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Gandhi, Ambedkar and the Scheduled Castes
Radha Rajan
26 June 2009
[Recently, the mercurial Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati dubbed Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi a ânatakbaazâ (pretender). This prompted Mr. Tahir Mahmood, Member, Law Commission, to propose making of derogatory remarks against Gandhi a punishable offence. This prompt reaction from an educated Muslim reflects the status of Gandhi with politically savvy Muslims and the serious reservations of Hindus about his role in the national movement and Partition, and towards Hindu society, particularly the scheduled castes and Bhim Rao Ambedkar. Hind Swaraj (1909) reveals Gandhi professing love for the cow but agreeing to continued cow slaughter if Muslims did not agree to a ban on its killing! His true attitude towards social uplift of untouchables and other oppressed sections of society are of a piece with this approach. We publish below an excerpt from a startling new book, released today, on Gandhi â Editor]
7.11 Gandhi, Ambedkar and the Scheduled Castes
The nineteenth and twentieth century was a period of great turbulence and upheaval for the Hindus of the nation. Not only were they confronting the external adversaries, ascendant Islam and the Christian-colonial British government but internally too, Hindu society was being churned by the incipient movement to end untouchability. One of the most positive fallout of the political movement to end colonial rule was the increasing awareness of the intrinsic injustice and criminality of the practice of untouchability in Hindu society.
Untouchability and the consequent cultural deprivation and social infirmity that it had caused to its victims, was beginning to rise to the surface of the collective Hindu consciousness, not the least because the harijans, as Gandhi insisted on calling the scheduled castes, were taking to English education and were becoming increasingly articulate and assertive in public life. Babasaheb Ambedkar was both the embodiment and symbol of this cataclysmic phenomenon and his inspirational life bestowed upon him iconic status among the scheduled castes; Ambedkar, in the last phase of the freedom movement was as powerful and influential as Gandhi and Jinnah, with a vast following of his own, not confined to his own community.
Gandhi knew that his clout with the British government was proportional to the size of his following and his capacity to bend his followers to his will; and that his power and influence over the people of this nation in his role as the tallest leader of the Congress was proportional to his clout with the British government and his capacity to deliver on the political front. Gandhiâs towering ambition to be the sole leader of all sections of the Indian populace flowed from the astute understanding of this critically important political factor. Gandhi already had the INC under his thumb and he therefore sought to make the INC the only legitimate and all-representative political vehicle. The reasoning was simple and sound â control of the INC effectively meant control of all sections of people â Muslims, Hindus, scheduled castes and the people of the Indian states.
But Gandhi failed to get all sections of the people behind him because he sought exclusive leadership; he wanted people to follow him but on his terms and without their leaders, unless their leaders were willing to subordinate themselves to his leadership. Gandhi wanted the Hindus without their rituals and daily observances, without their religious leaders and their caste and community leaders, he wanted the Muslims without Jinnah and the Muslim League, the scheduled castes without Ambedkar and the people of the Indian states without their Hindu maharajas and princes.
Gandhi wanted to publicly de-link these segments from its leadership and so he dealt with the practice of untouchability in one way and with Ambedkar and others like him who had emerged as the new generation leaders - the educated, assertive and politically conscious scheduled castes - in a radically different way. It is too much of a coincidence that Gandhiâs attention turned to the sinful practice of untouchability with the meteoric rise of Ambedkar in Indian politics.
With deliberate political intent, in startling contrast to Ambedkar and the aspirations of the new, articulate sections of the scheduled castes who wanted to end the isolation of their community and discard every insulting epithet used to describe and define them, Gandhi who had arrogated to himself the right to give them the name âharijanâ now replaced it and began to call them âbhangiâ [1]. As if to legitimize the pejorative (now outlawed) appellation and seek acceptance for the name in popular discourse Gandhi began to call himself a âbhangi-by-choiceâ. He usually preferred to stay in what he termed were âbhangi coloniesâ, not in the heart of these colonies but on the outskirts and his official residence in Delhi where he stayed whenever he was dabbling in politics was called âBhangi Niwasâ.
