B. R. Ambedkar

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born 14 April 1891 and built an improbable academic path out: Elphinstone College, then doctorates from Columbia University in 1927 and the London School of Economics in 1923, training in law at Gray's Inn - among the first Indian students to do so at either American or British institution in that decade. At Columbia he studied under John Dewey, absorbing pragmatist philosophy that would shape his later work. He returned as economist, professor, and lawyer, but his career turned political: campaigning for Dalit rights, negotiating through partition, publishing journals, advocating social freedom for those locked outside the caste system. When independence came, Jawaharlal Nehru named him Law and Justice minister, and Ambedkar chaired the committee that drafted India's Constitution, working from the debates of the Constituent Assembly and Sir Benegal Narsing Rau's first draft. In 1956, months before his death on 6 December, he renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism, initiating mass conversions and founding the Dalit Buddhist movement. In 1990 India gave him the Bharat Ratna; his followers still greet each other with "Jai Bhim."