Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and Harry S. TrumanThe first Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru (second from right), being greeted by U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman at the start of Nehru's visit to the United States in October 1949. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, who later served as prime minister, is on the right.
In the 35 years from 1929, when Gandhi chose Nehru as president of the Congress session at Lahore, until his death, as prime minister, in 1964, Nehru remained—despite the debacle of the brief conflict with China in 1962—the idol of his people. His secular approach to politics contrasted with Gandhi’s religious and traditionalist attitude, which during Gandhi’s lifetime had given Indian politics a religious cast—misleadingly so, for, although Gandhi may have appeared to be a religious conservative, he was actually a social nonconformist trying to secularize Hinduism. The real difference between Nehru and Gandhi was not in their attitudes toward religion but in their attitudes toward civilization. Whereas Nehru talked in an increasingly modern idiom, Gandhi was harking back to the glories of ancient India.
The importance of Nehru in the perspective of Indian history is that he imported and imparted modern values and ways of thinking, which he adapted to Indian conditions. Apart from his stress on secularism and on the basic unity of India, despite its ethnic and religious diversities, Nehru was deeply concerned with carrying India forward into the modern age of scientific discovery and technological development. In addition, he aroused in his people an awareness of the necessity of social concern with the poor and the outcast and of respect for democratic values. One of the achievements of which he was particularly proud was the reform of the ancient Hindu civil code that finally enabled Hindu widows to enjoy equality with men in matters of inheritance and property.
Internationally, Nehru’s star was in the ascendant until October 1956, when India’s attitude on the Hungarian Revolution against the Soviets brought his policy of nonalignment (neutralism) under sharp scrutiny by the noncommunist countries. In the United Nations, India was the only nonaligned country to vote with the Soviet Union on the invasion of Hungary, and it was thereafter difficult for Nehru to command credence in his calls for nonalignment. In the early years after independence, anticolonialism had been the cornerstone of his foreign policy. His interest in the issue waned, however, after Zhou Enlai, the Chinese prime minister, stole the spotlight from him at the Bandung Conference of African and Asian countries that was held in Indonesia in 1955. By the time of the first conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), in 1961, Nehru had substituted nonalignment for anticolonialism as his most-pressing concern.
The month-long Sino-Indian War of 1962, however, exposed Nehru’s wishful thinking on nonalignment. When Chinese forces threatened to overrun the Brahmaputra River valley in the northeast as a result of a long-standing border dispute regarding Arunachal Pradesh state, they exposed the hollowness of Nehru’s proclamation, “Hindu-Chini bhai bhai” (“Indians and Chinese are brothers”). Nehru’s subsequent call for Western aid made virtual nonsense of his nonalignment policy. China soon withdrew its troops.
The Kashmir region—claimed by both India and Pakistan—remained a perennial problem throughout Nehru’s term as prime minister. In the months after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, he made tentative efforts to settle the dispute between the two new countries while Hari Singh, the maharaja of Kashmir, decided on which country he would join. When Singh chose India, however, fighting broke out between the two sides. The UN brokered a cease-fire line in the region, and Nehru proposed territorial adjustments along the line that failed. That demarcation became the line of control that still separates the Indian- and Pakistani-administered portions of the region.
Nehru was more fortunate in his efforts to solve the problem of the Portuguese colony of Goa, the last remaining foreign-controlled entity in India. Although its military occupation by Indian troops in December 1961 raised a furor in many Western countries, in the hindsight of history, Nehru’s action is justifiable. With the withdrawal of the British and the French, the Portuguese colonial presence in India had become an anachronism. Both the British and the French had withdrawn peacefully. If the Portuguese were not prepared to follow suit, Nehru had to find ways to dislodge them. After first trying persuasion, in August 1955 he had permitted a group of unarmed Indians to march into Portuguese territory in a nonviolent demonstration. Even though the Portuguese opened fire on the demonstrators, killing nearly 30, Nehru stayed his hand for six years, appealing meanwhile to Portugal’s Western friends to persuade its government to cede the colony. When India finally struck, Nehru could claim that neither he nor the government of India had ever been committed to nonviolence as a policy.
Nehru’s health showed signs of deteriorating not long after the clash with China. He suffered a slight stroke in 1963, and a more-debilitating attack followed in January 1964. He died a few months later from a third and fatal stroke.
Legacy
While consciously assertive in his Indianness, Nehru never exuded the Hindu aura and atmosphere clinging to Gandhi’s personality. Because of his modern political and economic outlook, he was able to attract the younger intelligentsia of India to Gandhi’s movement of nonviolent resistance against the British and later to rally them around him after independence had been gained. Nehru’s Western upbringing and his visits to Europe before independence had acclimatized him to Western ways of thinking.
Nehru did not conceal his differences with Gandhi on many basic social, economic, and political issues. He did not share Gandhi’s aversion to industrialization, and he saw to it that India’s early five-year plans after independence were geared toward heavy manufacturing. If Nehru accepted Gandhi’s nonviolence, he did so not as a matter of principle but because he regarded nonviolence as a useful political weapon and the right policy for India under the prevailing political conditions.
Of all the leaders of the Congress Party—including Gandhi—Nehru alone had given serious thought to India’s place in the world community. That enabled him not only to educate the Indian populace on foreign affairs before independence but to project his own views on Indian foreign policy when freedom came. If Gandhi made Indians aware of India, Nehru made them also aware of others. When India achieved independence, the image it presented to the world was really Nehru’s image: in the early years of Indian nationhood, the world identified India with Nehru.
Throughout his 17 years in the prime minister’s office, he held up democratic socialism as the guiding star, emphasizing that India needed to achieve both democracy and socialism. With the help of the overwhelming majority that the Congress Party maintained in the parliament during his term of office, he advanced toward that goal. The four pillars of his domestic policies were democracy, socialism, unity, and secularism. He succeeded to a large extent in maintaining the edifice supported by those four pillars during his lifetime.
Jawaharlal Nehru delivers his “Tryst with Destiny” speechAt the stroke of midnight on August 14–15, 1947, India and Pakistan became independent nations. Just before midnight, India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, delivered a speech entitled “A Tryst with Destiny.”
Indian Independence Movement, an anti-colonial struggle spanning approximately a century, aimed at ending British rule over the Indian subcontinent. It ended in a bittersweet victory, as the people of the subcontinent won freedom and independence, yet were painfully divided into two nations: India and Pakistan. Nonetheless, midnight on August 14–15, 1947, was a triumph and a landmark moment in the returning of dignity to the peoples of Asia following the colonial period. The movement was more than political; it was a renaissance, and an inspiration for oppressed nations around the world. Shortly before the stroke of midnight on August 14, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, made a famous speech entitled “A Tryst with Destiny”:
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
....The ambition of the greatest man of our generation [Mahatma Gandhi] has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. And so we have to labor and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world.
The British first arrived not as conquerors, but as merchants, drawn by India’s extraordinary wealth, which had been famous in the West since Greek times. They arrived to find India dominated by the vast Mughal empire, which had been established in the 16th century by the conqueror Bābur and now ruled most of the subcontinent. In 1613, the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr granted the British permission to establish a trading post in Surat, Gujarat, which would become the first British foothold in India.
Over the following century, the British East India Company established additional trading posts and also gradually increased its economic and political influence throughout the subcontinent. After the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal empire entered a rapid phase of decline, providing an opening for various regional powers, including the Marathas, the Sikhs, and the northern Rajput chiefs to assert their sovereignty. By the middle of the 18th century, there was no longer a single dominant power in the subcontinent, leaving the region vulnerable to colonial ambitions.
The Battle of Plassey
Plassey monumentMonument commemorating the Battle of Plassey (1757), Palashi, West Bengal, northeastern India.
