Yashwant Rao Ambedkar

Yashwant Rao Ambedkar, known as Bhaiyasaheb, was the son of B. R. Ambedkar. Wikipedia gives his birth as 12 December 1912 in Bombay and his death as 17 September 1977; its page carries a warning that it lacks reliable references, so the dates and offices below should be read with care. It lists him as editor of the paper Janata from 1942 and later of Prabuddha Bharat, as the second president of the Buddhist Society of India after his father, as a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council from 1960 to 1966, and as Mumbai state president of the Republican Party of India in 1964.

The Sikh option, 1936

• 13 and 14 April 1936: B. R. Ambedkar addresses the Sikh Mission Conference at Amritsar and repeats his intention of leaving Hinduism.
• May 1936: Ambedkar sends his son Yashwant Rao and a nephew to the Harimandar Sahib complex at Amritsar. They stay for about a month and a half to observe the situation and to meet Sikh leaders (Sikh Research Institute). The sources opened here do not record what they reported to Ambedkar.
• 1936 to 1937: the plan is postponed. Tarlochan Singh writes in Asia Samachar that opposition from Hindu leaders, among them Gandhi, led to the postponement, and that when a Sikh deputation met Ambedkar on 23 May 1937 he said only a few Dalits would follow him. Khalsa College in Mumbai opened that year, with classes beginning on 20 June 1937.
• 14 October 1956: Ambedkar formally embraces Buddhism at Nagpur, with many thousands of Dalits (Pritchett).

What he is remembered for. In the Sikh record he is remembered for the 1936 visit, one of the documented steps in the talks between Ambedkar and the Sikh leadership over the Dalit question and the Panth, a conversation that continues in Dalit-Sikh politics today.