This biography describes how Dr. Ambedkar raised himself from the lower echelons of society to Indian politics.

Dhananjay Keer (1913-84) attained eminence as a biographer, in recognition of which in 1971 the government of India conferred on him the honour of Padma Bhushan. He was born on April 23,1913 at Ratnagiri on the western coast of India. During the early twenties of this of this century Ratnagiri was the hotbed of revolutionary thought and activities and this had profound influence on Mr. Keer. After schooling at the Industrial School he passed his Matriculation Examination in 1935. He thereafter moved to Bombay and from 1938 worked with the Education Committee of Bombay Municipal Corporation. But the great men of India who dominated the early decades of this century absorbed Mr. Keer’s attention and continuous reading and research led to his writing several important biographies.

He started writing in 1945 in Free Hindustan pen pictures of important Indian political leaders, but his major work- biography of Veer Savarkar- was published in 1950. Thereafter he, on his own, published the biographies of Dr. Ambedkar and Lokmanya Tilak, and on his resignation from the Municipal service he wrote the biographies of Mahatma Phooley, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj and Mahatma Gandhi. His biographies have been distinguished both because of the painstaking research that has gone into them and because he has approached the form of biography not as a series of uninteresting data but as a form of art. He was awarded a Honorary Doctorate by Shivaji University in 1980