- On 29 August, 1947, the constituent assembly set up a drafting committee under the Chairmanship of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar to prepare a draft constitution for India. While deliberating upon the draft constitution, the assembly moved, discussed and disposed of as many as 2,473 amendments out of a total of 7,635 tabled.
- The assembly met in sessions open to the public, for 166 days, spread over a period of 2 years, 11 months and 18 days before adopting the Constitution, the 308 members of the Assembly signed two copies of the document (one each in Hindi and English) on 24 January 1950.
- Dr. Ambedkar was one of the very few Indian statesmen-politicians who actively participated in the discussions on Constitutional matters from the Monsford Reforms (1919) to the Cabinet Mission (1946) proposals.
- 26th January is the real independence day of Dalits because on this day Manusmriti/Vedic laws came to end.
- Dalit-Bahujans got human rights on this day. It is the real Independence Day for Dalits, otherwise on 15th August there was just a power transfer from British to so called upper caste people of India.
- Indian constitution is the longest written constitution of any sovereign country in the world, containing 448 articles in 25 parts, 12 schedules, 5 appendices and 98 amendments.
- At the time of commencement, the constitution had 395 articles in 22 parts and 8 schedules.
- As of December 2014, 98 amendments have been made to the Constitution of India since it was first enacted in 1950.
- It consists of almost 80,000 words and took 2 years 11 months and 18 days to build. Main work was done by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar only.
- Dr. B R Ambedkar is regarded as the architect of the Indian Constitution. Dr. B R. Ambedkar was an untouchable, who was denied access to education but he struggled and educated himself and became the first law minister of India.
- The Constitution came into a legal circulation at 10:18am IST on the 26th of January, 1950.
- There are just two original copies of the Constitution in the country written in Hindi and English.
- Indian constitution was all hand-written and it was on the 26th of January that marked the celebration of Independence in its true sense.
- The Indian emblem is adapted from the Ashoka Pillar at Sarnath, dating back to 250 BC.
- The original book of our Constitution is a 479 page calligraphic edition signed by all our framers and
- The original book of our Constitution is preserved in a helium filled case in the Library of Parliament.
- Parliamentary system was borrowed from Buddhism.
- Dr. Ambedkar said on constitution that ‘I feel that the constitution is workable, it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the country together both in peacetime and in wartime. Indeed, if I may say so, if things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile.’
- Granville Austin described the Indian Constitution drafted by Dr. Ambedkar as ‘first and foremost a social document’. … ‘The majority of India’s constitutional provisions are either directly arrived at furthering the aim of social revolution or attempt to foster this revolution by establishing conditions necessary for its achievement.
- In India, Republic Day means the day honours the date on which the Constitution of India came into force on 26 January 1950 replacing the Government of India Act (1935), Dr B R Ambedkar was the Drafting committee chairmen of constitution of India. Therefore, this day is remember the contributions of Dr B. R. Ambedkar.
- The date 26 January, as everyone knows, was when the Constitution of India came into force. This date was, later on, chosen to honour the memory of the “Declaration of Independence of 1930” from the British Rule.
- Dr Ambedkar – On 26th January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics, we will have equality and in social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of democracy which this Constituent Assembly has so laboriously built up.
- Dr Ambedkar was criticized for giving more powers to centre government. In the draft Constitution Dr. Ambedkar offered more powers to the Centre and made it strong. Some members of the constituent assembly criticised him on the ground that since Dr. Ambedkar postulated – the rights and values of each individual and the development of each province and each–village, it was contradictory of his part to make the Centre strong.
- Justifying the provisions for a strong Central authority Dr. Ambedkar said that he made the centre strong not only to ‘save minorities from the misrule of majority’ but also “for it is only the centre which can work for a common end and for the general interests of the country as a whole.”
- On the night of January 25, 1999 – on the eve of Republic Day – around 100 armed Ranvir Sena activists raided a Dalit hamlet at Shankar Bigha village in central Bihar’s Jehanabad district and gunned down at least 23 villagers in cold blood while they were asleep in their mud-built houses and huts. The marauders had also set afire their houses before fleeing the scene. Of the dead, five were women and seven children — the youngest being six months old.
- These are the opening words of the preamble to the Indian Constitution
