Family and Personal Life

Dr. Ambedkar’s public life is well known: the scholar, the lawyer, the leader, the maker of the Constitution. His private life was quieter, and often sad. He lost four of his five children and his first wife while he was still in his forties. He was ill for much of his later life.

Through it all he kept two loves: his family and his books. This chapter brings together what reliable sources say about the man at home.

Ramabai: a marriage in a market

Bhimrao married Ramabai in Bombay (now Mumbai) when he was a teenager and she was about nine years old ¹. Child marriage was common at the time. Her name before marriage was Rami. She came from a poor family of Wanand village near Dapoli, where her father had worked as a porter ^{2 3}.

The wedding took place at night in the open shed of the Byculla fish market. The families slept in corners of the shed, used the stone platforms as benches, and left in the morning before the fish-sellers arrived ². He called her “Ramu”, and she called him “Saheb” ³. He also taught her to read and write a little ².

Hard years and lost children

While Bhimrao studied in New York and London, Ramabai stayed behind in Bombay. She lived in great poverty, looked after the family of his late elder brother, and did not send him news of illness at home so that his studies would not suffer ². Once, staying at a friend’s boarding school where the children had gone hungry, she gave her gold jewellery so that food could be bought. The children called her “Ramai”, meaning “Mother Rama”, a name still used today ³.

The couple had five children: Yashwant, Ramesh, Gangadhar, Indu and Rajratna. Only Yashwant, born in 1912, lived to grow up ⁴. Ramesh, Gangadhar and their daughter Indu all died as babies ².

The hardest loss was little Rajratna, who died in July 1926. Keer writes that his father would not let go of the body and for days could not enter the room where the boy had died ². A few weeks later he wrote to a friend:

“We have in all buried four precious children, three sons and a daughter, all sprightly, auspicious and handsome children.”

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, letter to Dattoba Powar, 16 August 1926 ^{2 5}

Ramabai’s illness and death

In her last years Ramabai was seriously ill. He took her to Dharwar for a change of air, but she did not recover ². She was deeply religious and longed to visit the temple at Pandharpur. As an “untouchable” woman she would have had to stand far from the shrine. He refused to let her be humiliated, and told her they would build “another Pandharpur” through a life of service ².

Ramabai died on 27 May 1935 ^{6 7}. About 10,000 people joined her funeral procession. Keer says her husband shut himself in his room and wept for a week ².

Five years later, he dedicated his book Thoughts on Pakistan to her:

“Inscribed to the memory of Ramu as a token of my appreciation of her goodness of heart, her nobility of mind and her purity of character and also for the cool fortitude and readiness to suffer along with me which she showed in those friendless days of want and worries which fell to our lot.”

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, dedication of Thoughts on Pakistan (1940) ^{8 9}

A house built for books

In 1931 he bought two plots of land in Dadar, Bombay, and began to build a family home ⁷. By 1934 it was called Rajgriha, after Rajagriha, the capital of the ancient Buddhist kings of Magadha ¹⁰. His letters from March 1934 already carry the address “Rajgriha, Dadar” ¹¹.

His biographer Keer describes it as a house built for books. Ambedkar studied books on architecture and had parts of the building pulled down and rebuilt until the library was arranged as he wanted ². The family lived on the ground floor ².

A life with books

Keer describes him coming home from court with armfuls of new books and reading through the night until his dog Peter came for its morning pat ². He bought thousands of books, including rare ones. Keer says Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya once offered him two lakh rupees for the library, and he refused, saying that losing it would be like losing his life ². He did not like lending books.

How many books did he own? Websites often say 50,000. We could not find that number in a reliable early source, so we do not repeat it as fact (see “Where sources disagree”). Part of his library is now kept at Siddharth College, Mumbai, which he founded ¹².

His health

He was not a healthy man in later life. Keer lists appendicitis, high blood pressure and, above all, diabetes ². In 1947 he wrote of sleepless nights and pain in his legs, and he was taking insulin ².

In 1954 he was confined to bed for two months. From June to October 1956 he was mostly bedridden at his Delhi home, with failing eyesight ^{13 2}. He died in his sleep on 6 December 1956 ^{2 13}.

A second marriage: Dr. Savita Ambedkar

Dr. Sharda Kabir was a medical doctor. She studied at Pune and earned her MBBS from Grant Medical College, Bombay, in 1937. She met Dr. Ambedkar while working with his physician, Dr. Malvankar ¹⁴.

After his first wife’s death he had decided not to marry again. In early 1948, very ill, he changed his mind. He wrote to a friend that he wanted an educated companion who was a doctor and could look after his health ². They married on 15 April 1948 at his home, 1 Hardinge Avenue, New Delhi, in a simple civil ceremony ². She took the name Savita, and followers called her “Mai” ¹⁵.

