BREAKING CHAINS, BUILDING JUSTICE: DR. B.R. CONSTITUTIONAL LEGACY AND ITS CONTINUING JUDICIAL LIFE

Abstract

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's constitutional thought cannot be understood apart from the caste discrimination he experienced directly and the intellectual apparatus he built, across three decades of advocacy before the Constituent Assembly convened, to dismantle it. This paper examines Ambedkar's contribution to Indian constitutional law not merely as biography but as a body of doctrine that continues to shape contemporary adjudication. It traces his advocacy from the 1919 Southborough Committee through the Round Table Conferences and the Poona Pact to his chairmanship of the Drafting Committee, and it demonstrates that the constitutional architecture he shaped, Articles 14 through 18, the Directive Principles, and the special provisions of Part XVI, remains the operative doctrinal foundation for equality jurisprudence in India today. The paper gives particular attention to two concepts of lasting judicial significance: constitutional morality, which the Supreme Court has invoked in landmark decisions including Government of NCT of Delhi v. Union of India and Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, and the abolition of untouchability under Article 17, enforced through the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and interpreted expansively in State of Karnataka v. Appa Balu Ingale. It concludes that Ambedkar's central insight, that political democracy is unsustainable without social democracy, continues to supply the interpretive key through which Indian courts read the equality provisions he helped draft.