The dalit in India - caste and social class

Social Research, Spring, 2003 by Sagarika Ghose

Ambedkar's dalit movement would not align itself to the nationalist cause that occupied political centerstage all his life. It would instead campaign openly against caste and Hinduism. At this juncture of India's independence movement, the motifs of Hinduism were providing the images of nationalism. Hindu goddesses and festivals were being used to instill self-esteem and brotherhood. Ambedkar's open denunciations of Hinduism and the Indian National Congress--seen as the great hope of all who were pitted against imperialism--became the basis of much of the future criticism of Ambedkar as an imperialist agent trying to divide the nationalist struggle (Shourie, 1997: 483). In "Annihilation of Caste" (Moon, 1979, vol. 1: 37), Ambedkar provided a searing critique of the "enlightened high caste social reformers who did not have the courage to agitate against caste." The subsequent debate with Gandhi began Ambedkar's long distrust of the Congress Party and his belief that membership in the Congress would further enslave the dalits.

The attack on caste and the championing of the industrial strike--Gandhi had declared that the industrial strike would never be part of the armory of the Indian freedom struggle--made Ambedkar anathema to Gandhians. Even liberals accused him of trying to take Indian society onto a suicidal self-destructive course (Kumar, 1987: 97). Before independence, Ambedkar's insistence on separate electorates for Untouchables had been totally unacceptable to Gandhi. Ambedkar's demand was interpreted as dalit antipatriotism. Gandhi said at the time that "The claims advanced by the Untouchables, that to me is the unkindest cut of all. I claim in my own person to represent the vast mass of the Untouchables" (Moon, 1979, vol. 1: 506).

For Gandhi, Hinduism and the caste system were not negotiable. But Ambedkar rejected both Hinduism and the caste system as well as the claims of any upper caste to represent the dalits. For Gandhi, Untouchability was an evil within Hinduism, to be reformed by Hindus. For Ambedkar, upper-caste leadership of dalits was abhorrent. While Gandhi asserted that he was proud to be a Hindu and that castes were an integral part of Hinduism, Ambedkar categorically stated that he would reject Hinduism unless caste was purged from it completely (Keer, 1990: 231). This has formed the basis of much contemporary antagonism between dalits and the upper castes. For the dvija, the dalit hostility to Gandhi--the patron saint of the independent nation-state of India--was almost an act of treason. For dalits, patriotism for India itself came to be seen as an upper-caste activity.

Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that Gandhi's own harijan campaign was highly successful and for those dalits who were not with Ambedkar, Gandhi remained an attractive leader--so much so that for the first four decades after independence, significant sections of dalits remained loyal to the Congress largely because of the hope embodied for them in the person of the Mahatma.