Gandhi, it was clear, was making a point against Ambedkar. While Ambedkar was striving by personal example to raise his people above their infirmity, Gandhi was positioning himself politically as a contrast to Ambedkar by conferring high status to a word Ambedkar abhorred. Gandhi endowed this new name with the appellation âideal scavengersâ. It cannot be emphasized enough that Gandhi relied on his mahatmahood to sell the proposition that he was wiping off the stigma from the despised word by making every Hindu a âbhangiâ in the Utopia of his conception.
We know that all real constructive work in society, including the mentally stressful, challenging task to end untouchability, the real yagna, was undertaken not just by Gandhi but by his devoted followers who carried on the work for years at a stretch, sometimes their entire lives. Gandhi offered himself merely as the symbol of this work and his work itself, whether growing food for the hungry, scavenging, spinning the charkha to clothe the naked or ending untouchability, was more symbolic than substantive. But such was the power of his mahatmahood, that his devoted followers, Thakkar Bapa, Acharya Vinobha Bhave and countless nameless others made it their lifeâs mission to live in villages and work ceaselessly to bring different communities together to end untouchability.
Theirs was the first extraordinarily noble, organized movement to end this terrible practice in Hindu society; with little success it may be true, but a great beginning had been made. Some measure of success was achieved to improve the living conditions, particularly the hygiene of the scheduled caste habitations in their segregated localities, but bringing about a change in the attitude of the caste Hindus to end the practice of untouchability continued to remain a long and uphill task. The inspiring force behind the movement for making our villages the focus of attention of the educated among us was undoubtedly Gandhi; his unerring instinct to restore the inter-dependence of communities for the social and economic well-being of the villages was also making some headway; but it was becoming clear that uprooting untouchability merely through social transformation or a voluntary change of heart, while not impossible, was going to be an arduous mission perhaps stretching beyond one generation. One such gesture that Gandhi exhorted Congress workers and members of the Harijan Sevak Sangh to make was to ask each one of them to marry or get their sons or daughters to marry a harijan.
As regards inter-dining and inter-caste marriage, Gandhiji said that so far as he understood the mind of the Congress he knew there was no difference of opinion about inter-dining but he thought that so long as one could not think himself one of the Harijans the poison of untouchability could not be removed. If anybody was not prepared to marry a Harijan he found no occasion of giving his blessings to that marriage. The question of marrying a Harijan was not so difficult but the difficulty was only mental [2].
But can the members of the Harijan Sevak Sangh truthfully claim to have eradicated the last trace of untouchability from their own hearts? Are their professions altogether on a par with their practice? A member asked as to what his criterion was in that respect.
Are you married?
The Member: I happen to be.
G. Then have you an unmarried daughter? If you have, get for her a Harijan bridegroom, not to satisfy her lust but in a purely religious spirit and I shall send you a wire of congratulations at my expense.
You will now realize why the Harijan sevaks are unable to move the hearts of the savarna Hindus. The reason is that they have not that fire of faith in their hearts, that impatient hunger for service which is the first essential for an effective appeal. Let but a handful of savarna Hindus go forth in that true missionary spirit and they will leaven the entire Hindu mass [3].
Gandhiâs sons, Manilal and Devdas, married the daughters of two of Gandhiâs most illustrious colleagues; Manilal married Sushila Mashruwalla, daughter of Kishorelal Mashruwalla, while Devdas fell in love with and married Lakshmi, daughter of C. Rajagopalachari or Rajaji. Needless to say neither Rajaji nor Kishorelal Mashruwalla was a harijan. While Gandhiâs ideas for integrating all communities for a harmonious village life with common social and economic objectives worked in the villages, Gandhi had not accounted for the scheduled castes moving out of villages and into cities, even traveling abroad, acquiring English education and developing a mind of their own about what they wanted to achieve, and how they expected to be treated.
Gandhi failed to come to terms with the reality that English education, for better or for worse, had become the instrument of political power under colonial dispensation and being elected to provincial legislatures, the viceroyâs council, being ministers in the provincial government or the interim government was perceived then as the only means to power and privilege. The educated scheduled castes were no different; in fact their passionate desire for political power had much to do with their impatience and even lack of faith for achieving equality through the slow and painstaking process of change of attitude and also because they understood the new reality that politics was a great equalizer.
