Gandhi@150: The Man Who Saw Mahatma바카라�s Fangs

바카라�Dr B.R. Ambedkar, 1955

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi바카라�s relation­ship with other epoch-makers of his time, whether allies like Jawaharlal Nehru, friends like Rabindranath Tagore or antagonistic rivals like Mohammed Ali Jinnah, was never straightforward, uncomplicated or free of turbulence. Among the most controversial relationships was that between Gandhi and Dr B.R. Ambedkar (picture left). Scrutinising the ­relationship between Gandhi and Ambedkar is of crucial importance to a proper understanding of both of these pioneering figures, in spite of their notorious rivalry. As Upendra Baxi has argued, 바카라�our understanding of leading historic figures like Gandhi or Nehru is bound to remain incomplete, both in the sense of biography and history, in the absence of the grasp of their relations with Ambedkar바카라�.

The rivalry between Gandhi and Ambedkar lives on through polemics in street-corner debates, ­newspaper columns, blogs, books, documentary films and so on, often with aggressive insults parlayed between the pro-Ambedkar, anti-Gandhi group and the pro-Gandhi, anti-Ambedkar group.

And indeed, the numerous differences between Gandhi and Ambedkar during their own lifetimes are always evoked in support of the ­currently-sustained enmity between their followers.

Ramachandra Guha has well capsulated many of these ­salient differences bet­ween Gandhi and Ambedkar. 바카라�Gandhi wished to save Hinduism by abolishing ­untouchability, whereas Ambedkar saw a solution for his people outside the fold of the dominant religion of the Indian people,바카라� Guha writes. 바카라�Gandhi was a rural romantic, who wished to make the self-governing village the bedrock of free India; Ambedkar an admirer of city life and modern technology who dismissed the Indian ­village as a den of iniquity. Gandhi was a crypto-­anarchist who favoured non-violent protest while being suspicious of the State; Ambedkar a steadfast ­constitutionalist, who worked within the State and sought solutions to social problems with the aid of the State.바카라�

But what Guha has captured here would seem to be the bases for a perfectly amicable dispute. The Gandhi-Ambedkar dispute was far from cordial. It was, at times, an existential battle, a life-or-death struggle.

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The 1932 Poona Pact ­remained a thorn in the side of Ambedkar until the end of his life, and the details of its unfolding continue to irk Dalits and Ambedkari­tes right up to the present day, and for very good reason. Gandhi바카라�s hunger fast in ­defiance of communal voting rights that the British had awarded to the untouchables ­presented Ambedkar with an agonising ­dilemma. Ambedkar had to choose between letting Gandhi starve to death in order to permit the untouchable communities to ­retain essential voting privileges within ­democratic elections or, on the other hand, giving in to Gandhi바카라�s demand of undivided general elections for the ­untouchables, thereby ­undermining their political representation, but saving Gandhi바카라�s life.

Ambedkar gave in to Gandhi, the Poona Pact was signed, and Gandhi broke his fast. After this event, Ambedkar understandably became ­increasingly bitter towards Gandhi바카라�s movement and his biopolitical methods.

Many historians view this unfortunate event as the ­paradigmatic conflict ­between Gandhi and Ambedkar. Actually, the ­situation is far more ­complicated. In an interview conducted for BBC radio in 1955, Ambedkar, nearing the end of his life, spoke candidly about Gandhi, withholding none of the acrimony that had accumulated over the years since his coerced submission to Gandhi decades earlier.

In reply to the interviewer바카라�s question, 바카라�So you would say Gandhi was an orthodox Hindu?바카라� Ambedkar answered: 바카라�Yes, he was absolutely an ­orthodox Hindu. He was never a reformer. He has no dynamics in him, you see. All this talk about untouchability was just for the purpose of drawing the untouchables into the Congress. That was one thing, and secondly, he wanted that the untouchables would not oppose his ­movement of Swaraj. I don바카라�t think beyond that he had any motive of uplift.바카라�

In the same interview, Ambedkar characterised Gandhi as a cunning ­politician, rather than as a mahatma. He suggested that Gandhi바카라�s decisions and ­declarations relating to the untouchables were based on calculated politics rather than on an appreciation of the inherent injustices of the caste system and the urgent humanitarian need to address it. As far as Ambedkar saw it, Gandhi바카라�s deeper motivation was to pack the numbers of Hindus by including the ­numerous scheduled castes within this section, as against independent communities such as the Sikhs and the Muslims. For his part, Gandhi sought without success to continue to lure Ambedkar into his own fold.

