Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) was a statesman lawyer editor of newspapers and political thinker who waged a relentless lifelong struggle for the rights of dalits. He was born in an ‘untouchable’ mahar family in Mhow in presentday Madhya Pradesh. Having earned doctorates from both Columbia University and the London School of Economics he went on to serve as Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism along with half a million followers a few months before his death in 1956. At Navayana his writings and speeches have been annotated and published in Against the Madness of Manu Annihilation of Caste Riddles in Hinduism Beef Brahmins and Broken Men and A Stake in the Nation; books related to him include Ambedkar’s World Bhimayana In Pursuit of Ambedkar In The Tiger’s Shadow Ambedkar: The Attendant Details Ambedkar and Other Immortals No Laughing Matter Radical Equality and A Part Apart.
<p>In our twenty years we may have published a hundred titles. Maybe a few less or more. The exact number eludes us. Curiously the score does not matter. The game is always on: no winners no losers. With each book we are reborn. Like Babasaheb says ‘To realise that every living being will die sometime or other is a very easy matter to understand. But it is not quite so easy to understand how a human being can go on changing—becoming—while he is alive.’ And so with books that change and become something else when they are read. Navayana is not about being. It is a becoming.</p>