The new generation of scheduled castes wanted political power and position to break the social glass ceiling. And it was this yearning for social respectability that made for the vital difference between why the Muslims and the scheduled castes aspired for political power. For the former, it was vivisection of the Hindu bhumi to set up an Islamic state while for the latter it was an empowering instrument to end social ostracism.
Gandhi undertook a fast-unto-death against separate electorates for the scheduled castes on the pretext that the scheduled castes were Hindus and if they sought political power through separate electorates it would sever them permanently from the Hindu samaj. Gandhi therefore insisted on joint electorates with the concession of reserved constituencies for the scheduled castes. So far so good; but given that the Congress was the only powerful political alternative to the Muslim League, no Hindu was going to vote for the Muslim League. Hindus generally voted for the Congress even though the Congress under Gandhiâs leadership, while depending on the vote of the Hindu majority, refused to represent Hindu interests [4]. Therefore if the scheduled castes had to win elections to provincial and central legislatures which would give them the opening to become ministers in government, they had to become a part of, or be supported by either the Muslim League or the Congress.
Gandhi did not like the idea of the scheduled castes demanding representation in politics on merit as their right and as a matter of sense of right. Gandhi wanted to be the source from which all things flowed and he wanted all things to flow âwith my consentâ [5]. Gandhi wanted the scheduled castes to accept what Gandhi, and through Gandhi the INC bestowed upon them in what they considered was in the fitness of things. Gandhi even took exception to feeding, without his prior consent, harijans who had been gathered for a public flag-hoisting ceremony to celebrate Gandhiâs birthday.
Gandhi stopped refreshments from being served to them on the ground that he did not want to make beggars and idlers of them! Hindu civilization has accorded sharing food and feeding the highest place in dharma. In fact, annadaanam or feeding the hungry is considered to be paramodharmah or the primary dharma of every Hindu. On every important occasion in a Hinduâs life beginning with the birth of a Hindu and until his death, his or her family undertakes feeding the community and sharing food with the hungry, an integral part of their duty towards society.
Yet his nearest comrades were about to make the mistake of serving refreshments, after the Jhanda-vandan by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, to volunteers and Harijans who were not in need of such. Was it not criminal to fritter away food-stuff that would serve to keep alive twenty men, to provide titbits to Harijans and volunteers who were certainly not suffering pangs of hunger? They were deceiving themselves if they thought that thereby they served the Harijans. The real hunger of the Harijans which needed to be satisfied was not for morsels of food but for decent living as self-respecting equal citizens, for a square deal as human beings, for freedom from fear, inculcation of clean and sanitary habits, thrift, industry, education.
That required perseverance, self-sacrifice and patient intelligent labour on our part. If they gave him money to feed Harijans he would refuse to accept it. For he did not want to make beggars and idlers of them. He pointedly referred to the fact that Dr. Rajendra Prasad was their Food Member who wanted to save for the famishing every morsel of food. In the circumstances he very much questioned whether the oversight of his comrades was not due to his being lax with himself. Was he not allowing himself to partake rather too freely of the fruits that were placed before him? The lesson of yesterday, he remarked, was a grave warning for all, if we are to learn truly the lesson of the charkha [6].
But Gandhi accepted with great equanimity the unprecedented gesture of having people celebrate not just his birthday but also celebrate his birthday for an entire week as Gandhi-jayanthi week; we have to infer that this too was done with his consent.
Though I have noticed it in the Gujarati columns of the Harijanbandhu from a different source, at the risk of repetition in another form, I must quote from a touching letter from Shri Parikshitlal Majumdar addressed to Shyamlalji, a copy of which has been sent by the latter.
âI am writing this from Bardoli. This year, during the Gandhi Jayanti week, nearly 40 public wells have been freely opened for the Harijans. People have taken to this programme of their own will. Local people have invited Harijans and taken them to the public wells. I myself have attended some functions and personally have become a witness to the marvelous change. No doubt, it is Gandhijiâs efforts and the recent writings that have brought this change. Numerous inter-communal dinners have been held. There was one such big dinner at Nadiad, the real capital of the Kaira District. One prominent well has been opened in Kadi, a citadel of orthodoxy and 150 people dined with Harijans at Padra in Baroda. There are numerous such incidents but I cannot enumerate them at presentâ.