The Battle of Plassey in 1757, part of the larger Seven Years’ War between Britain and France, was a turning point in the British conquest of India. The East India Company had increasingly solidified its position and was now regarded by native rulers as a serious threat. The nawab (ruler) of Bengal, Sirāj al-Dawlah, favoring an alliance with the French, had previously attacked company trading posts. With the help of some of the nawab’s own generals, the British were able to defeat and depose the nawab at the Battle of Plassey and appointed their own administration in Bengal. This crucial victory marked the transformation of the British East India Company from a mere mercantile presence into a military and political power in India. The company would go on to consolidate its power over the Indian subcontinent through a series of military campaigns. It established its dominance in Bengal and Bihar with the Battle of Buxar (1764), in southern India with Tipu Sultan’s defeat in the fourth Mysore War (1799), and in the Punjab following the second Sikh war (1848-49).
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The term sepoy refers to an Indian soldier employed by a European power. It entered English via the Portuguese sipai, derived from the Hindustani sipāhī, itself from the Persian sipahi, meaning “cavalryman.”
By the 1850s, the company had consolidated its rule over much of India. This led to widespread discontent throughout Indian society. On May 10, 1857, an open rebellion erupted in Meerut. Sepoys (Indian soldiers) in the company’s service shot their British officers and marched to Delhi, rallying local troops to their cause. By the evening of May 11, they had declared the aged Bahādur Shāh II the emperor of India, symbolically restoring the Mughals to power and rejecting British rule.
Lakshmi BaiThe rani (“queen”) of Jhansi, Lakshmi Bai, was one of the leading figures of the Indian revolt of 1857.
The Rebellion of 1857, often called as the Sepoy Mutiny in traditional British historiography, spread rapidly across northern and central India. It produced fierce battles at Delhi, Kanpur, and Lucknow, and it eventually involved leaders such as Nana Sahib, Tantia Tope, and Lakshmi Bai, the rani (“queen”) of Jhansi. Lakshmi Bai in particular became a legendary symbol of resistance against British rule; after the British attempted to annex Jhansi using the pretext of the doctrine of lapse, Lakshmi Bai took command of the rebels in the Bundelkhand region and fought valiantly before being killed in battle on June 17, 1858.
Bahādur Shāh IIThe last Mughal emperor of India, Bahādur Shāh II was named emperor of Hindustan during the Indian Revolt of 1857 and exiled to Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar [Burma]) after the revolt was suppressed.
By the end of 1858, the revolt was largely suppressed. The British captured Bahādur Shāh II and exiled him to Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar [Burma]), where he died in 1862, marking the end of the Mughal dynasty. In response to the revolt, the British government recognized the administrative failures of the East India Company, and the British crown assumed direct rule of India, initiating the period known as the British raj.
The failure of the revolt had a profound psychological impact on the people of India. The sepoys, the native princes, the queen of Jhansi, and the heir of Mughal grandeur had made their stand against the British—and they had failed. From this time all serious hope of a revival of the past or an exclusion of the West diminished. The traditional structure of Indian society began to break down and was eventually superseded by a Westernized class system, from which emerged a strong middle class with a heightened sense of Indian nationalism.
Formation of the Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress, 1885The first meeting of the Indian National Congress in Bombay (now Mumbai), on December 28, 1885.
Yet the struggle continued. On December 28, 1885, the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) was formed, marking the inception of the first major nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire outside Britain. Led largely by Allan Octavian Hume, a retired British civil servant sympathetic to the cause of Indian freedom, the Congress Party was initially established as a platform for educated Indians to discuss political issues and advocate for a greater role in governance. The first meeting was held in Bombay (now Mumbai), drawing 72 delegates from across the Indian subcontinent. These initial delegates were largely Western-educated and from elite backgrounds and focused on moderate reforms rather than outright independence.
Bal Gangadhar TilakArdent nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak helped lay the foundation for India's independence movement in the early 20th century.
By the early 20th century, the Indian National Congress began to shift from moderate to more “extremist” stances, under the influence of leaders such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Annie Besant. The concept of swadeshi (“of our own country”), or prioritizing indigenous goods over British imports, gained prominence, symbolizing a growing spirit of economic self-sufficiency and resistance against imperial exploitation. By 1907 a clear delineation existed between the moderates, led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and the extremists.