In a letter to Ambedkar, dated August 6, 1944, Gandhi wrote: 바카라�I know to my cost that you and I hold different views on this very important ­question (untouchability). And I know, too, that on the broad politics of the country we see things from different angles. I would love to find a meeting ground between us on both the questions. I know your great ability and I would love to own you as a colleague and co-worker. But I must admit my failure to come nearer to you. If you can show me a way to a common ­meeting ground between us, I would like to see it. Meanwhile, I must reconcile myself to the present ­unfortunate difference.바카라�

As is apparent from Ambedkar바카라�s 1955 assessment, the 바카라�present unfortunate ­difference바카라� to which Gandhi had to reconcile himself was not itself reconciled in ­subsequent events. The ­politics of the era pitted Gandhi and Ambedkar as ­antagonists on too many ­issues, and on issues so ­crucial to their persons and personalities that the ­bridging of their divide ­remained impossible.

Ambedkar firmly believed that Gandhi remained ­attached to an idealised ­version of the varna system, a system against which Ambedkar was inalterably and profoundly opposed­. Indeed, this system바카라�s ­complete 바카라�annihilation바카라� was what Ambedkar sought. His ­systematic ­polemic writings against Gandhi, including Mr Gandhi and the Emancipation of the Untouchables and What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, are full of numerous citations of Gandhi on the question of varna, quoted with venomous disdain and contempt by the egalitarian Dalit.

Ambedkar sketches the ­progression of Gandhi바카라�s ideas on the subject from his early days in South Africa to the end of his life, attempting to show that Gandhi바카라�s subtle ­differentiation between caste and varna amounts to mere rhetoric. Moreover, in ­starkest possible contrast to Gandhi바카라�s romanticist ­nostalgia for a pre-modern organisation of human social and political economy, Ambedkar was an ­irrepressible pro-enlightenment modernist.

Gandhi and Ambedkar ­remained fixed in these ­fundamental beliefs. Thus, ­although Gandhi and Ambedkar both understood themselves to be champions of the emancipation of the untouchables, their conceptions of from what and into what the untouchables were being emancipated were ­radically and fundamentally at variance. Despite this, many scholars believe that Gandhi바카라�s ideas came closer to Ambedkar ­towards the last decade of his life.

Harold G. Coward argues forcefully that because 바카라�of continually having to contend with Ambedkar바카라�s critique바카라�, Gandhi바카라�s ideas on the political activity of the untouchables and, indeed, his ideas on varna changed from the 1940s onwards. Coward makes it a point to mention Gandhi바카라�s support for appointing Ambedkar to chair the ­constituent assembly바카라�s ­constitution drafting ­committee, even in the face of opposition. That바카라�s besides sundry remarks of Gandhi such as appointing a 바카라�chaste and brave Bhangi girl바카라� as president of the new India.

These and similar ­arguments about Gandhi바카라�s changing position on the caste question towards the end of his life raise perhaps a reasonable doubt about the issue of varnashrama ­constituting one of the ­principal bedrocks for the ­irreconcilability of Gandhi and Ambedkar. But one ­cannot fail to mention that Ambedkar himself was ­unconvinced of this argument, and perhaps he deserves the last word over whether his understanding of Gandhi바카라�s later position was more ­reconcilable with his own.

In fairness, it should be noted that a larger share of Gandhians have, indeed, come over to Ambedkar바카라�s ­position on the need to ­annihilate caste in order to establish egalitarian justice, and at least in this respect, the contemporary Gandhian and Ambedkarite camps have far less justification for ­mutual antagonism.

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Gandhi and Ambedkar may be forever irreconcilable, ­irrespective of so many recent attempts to reconcile them. Ambedkar himself remained unconvinced of any change in Gandhi바카라�s position, despite the evidence that certain scholars have proffered to show that Gandhi moved closer to his position in the last years of his life. An awareness of the harmonising traits in Gandhi and Ambedkar is especially valuable for uniting ­progressive forces in ­contemporary society rather than permitting them to ­expend energy on ­polemics against one another. They should rather collaborate strategically in pursuit of overlapping objectives.

Keep in mind, however, that this is the era of the ­appropriation of Ambedkar. That is why it is important that the value of this ­strategic collaboration should not ­prevent us from ­staying ­attuned to the ­differences ­between what Gandhi and Ambedkar ­represented in their own ­lifetimes. In fact, the ­laudable goal of ­emancipation may itself ­require an attentiveness to differences, especially when there is a constant risk of ­appropriation.

Aakash Singh Rathore Author of A Philosophy of Autobiography: Body & Text and Indian Political Theory: Laying the Groundwork for Svaraj