She cared for him until he died, and stood beside him, dressed in a white sari, when he became a Buddhist at Nagpur on 14 October 1956 ². In a preface he wrote for The Buddha and His Dhamma, he thanked her:

“The successful rekindling of this dying flame is due to the medical skill of my wife and Dr. Malvankar.”

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, unpublished preface to The Buddha and His Dhamma (1956) ^{16 2}

Her Marathi memoir, Dr. Ambedkaranchya Sahavasat, appeared in 1990. It is now in English as Babasaheb: My Life with Dr Ambedkar ¹⁷. She died in Mumbai on 29 May 2003, aged 94 ¹⁴.

Habits and interests

Keer’s book gives a lively picture of the man at home ²:

• Music and art. He loved music and, in his last years, took violin lessons. He also drew and painted, and enjoyed fine pictures and buildings.
• Dogs. He loved fine dogs. A 1934 family photo shows the dog Tobby ¹⁸, and Keer mentions another named Peter.
• Clothes and pens. He dressed in well-cut suits and liked big fountain pens.
• Cooking. Keer says he was a skilled cook.
• Sport. He played cricket as a young man.
• No smoking or drinking. He did not smoke and never drank alcohol. A police report of a 1954 speech records him saying he “had none of the bad habits but he was fond of reading” ¹⁹.

As a boy in Satara, he spent every coin he had on new plants for gardening ².

His family after him

His son Yashwant Ambedkar (1912–1977) lit his funeral pyre in Bombay ². Yashwant’s widow, Meera (Meeratai) Ambedkar, led the Buddhist Society of India, which Dr. Ambedkar registered in 1955 ²⁰. Their son Prakash Ambedkar is a politician in Maharashtra ^{20 10}.

Where sources disagree

• Year of marriage and ages. The Pritchett timeline and PARI give 1906 ^{1 3}. Keer places it after his 1907 matriculation and says he was about seventeen ². PARI says he was 14. All agree Ramabai was about nine.
• Ramabai’s father. Keer names him Bhiku Walangkar; Pritchett names him Bhiku Dhutre ^{2 1}.
• The order of the children. Keer says Ramesh was born while his father was in America and Gangadhar after he returned; Pritchett lists “Gangadhar and Ramesh” born between 1913 and 1920 ^{2 4}.
• Ramabai’s death date. Keer gives 27 May 1935. The 3rd-edition scan misprints the year as “1985” ². Some online articles give 26 May.
• When Thoughts on Pakistan came out. BAWS says first published December 1940 ²¹; a surviving printed copy is dated 1941 ⁹.
• Number of books. Keer gives no number, only thousands ². The popular figure of 50,000 is repeated online and on Wikipedia, but the article Wikipedia cites does not give it ¹².
• His second wife’s first name. The 1954 edition of Keer calls her “Lakshmi Kabir”; the later edition and news reports say “Sharda (Sharada) Kabir” ^{6 2}.

Read more

• Remembering Bhimrao and Ramabai Ambedkar (PARI) — Ramabai’s life and the village songs about her.
• Dhananjay Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission (Internet Archive) — the classic biography; its last chapters describe his habits.
• Unpublished preface to The Buddha and His Dhamma — his own words on his health and his wife’s care.
• Unpacking a Library (V. Geetha, The Wire) — what his surviving books tell us about his mind.
• Savita Ambedkar, Babasaheb: My Life with Dr Ambedkar (Penguin) — his second wife’s memoir in English.

Sources

1. Columbia University – Pritchett timeline franpritchett.com ↗ ↩
2. Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission, pp. 20–21 archive.org ↗ ↩
3. PARI ruralindiaonline.org ↗ ↩
4. Pritchett timeline, 1910s franpritchett.com ↗ ↩
5. Pritchett timeline, 1920s franpritchett.com ↗ ↩
6. Keer, 1954 edition archive.org ↗ ↩
7. Pritchett timeline, 1930s franpritchett.com ↗ ↩
8. BAWS Vol. 8, dedication page Read this page on the site · Official PDF ↗ ↩
9. 1941 Thacker printing, Internet Archive archive.org ↗ ↩
10. Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit, p. 137 archive.org ↗ ↩
11. BAWS Vol. 17 Part I, p. 202 Read this page on the site · Official PDF ↗ ↩
12. V. Geetha, The Wire thewire.in ↗ ↩
13. Pritchett timeline, 1950s franpritchett.com ↗ ↩
14. Times of India (PTI), 2003 timesofindia.indiatimes.com ↗ ↩
15. Pritchett timeline, 1940s franpritchett.com ↗ ↩
16. Columbia University – Pritchett franpritchett.com ↗ ↩
17. Penguin penguin.co.in ↗ ↩
18. Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org ↗ ↩
19. BAWS Vol. 17 Part III, p. 505 Read this page on the site · Official PDF ↗ ↩
20. Indian Express, 2013 indianexpress.com ↗ ↩
21. BAWS Vol. 8 Read this page on the site · Official PDF ↗ ↩