Formation of the All-India Muslim League
All-India Muslim League, 1906.The first meeting of the All-India Muslim League in Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh), on December 30, 1906.
The All-India Muslim League, the first political party for Muslims in India, was founded in Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh) on December 30, 1906. This development was driven by the increasing dissatisfaction among Indian Muslims with the Indian National Congress, which many perceived as primarily representing Hindu interests. The party was heavily influenced by the visionary Indian Muslim leader Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who had died in 1898, and was founded by leaders including Mian Muhammad Shafi, Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk, Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Syed Ameer Ali, Mualana Mohammad Ali Jouhar, and Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah (the league’s first president, also known as Aga Khan III). Sir Muhammad Iqbal would emerge as a key voice within a few years of the party’s founding.
The league aimed to safeguard the rights of Indian Muslims and initially espoused loyalty to the British raj as a means to achieve greater civil rights and counterbalance the dominance of the Congress Party. The Muslim League would eventually lay the groundwork for modern Pakistan. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who joined the league in 1913, would later transform the political party into a mass movement for Muslim autonomy.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, later known as Mahatma (“Great Soul”) Gandhi, was born in 1869 in Porbandar, India, and initially trained as a lawyer in England before relocating to South Africa. There, he advocated for civil rights and developed his foundational philosophy of nonviolent resistance. After spending over two decades in South Africa, Gandhi returned to India in 1915 amid the backdrop of World War I and joined the Indian National Congress. Initially, he remained at the periphery of the movement, supporting the British war effort and refraining from political agitation. However, his perspective shifted dramatically following the enactment of the Rowlatt Acts in 1919.
The Rowlatt Acts are passed
In February 1919 the British government passed the Rowlatt Acts (the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act and the Emergency Powers Bill), which empowered authorities to imprison suspected independence activists without trial and allowed for certain political cases to be tried without juries. The object of these acts was to replace the repressive provisions of the wartime Defence of India Act with a permanent law. Indians felt profoundly betrayed after their support of Britain throughout World War I, and resentment spread throughout the country. Gandhi, provoked by the act, announced his initial satyagraha (“clinging to truth”) struggle, advocating nonviolent civil disobedience, which would lead to a political earthquake throughout the spring of 1919.
The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
Amritsar massacre monumentMonument to the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab, northwestern India.
On April 13, 1919, British troops under the command of Gen. Reginald Dyer fired on a crowd of unarmed civilians in Amritsar. Following Gandhi’s calls for resistance and a one-day general strike earlier that month, protests had broken out across the country, particularly in Punjab. In Amritsar, following the arrests of prominent Indian leaders, protests had turned violent on April 10. A force of several dozen troops commanded by General Dyer was tasked with restoring order, and among the measures taken was a ban on public gatherings.
On the afternoon of April 13, a crowd of at least 10,000 men, women, and children gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh, a public garden near the Golden Temple that was nearly completely enclosed by walls and had only one exit. It is not clear how many people there were protesters who were defying the ban on public meetings and how many had come to the city from the surrounding region to celebrate Baisakhi, a spring festival. Dyer and his soldiers arrived and sealed off the exit. Without warning, the troops opened fire on the crowd, reportedly shooting hundreds of rounds until they ran out of ammunition. It is not certain how many died in the bloodbath, but, according to one official British report, an estimated 379 people were killed, and about 1,200 more were wounded. After they ceased firing, the troops immediately withdrew, leaving behind the dead and wounded.
The shooting was followed by the proclamation of martial law in Punjab that included public floggings and other humiliations. Indian outrage grew as news of the shooting and subsequent British actions spread throughout the subcontinent. The Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore renounced the knighthood that he had received in 1915. Gandhi was initially hesitant to act, but he soon began organizing the noncooperation movement (1920–22), his first large-scale and sustained nonviolent protest campaign.
