How did Ambedkar protect minorities in the Constitution?
He built the protection into the enforceable core of the document rather than leaving it to the goodwill of majorities, because his whole political education had taught him that goodwill is exactly what a minority cannot rely on. The method was to make certain rights belong to every person as of right, and to give each person a direct route to a court when the right was denied.
The safeguards
- Equality before the law and a ban on discrimination by religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, applying to everyone.
- Freedom of conscience and the free profession, practice and propagation of religion, so that faith is a matter of right and not of the majority's permission.
- The right of religious and linguistic minorities to run their own educational institutions and preserve their culture.
- A direct right to move the highest court for the enforcement of these rights, which he called the very heart of the Constitution.
He was, at the same time, wary of turning minorities into permanent political blocs, and had lived the difficulty personally through the fight over separate electorates. His settled answer was to protect the individual and the community's culture and worship, while keeping the political nation single. A minority, on this design, is safe not because the majority is kind but because the law binds the majority whether it is kind or not.