Of course, compared to what we want to achieve, this progress is a miserable show. But seeing that Gujarat has been so far behind in this matter of removal of untouchability, the little progress of which Shri Parikshitlal takes note with pardonable satisfaction is pleasant, if it is permanent and is a precursor of better things to come. Every nail driven into the coffin of untouchability is a step in the right direction towards the purification of Hinduism [7].
While Gandhi reserved the right to handle politics for himself and for his favored ones in the INC, he apportioned social work or âconstructive programmeâ to lesser mortals called âCongress workersâ. Until the 1940s decade there were few who dared to question Gandhi on any issue but by the turn of the decade he was beginning to confront very sharp, pointed questions on several issues not only through the âquestion boxâ in Harijan but also during his prayer meetings.
Gandhi received one such pointed letter in flawless English from a member of the scheduled castes, from the Mehtar community, on the eve of elections to the Constituent Assembly. Gandhi ridiculed the harijanâs âimpertinenceâ in writing to him in âbookishâ English, which Gandhi says patronizingly, the Mehtar harijan probably only half understood, and savagely mocked the aspiration of his community to enter the privileged portals of the Constituent Assembly. Instead, Gandhi advised the harijan condescendingly to use his English education to become a better âbhangiâ and to come forward to help Gandhi clean up the âbhangiâ colony in Mumbai!
<b>The letter by the educated scheduled caste person to Gandhi and Gandhiâs response to him is reproduced below in its entirety only to throw light on this little known side to Gandhiâs character. It was this vicious and even megalomaniac streak in Gandhi which kept critically important sections of Hindu community away from the INC at a time when forging a common front alone could have tamed the Muslim League and staved off impending vivisection.
I am writing this letter with a hope of getting proper and immediate response from you. Along with the whole of India I am well aware of your sweet will and affinity towards the Mehtar Community. Your Harijan has obliged us to a great extent by enabling us to see through your heart. Especially the recent Harijan have emphatically revealed your thoughts about the Mehtar Community. I now wish to reveal my interrogatory heart in order to be well nigh to your feelings towards us and to be definite about our position in the muddled and complicated Indian political field.
By the time you will receive this letter it will be the last date of filling in nomination forms for the candidateships for the Constituent Assembly, which has, it is learnt, to be completed by the end of this month. Congress is proposing particular M. L. as and non-M. L. as for the same. It is believed that Scheduled Castes are also to be represented (adequately?). But is there any proposal from you or from Congress to elect adequate or at least some members from the Mehtar Community who, I am sure, will discharge their duty of citizenship and pick up their legitimate share in the future constitution of Free India?
2. Generous as you are towards us, may I assure myself and my community that Mehtar seats in the Constituent Assembly will not escape your notice?
3. Who will be the components of the Advisory Board? Caste Hindus or Minorities including the Scheduled Castes?
4. Will the advice or proposals of the Advisory Board be binding to the Constituent Assembly? I think they will not. If so, what sense is there in appointing such a Board, which will be nonentity if the Constituent Assembly were not to pay heed to its advice? Is it not merely for the appeasement of the weak minorities? You might say you have been [doing] and will do everything for us, but I wish to say âlet us be with you when everything for us is to be done. Let us be represented democratically.â I strongly hope that my questions will be fully and satisfactorily answered by you with an obligation of immediate reply to me. I further humbly request you to be good enough to publish your answers in your weekly Harijan.
Hope to be excused for troubles.