The noncooperation movement and aftermath
Headline about the noncooperation movement in The Bombay ChronicleThe noncooperation movement marked the transition of Indian nationalism from a middle-class movement to a nationwide struggle and was the first time the British government faced a united Indian front.
Launched in 1920 Gandhi’s noncooperation movement, backed by the Congress Party, was a mass protest against British authority advocating nonparticipation in colonial institutions. Indians were encouraged to resign from their titles; boycott government educational institutions, courts, government services, foreign goods, and elections; and, eventually, refuse to pay taxes. The noncooperation movement rapidly gained momentum amid growing national anger toward the British raj, particularly in the wake of the Rowlatt Acts and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The heavy-handedness of the British government and its failure to adequately address the actions of General Dyer only intensified the Indian resolve for self-governance.
By 1921 the British government, confronted with a united Indian front for the first time, was visibly shaken. The noncooperation movement had definitively shown the potential of united, nonviolent civil disobedience against the colonial regime; additionally, it marked the transition of Indian nationalism from a middle-class movement to a nationwide struggle. Gandhi, at this point, emerged as the de facto leader of both the Indian National Congress and the independence movement itself. The noncooperation movement also drew support from the Khilafat movement, which was mobilizing Muslim protest against the dissolution of the Ottoman empire after World War I. Gandhi’s solidarity with the Khilafat movement helped strengthen Hindu-Muslim unity during this phase of the independence struggle.
However, Gandhi called an end to the noncooperation movement in 1922 after an angry mob in Chauri Chaura killed 22 police officers. Gandhi feared that the movement was becoming violent, contrary to its principles. Gandhi was arrested for sedition that year and sentenced to six years in prison. Jawaharlal Nehru, a young leader within the Congress Party who would later become India’s first prime minister, had been arrested the previous year for anti-government activity and released a few months later.
Gandhi was released in 1924 after serving only two years of his sentence. By the time of his release, the political landscape had changed significantly. The Indian National Congress had split into two factions: one led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru (the father of Jawaharlal Nehru), favoring participation in the British-dominated legislative councils as a means to gain political influence, and the other led by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Vallabhbhai Patel, opposing this approach and advocating for a more assertive stance against British authority. Additionally, the unity between Hindus and Muslims had deteriorated. In 1924 Gandhi was named president of the Congress Party, a position he held for a year.
Declaration of Purna Swaraj
On January 26, 1930, the Indian National Congress publicly declared its Purna Swaraj (“Complete Self-Rule”) resolution, decisively rejecting the idea of dominion status within the British Empire and establishing full sovereignty as the goal of the independence movement. Initially, some leaders within the movement had aimed for dominion status, which would have given India a position similar to that of Canada and Australia within the British Empire. However, as the movement progressed, this idea was increasingly viewed as inadequate by Congress Party leaders.
The resolution was initially passed by the Congress Party on December 19, 1929, during the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru, who at the time was the youngest person to hold that position in the party. The resolution was publicly declared the following month, with the Congress Party urging Indians to celebrate January 26 as Independence Day. Although August 15 was later chosen as India’s official Independence Day after achieving independence in 1947, the date January 26 remained significant. The constitution of India was drafted to take effect on January 26, 1950, to honor the 1930 declaration, marking India’s transition to a republic. Today, January 26 is celebrated annually as Republic Day in India.
In March 1930 Gandhi launched the Salt March (popularly known as the Dandi March), a satyagraha campaign against the British monopoly on salt. Salt production and distribution in India had long been a lucrative monopoly of the British. Through a series of laws, the Indian populace was prohibited from producing or selling salt independently, and instead Indians were required to buy expensive, heavily taxed salt that often was imported. This affected the great majority of Indians, who were poor and could not afford to buy it. Indian protests against the salt tax began in the 19th century and remained a major contentious issue throughout the period of British rule.
