of the Indian subcontinent called the Dalits, and so sought the annihilation of caste.

Whereas Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s mission to uplift the Dalits was inspired by his own life experiences as an Untouchable, such as being treated as subhuman as a young child at school by having to study in a separate classroom, not being allowed to ask any questions of his teacher, not being permitted to interact with any other student and never being allowed to drink from the school water supply;

Whereas Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was granted a scholarship to study at Columbia University in New York by Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the Maharaja of Baroda, in 1913, and there earned by 1915 his master’s degree in economics, after which he obtained his doctorate in that subject in 1928 at the London School of Economics;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar first introduced the plight of the Dalits to a broad international audience upon presenting his thesis paper “Castes In India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development” at Columbia University on May 9, 1916, in which he particularly condemned the prohibition of marriage between castes as the primary method for enforcing social segregation;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar pleaded before the Southborough Committee, which wrote the reformative Government of India Act of 1919, that the tens of million of Dalits within India receive safeguarded civil rights such as that of representation;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar started in 1920 a weekly paper called “Mooknayak,” meaning “Leader of the Voiceless,” his first article in which condemned the caste system that he said made India a “home of inequality” and created a society he likened to: “A tower which had several storeys without a ladder or an entrance. One was to die in the storey in which one was born”;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar participated in the first Depressed Classes Conference in March 1920, and was there praised as a future national leader by Shahu IV, the Maharaja of Kolhapur, who shocked the upper-castes by dining with Ambedkar and other Dalits;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar passionately strove to unite the Dalits, who are divided by the use of a great many sub-castes, by promoting a dinner in May 1920 in which the various sub-castes shattered taboo by all dining together;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar founded the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha on July 20, 1924 for the purpose of spreading education among the Dalits and improving their economic condition, adopting the motto “Educate, Agitate, Organise”;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar, in March 1927, led a Satyagraha of the Untouchables at Mahad in Maharashtra, seeking to open public places to all regardless of religion, caste or creed and so ceremonially drank water from the well reserved for upper-caste Hindus, after which local caste Hindus rioted, and Brahmins took elaborate measure for the ritual purification of the tank;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar, on December 25, 1927, condemned the Manusmrti, also named the Laws of Manu, which teach the hereditary segregation of Dalits from the rest of society, and he publicly burned a copy of the ancient text while addressing a Depressed Classes Conference;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar presided over the Depressed Classes Congress at Nagpur in 1930, at which time he told the Dalits they must seek to help themselves through education and social elevation, saying: “Political power cannot be a panacea for the ills of the Depressed Classes”;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar represented the Dalits from 1930-1932 as their delegate to the three Round Table Conferences which were conducted in London to discuss India’s independence from the British Empire;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar exercised his democratic rights by organizing in 1936 his first political party, the Independent Labour Party, and his second in 1942, the All-India Scheduled Castes Federation, which helped provide Dalits with political representation;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar served, beginning in August 1947, as the independent country of India’s first Minister of Law and Justice and also as Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee;

Whereas Dr. Ambedkar envisioned a secular India wherein the human rights and liberties of all religious groups and minorities would be equally protected;

Resolved, that we

(1) Celebrate along with all peoples of Indian descent the birth anniversary of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, which falls on April 14 of each year; and

(2) Recognize Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar as an exemplary figure in the struggle for human rights and civil liberties for oppressed people around the world.