Babasaheb Dr B.R Ambedkar

FOREWORD
This is the fifth volume of the writings of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar,
a jurist and constitutionalist par excellence of the modern India.
The present volume brings together the unpublished writings of
Dr. Ambedkar on Untouchables and Untouchability. India has
rightly been called a sociological museum in which are exhibited
cheek by jowl items that are contemporaneous with items that are
noncontemporaneous. Dr. Ambedkar has pointed out the irrelevance
of the caste system and its essential iniquity arising out of the
emphasis on status by birth. It was Sir Henry Maine who in his
“Ancient Law” has pointed out that the movement of progressive
societies is from status to contract. The Constitution of India
enshrines fundamental rights and provides for the machinery for
their enforcement against the State, thereby preserving the dignity
of the individual as the primary object of socio-economic progress.
The writings of Dr. Ambedkar, therefore, have contemporary
relevance in the context of the new social order which the Indian
Constitution envisages.
The Indian Constitution is a mid-20th century phenomenon
and it has drawn heavily on the experience of other nations in
working democratic institutions. Judging by the experience, it
must be said that the Constitution has worked well.
The State today is committed to the establishment of the
just social order and in all walks of life there is evidence of new
activities with a view to improving the lot of the common man. The
evolution from status to contract, from immobility to mobility, from
the tendency to look to the past as the ideal to the belief in bright
future sustained by socialist ideals of equality and fraternity—these
are some of the conspicuous features of the socio-economic scenes
of the free India in the making of which the philosophy and the
ideals of Dr. Ambedkar have played a critical part.