Gandhi decided to mount a highly visible demonstration against the increasingly repressive salt tax by marching through what is now the western Indian state of Gujarat from his ashram (religious retreat) at Sabarmati (near Ahmadabad) to the town of Dandi (near Surat) on the Arabian Sea coast. He set out on foot on March 12, accompanied by several dozen followers. After each day’s march the group stopped in a village along the route, where increasingly larger crowds would gather to hear Gandhi speak about the unfairness of the tax on poor people. Hundreds more would join the core group of followers as they made their way to the sea, until on April 5 the entourage reached Dandi after a journey of some 240 miles (385 km). On the morning of April 6, Gandhi and his followers picked up handfuls of salt along the shore, thus technically “producing” salt and breaking the law.
Sarojini Naidu was a distinguished figure in Indian politics and literature, sometimes known as the “Nightingale of India.” She played a leading role in the Salt March and later became president (1925–26) of the Indian National Congress, becoming the first Indian woman to do so. Her political career culminated in her appointment (1947–49) as the governor of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). She also led an active literary life as a poet and attracted notable Indian intellectuals to her famous salon in Bombay (now Mumbai).
Sarojini NaiduImage of Sarojini Naidu, from the frontispiece of her workThe Bird of Time (1912).
In May Gandhi was arrested after informing Lord Irwin, the viceroy of India, of his intention to march on the Dharasana saltworks. Gandhi’s arrest further fueled the movement, prompting tens of thousands more people to join the satyagraha. On May 21 Sarojini Naidu, a well-known political activist and poet, led a march to the saltworks, where many of the 2,500 peaceful marchers were brutally attacked and beaten by police. By the end of 1930 approximately 60,000 people were imprisoned as part of the civil disobedience campaign. In January 1931 Gandhi was released from custody and began negotiations with Irwin, leading to the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, signed on March 5, 1931. This truce ended the satyagraha campaign and allowed Gandhi, accompanied by Naidu, to represent the Indian National Congress at the second section of the Round Table Conference in London later that year. This session, however failed to reach agreement, either on a constitutional framework or on communal representation.
The Poona Pact, Ambedkar, and the movement against “untouchability”
B.R. AmbedkarBhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was the leading advocate for Dalits, Hindu caste groups then labeled “untouchables,” throughout the Indian Independence Movement. He held degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics in the social sciences and law and would go on to become the principal architect of the Indian Constitution.
The Poona Pact, signed on September 24, 1932, was a significant agreement between Hindu leaders and Dalit representatives, granting new rights to Dalits, Hindu caste groups then labeled “untouchables.” This agreement arose from the British government’s Communal Award, which proposed separate electorates for Dalits to ensure their political representation. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the most prominent Dalit leader, supported the proposal, believing that it would allow Dalits to advance their interests. However, Mahatma Gandhi opposed separate electorates, fearing that it would divide the Hindu community and weaken India’s fight for independence. While imprisoned, Gandhi began a fast unto death on September 18, 1932, to protest the separate electorates. Faced with Gandhi’s deteriorating health, Ambedkar and Hindu leaders negotiated the Poona Pact, which increased Dalit representation within the Hindu electorate instead of creating separate electorates.
Ambedkar’s advocacy of Dalit rights was rooted in his personal experiences of discrimination and his extensive education. Born on April 14, 1891, into a Dalit Mahar family, Ambedkar faced severe social exclusion from an early age. Nonetheless, he excelled academically, to the extent that he came to the attention of Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the maharaja of Baroda (now Vadodara). The maharaja provided financial support for Ambedkar’s education at Bombay’s Elphinstone College and later at Columbia University in the United States and the London School of Economics in Britain. Ambedkar would use this education to champion the cause of Dalit rights upon his return to India. Ambedkar would also later become the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution for the future Republic of India.
Although the Poona Pact was a significant development in the movement against “untouchability,” Ambedkar felt coerced into the agreement by Gandhi’s threat of suicide by starvation. Nonetheless, Ambedkar’s work would continue. He would found several journals for Dalits and, through his later role in drafting the Indian constitution, secure special representation for them in legislative councils. His efforts laid the foundation for future advancements in social justice and the eventual outlawing of untouchability, although cultural caste prejudice continues to persist in India.
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