Gandhi: I have reproduced the foregoing in order to show what havoc dangerous knowledge of English has produced in our society. This is a specimen not of English nor yet of Indian English. It is bookish English which the writer probably half understands. I suggest to him that if he had written to me in the national language Hindustani or in his provincial language, it would not have evoked an unfavourable response from me. The writer has paid me a left-handed compliment and that perhaps in order to teach me how to express my love for the Bhangi, otherwise known as Mehtar. The writer is a discontented graduate, setting no example or a bad example to Bhangis. He has isolated himself from them, though he professes to represent them. He will certainly become my teacher if he will be a graduate in the art of being a good Bhangi. I very much fear that he does no scavenging himself; he does not know what scientific scavenging is. If he became an expert in the art, his services would be wanted by all the cities of India. When Bhangis really rise from the slumber of ages, they will successfully sweep the Augean stables everywhere and India will be a pattern of cleanliness and there will be in India no plague and other diseases which are the descendants of filth and dirt.
In the place where I am living in Bombay, my room and the adjoining lavatory are fairly clean, but I am in the midst of suffocating dirt. I have had no time to examine the tenements in front of me. They are as crowded and as dirty as the ones in the quarters where I was living in New Delhi. Had my graduate fellow Bhangi been an expert in the art, I would, without doubt, have requisitioned his services as my guide and helper. As it is, not only have I no use for him, I have to risk his displeasure by telling him that he should not think of the Constituent Assembly or other assemblies. Let those go to them who are wanted there. Instead of getting rid of the wretched caste mentality, he argues that any Harijan is not good enough for the purpose but preference should be given to the Mehtar caste. I suggest to him that it is a harmful method, doing no good to anybody.
Anyway, he has expected the impossible from me. I am not made for these big institutions. I have never interested myself in the periodical assembly elections. I have not attended Working Committee meetings where they make these selections. What I know of the present selections is from the newspapers. I have become a Bhangi because I think that that is the vocation of every Hindu, that the hoary institution of untouchability as we know it today in its ugly shape will die a decent death only when the Hindus will be casteless by becoming Bhangis from the bottom of their hearts. That cannot be done by aspiring after the membership my correspondent has in view [8].</b>
Gandhi may not have dared to give Ambedkar a similar tongue-lashing in public but made sure Ambedkar realized that he was not welcome in the INC. Gandhiâs antipathy for Ambedkar did not escape notice however â
I understand and appreciate your remarks about Dr. Ambedkar. I suppose you are aware that I know him very well and that I have met him often enough. He represents a good cause but he is a bad advocate for the simple reason that his passion has made him bitter and made him depart from the straight and narrow path. As I know to my cost, he is a believer in questionable means so long as the end is considered to be good. With him and with men like him the end justifies the means. Have you read his book? It is packed with untruths almost from beginning to end. I am sorry to have to say this of a countryman who has himself been obliged to put up with insults which have embittered men mightier than Dr. Ambedkar. You need not take all I say as gospel truth. I have written this to you in order to give you my . . . that if I do not go out of my way to seek contact with Dr. Ambedkar it is not for want of will or want of regard for you and friends like you but because I know that such seeking will, in my view, harm the cause [rather] than help it. No question of prestige will deter me from walking to him. I can say that the question of prestige has never interfered with my doing what I believed was a duty. I have laboured to show that in this case duty points the other way [9].
With little thought to the immense hurt he was causing not only to the scheduled castes but to the entire Hindu samaj by marginalizing Ambedkar and ridiculing the aspirations of the newly educated in the community, Gandhi compounded the vexatious issue by encouraging the Congress to put up its own scheduled caste candidates against those owning allegiance to the Scheduled Castesâ Federation, formed by Ambedkar in 1942. Gandhi promoted the idea of Congress Muslim versus the League Muslim, understandably as a Muslim who did not subscribe to the idea of Pakistan and vivisection; less understandable is Gandhiâs move to promote the idea of Congress âharijanâ versus Ambedkarâs scheduled castes.
Not surprisingly, Ambedkar and the entire community viewed Gandhiâs moves as hostile to their self-assertion and political aspirations. Gandhi was totally right to insist that the scheduled castes were an integral part of the Hindu samaj; and that the separation implied by separate electorates would be suicidal not only for the scheduled castes but also for the caste Hindus [10]. But the remedy laid not in promoting Congress harijans against Ambedkarâs scheduled castes, but in the Congress refraining from entering the electoral fray in the reserved constituencies and allowing Ambedkarâs scheduled castes to occupy all the space with the full backing of the Congress. Politics, as it was being proved by the day from 1942 onwards, was not Gandhiâs karmabhumi, social transformation definitely was. Had Gandhi handled Ambedkar with greater tact and understanding, Ambedkar would have stood staunchly alongside the Congress and as a brilliant lawyer he would have added considerable weight to the Congress team against the Muslim League and the British government during the negotiations on the Cabinet Mission proposals and during the tragedy that followed thereafter.
