Ambedkar Jayantī

When it falls

14 April, the birthday of B. R. Ambedkar, born 1891. A public holiday in most Indian states and observed at the United Nations since 2016.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Bhīmrāo Rāmjī Ambedkar was born into a Mahar family, then counted untouchable. He was made to sit apart from the class at school and was not allowed to touch the water tap. He went on to take doctorates at Columbia and the London School of Economics, and to qualify at Gray's Inn.

He chaired the drafting committee of India's constitution, which abolished untouchability in its seventeenth article, and served as the first law minister. He resigned over the Hindu Code Bill, which would have given women rights in property and divorce, when it was blocked.

In October 1956, weeks before his death, he converted to Buddhism at Nagpur with several hundred thousand followers, having said twenty years earlier that he had been born a Hindu but would not die one.

How the day is kept

• His statue in every town is garlanded before dawn; the queues at Chaitya Bhoomi in Mumbai and the Dīkṣābhūmi in Nagpur run through the day.
• Processions carry blue flags — the colour of the movement — and the Aśoka wheel.
• Public readings from his writings, and from the constitution itself, are held in schools, colleges and Buddhist vihāras.
• Government offices and courts close; the parliament building in Delhi holds a formal tribute.

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