Babasaheb’s warning: In politics, hero-worship is a path to degradation and eventual dictatorship

Ambedkar emphasised that this caution is far more necessary in the case of India. For in India, bhakti, or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in politics, unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country.

Ambedkar’s prescription for the successful working of the Constitution

There is nothing wrong in admiring our leaders as heroes, but the risk is that in the process, the tendency is to entrust such persons with vast powers and uncritically accept the exercise of these powers, without insisting on accountability.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, affectionately known as Babasaheb Ambedkar, was the main architect of our Constitution. The task of framing free India’s Constitution was formidable. The first meeting of the Constituent Assembly for this purpose was held on December 6, 1946. Ambedkar was elected on August 29, 1947 as the chairman of the drafting committee. He was insistent that the guarantees of fundamental rights be expressly incorporated in the Constitution and that remedies for their enforcement be easily accessible and expeditious. With that in view, draft Article 25, corresponding to the current Article 32 was incorporated. According to Ambedkar, “If I was asked to name any particular article in this Constitution as the most important — an article without which this Constitution would be a nullity — I could not refer to any other article except this one. It is the very soul of the Constitution and the very heart of it”.