It is the tragedy that the books with this title should be written after 70 years when the constitution was enacted. Mispropaganda and theft of thoughts have been one of the attributes of the Brahminical machinations. Over the years lies are repeated to make them sound like facts. A cursory glance at the Constituent Assembly Debates will bring out the role played by Babasaheb Ambedkar. However, it needs an intellectual sleuth like Aakash to dig into the secret history. And to his credit, it is a job well.

To zoom into the entire domain of thoughts of Babasaheb Ambedkar through the portal of the preamble is a fascinating endeavour. Taking up six keywords in the preamble: Justice, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Dignity, and Nation; Rathore digs into the writings and speeches of Babasaheb Ambedkar. Bringing his training in philosophy in action, Rathore shows the biography of these keywords in the biography of Babasaheb Ambedkar.

I will leave it to the readers to cruise through the books and will gloss on the importance of such books for India today.

History can be used as a tool for decision making and understanding history can decide the fate of the country. For it, we might not have the penetrating and engaged mind that Babasaheb Ambedkar cultivated to dig into the history of India, but the history of India that we have available today and if history is the biographies of great men bears the indelible mark of Babasaheb Ambedkar and his life. Unlike the antiquated” deep” history, the history of the past 200 years is well documented and available for us to study. How much lies can be spread by the anti-national forces in our country today has no limits, but these lies can be countered and corrected through the intellectual reading of what is so easily available for the researchers and scholars to dwell upon. Rathore’s work is a concrete attempt in that direction: the scholarship brought at the service of mass movements and bigger project of nation-building.

There remains so much unexhumed in the large body of Ambedkariana and plunging into it is sure to yield pearls of pragmatic wisdom. Indians, and most particularly Ambedkarites, need to know how much is still hidden in the history of the past 200 years. Rathore’s work is therefore commendable from many points of views.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist