Babasaheb, Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar
I pay tribute to Bharat Ratna Babasaheb Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, on his birth anniversary. Abraham Lincoln was elected as president of America in 1860. Hardly had he been in office for six weeks before eleven southern states seceded from the Union, collectively turning their back on the idea of a single American nation. Lincoln said that he could tolerate slavery as a means of controlling what nearly everyone saw to be an exotic and alien population but what he could not tolerate was dissolution of the Union and asked Congress for 5 lakh soldiers to crush the white rebellion. Large sections of the South were ravaged by violent battles; and the Union nearly collapsed under determined Confederate forces. Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery, but what he really wanted more was to bring whites and blacks together, for he knew that the status of blacks could not be raised until they lived together. Lincoln, however, never meant to invite raci...