Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar was born into a family that many people, at the time, unfairly called 'untouchable'. As a child he was often not allowed to sit with other students or drink from the same water tap.

But he studied harder than almost anyone else. He earned degrees in Mumbai, in New York and in London, and became one of the greatest scholars of his time.

Later he led the team that wrote the Constitution of India — the big rulebook that says every Indian, no matter who their parents are, is equal.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born in 1891 in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh, into a Dalit family. Despite facing sharp discrimination, he earned doctorates in economics from Columbia University in New York and the London School of Economics.

Back in India he became a lawyer, a scholar and a leader fighting caste injustice.

He led the Mahad Satyagraha in 1927, where Dalits drank water from a public tank they had been kept away from, and later burned the Manusmriti in protest against caste rules. He signed the Poona Pact with Gandhi in 1932 to secure representation for Dalits.

After Independence he chaired the drafting committee of the Constitution of India, which was adopted on 26 November 1949 and gave every citizen equal rights, universal adult voting and protection from discrimination. He served as India's first Law Minister.

In 1956, along with hundreds of thousands of followers, he embraced Buddhism at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1990.