On the one hand Gandhi was insisting that the scheduled castes should not ask for separate electorates because they were an integral part of the Hindu samaj; on the other hand, Gandhi refused to accommodate any of Ambedkarâs demands on behalf of his community and refused also to make space within the INC for the politically-ambitious Ambedkarite scheduled castes. In fact, Gandhi was using the Hindu card to play politics with Ambedkar; he was denying the scheduled castes what they thought was the best means for being elected in large numbers but doing little to make the INC responsive to their needs.
While Gandhi repeatedly insisted that the Congress was not a Hindu organization, he used the argument of âsurvival of Hinduismâ as the fig-leaf to thwart Ambedkarâs demand for separate electorates. Gandhi was effectively doing everything to push Ambedkar and his followers inexorably out of the Hindu fold if that was the only way they could realize their political aspirations, just as he was doing everything to scuttle the Cabinet Mission.
I have not been able to answer your letter fully. The main problem is about Ambedkar. I see a risk in coming to any sort of understanding with him, for he has told me in so many words that for him there is no distinction between truth and untruth or between violence and non-violence. He follows one single principle, viz., to adopt any means which will serve his purpose. One has to be very careful indeed when dealing with a man who would become a Christian, Muslim or Sikh and then be reconverted according to his convenience. There is much more I could write in the same strain. To my mind it is all a snare. It is a âcatchâ. Besides, it is not necessary for him at present to insist on 20 p.c.... I therefore feel that at present we should not insist on an agreement such as you suggest. However, we should stress the capacity of the Congress to do justice. Mine may be a voice in the wilderness. Even so I prefer it that way. Therefore, if we negotiate with Ambedkar out of fear of the League we are likely to lose on both the fronts [11].
Of course we have no way of knowing if Ambedkar did indeed say what Gandhi is accusing him of saying; but Patel, with a better understanding of politics, of Ambedkarâs position in the emerging polity and with an unerring sense of impending danger were Ambedkar to publicly repudiate Gandhi and the Congress, keeps the doors open to Ambedkar and keeps the dialogue with Ambedkar going. As a forerunner of things to come when Patel would successfully integrate the Indian states within the Indian Union after August 1947, Patel does indeed come to an amicable agreement with Ambedkar [12].
The Muslim League just a couple of days earlier had rejected the Cabinet Mission proposals and held Gandhi solely responsible for their decision. Patel knew that if Ambedkar were to be alienated at that point in time, because of Congress refusal under Gandhiâs pressure to arrive at some kind of agreement with him, Ambedkarâs alienation could cause incalculable damage to the INC if he too were to publicly repudiate Gandhi. Failure to accommodate Ambedkar then would certainly have weakened the INC vis a vis the growing militancy of the Muslim League. It was a measure of Patelâs political astuteness and his quiet influence within the INC that Ambedkar was not only elected to the Constituent Assembly but also made Chairman of the Drafting Committee for the Constitution of India. It was probably Patelâs wisdom which reached out to the wounded Ambedkar on time which averted the real danger of Ambedkar and his followers from converting to either Islam or Christianity. Ambedkar, towards the end of his life chose to convert to Buddhism, which was civilizationally related by the umbilical cord to Hindu dharma.
Endnotes
1] Because the words âbhangiâ and âpariahâ are considered highly derogatory, using these words intentionally as terms of abuse is a cognizable offence and the law deals sternly with offenders. Successive Indian governments have put in place admirable measures to protect the dignity of the scheduled castes and the Hindi equivalent for scavenger has been used in the book only when Gandhi has been quoted on the issue.
2] Discussion with Congress Workers, January 1, 1946, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3-1-1946, CWMG Vol. 89, page 150
3] Talk with members of Harijan Sevak Sangh, Panchgani, July 20, 1946, Harijan, 28-7-1946, CWMG Vol. 91, pp 320-21
4] There were some who described the Congress as a Hindu organization. They only betrayed their ignorance of the political history of India. At one time the Hindu Mahasabha was in the hands of the Congress and so was the Muslim League and others. Congress was not a Hindu organization. It did not serve Hindu interests to the exclusion of the other communities. It was hinted that the Congress leaders had come to consult him with regard to the interests of the Hindus. Had they done so they would have lowered the stature of the Indian National Congress in the eyes of the world. They had come to consult him, as an expert on the Hindu-Muslim question, as to how best to serve the national cause in the present crisis. (Speech at a prayer meeting, Srirampur, December 28, 1946, The Hindu, 2-1-1947; and Harijan, 26-1-1947, CWMG Vol 93, page 207)
5] I have asked you to pay me a brief visit. You might be of some use in the work that is being done here. That means your sparing a fortnight at the most. But I do not want you to neglect the duty you have undertaken, of course with my full consent. (Letter to Amrit Kaur, Patna March 18, 1947, CWMG Vol 94, page 136)
Mahadev I suppose did not have the same malady that you seem to have. In any case unless I know more fully I canât guide you. Moreover, Mahadev had put himself under an Ayurvedic physician at that time, staying in bed. Of course he did so with my consent. (Letter to Jag Parvesh Chander, Patna March 18, 1947, CWMG Vol 94, page 139)
I have gone through your papers. You should not have undertaken the fast without my consent. It is good that you have broken it.(Letter to Prabhakar, April 11, 1947, CWMG Vol 94, page 285)
6] Harijan, 29-9-1946, Extracted from Pyarelalâs âWeekly Letterâ. The Hindustan Times, 25-9-1946, also reports the speech, CWMG Vol. 92, page 225. Foot-note 2 in the above entry in CWMG says, âThis was to be in celebration of Gandhijiâs birthday according to the Vikram calendar.
7] A Sign of Progress, SRIRAMPUR, November 30, 1946, Harijan, 15-12-1946, CWMG Vol. 93, pp 80-81
8] Left-handed Compliment, Bombay, July 6, 1946, Harijan 14-7-1946, CWMG Vol. 91, pp 241-43
9] Letter to Carl Heath, December 2, 1946, From a copy: Pyarelal Papers. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Courtesy: Beladevi Nayyar and Dr. Sushila Nayyar, CWMG Vol. 93, pp 86-87
10] It is perfectly true that more is common between Hindus and Sikhs than between caste Hindus and untouchables. That is a blot upon caste Hindus and Hinduism. But the remedy is not to add evil to evil but to reform Hinduism, so that the demand for separation on the part of untouchables dies a natural death. Meantime Hindus cannot be expected to commit suicide which separation of Harijans from caste Hindus must mean. (âScheduled castesâ, Panchgani July 19, 1946, Harijan 28-7-1946, CWMG Vol 91, page 312)
11] Letter to Vallabhbhai Patel, August 1, 1946, Bapuna Patroâ2: Sardar Vallabhbhaine, pp. 319-20, Vol. 91, pp 393-94
12] I have your letter. If you see no risk in it, what is there for me to say? Do by all means settle with Bhimarao. I have nothing further to say in the matter. (Letter to Vallabhbhai Patel, August 3, 1946, Bapuna Patroâ2: Sardar Vallabhbhaine, p. 323, CWMG Vol. 91, page 412)
Excerpted from
Eclipse of The Hindu Nation: Gandhi and His Freedom Struggle
Radha Rajan
New Age Publishers Pvt Ltd, Delhi, 2009
Price: Rs 495/-
![[Image: Gandhi.jpg]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_q9YwLxFmI7k/Rb7Zkm6bdMI/AAAAAAAAADY/Hyoq2QwY7YA/s400/Gandhi.jpg)
[/color] i liked the Gandhi ji ideology so its because of what ever the peace and serenity are which are still in India its because the great the person Mahatma Gandhi...