Zoomed Vinay Special · First-person editorial

Ambedkar Said "I Was a Hack." Minutes Later the Home Minister Told Him: "You Had Drafted This Constitution." The Hack Line Is Only Half.

Eight claims about who wrote India's Constitution, tested one by one against the Constituent Assembly's debates, the Drafting Committee's own minutes, the Rajya Sabha's debates of 1953 and 1955 and Ambedkar's collected works, and told straight. A civil servant wrote the first draft, committees led by Nehru and Patel settled the fundamentals, and Ambedkar chaired the committee that rewrote it, present at every one of the 43 sittings whose minutes are printed. He called himself "a hack" in 1953 and, eighteen months later, called the same Constitution "a wonderful document": the story that he wrote it alone and the slogan that he took no part in writing it both fail against the record. Then the file tests him too: the Hindu text he named himself in 1955, the Hindu texts behind his other words, and his own claims about the Assembly and the Constitution against the record, much of it his own later words. Of ten, four hold, five are overstated and one is wrong.