Ambedkar saw constitutions as living documents requiring generational renewal

Evidence

Ambedkar was seriously disappointed with the final draft of the Constitution. Still, he did succeed in putting in place certain rights and safeguards that would, as far as the subordinated castes were concerned, make it a document that was more enlightened than the society it was drafted for. (For others, however, like India’s Adivasis, the Constitution turned out to be just an extension of colonial practice. We’ll come to that later.) Ambedkar thought of the Constitution as a work in progress. Like Thomas Jefferson, he believed that unless every generation had the right to create a new constitution for itself, the earth would belong to “the dead and not the living”. The trouble is that the living are not necessarily more progressive or enlightened than the dead. There are a number of forces today, political as well as commercial, that are lobbying to rewrite the Constitution in utterly regressive ways. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 110

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did the Constitution’s safeguards for Dalits fare relative to colonial-era treatment of Adivasis, which the author implies it merely extended?
• XREF: connects to: Ambedkar saw the Constitution as a work in progress each generation should remake — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 110; Constitutional states depend on founding solidarity that later generations must renew through participation — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 85; Democratic legitimacy requires tacit constitutional consensus renewed each generation — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 66
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Ambedkar saw the Constitution as a work in progress each generation should remake — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 110; Constitutional states depend on founding solidarity that later generations must renew through participation — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 85; Democratic legitimacy requires tacit constitutional consensus renewed each generation — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 66

Broader Connections

• Ambedkar saw the Constitution as a work in progress each generation should remake #corroborates (0.98) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 110