Dakshayani Velayudhan
Topic: Framing the Indian Constitution · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Framing the Constitution"
Meaning
Dakshayani Velayudhan was a member of the Constituent Assembly from Madras. She was the only Dalit woman in it. In the debate on the Depressed Castes, she refused to call seventy million Harijans a "minority". She said that special safeguards alone would not help. What was needed was a "moral safeguard", meaning a real change in how society treated them, and the immediate removal of social disabilities (the bans and humiliations that caste placed on them). Her view matters because it moved the debate from counting numbers to the moral values of caste society.
Example
In the Constituent Assembly debates (1946-49), she argued that untouchability came from the norms of caste society. She said it should be ended at once, not just managed with special arrangements.
Don't confuse with
- Separate electorates: in a separate electorate, only voters of one community elect that community's representative. Velayudhan did not ask for this. She wanted social disabilities ended.
Related concepts
- N.G. Ranga
- Jaipal Singh
- Adivasi
- J. Nagappa
- K.J. Khanderkar
- Jagjivan Ram
- Hansa Mehta
- Abolition of untouchability
- Reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes