Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (22 page)

138
Young India
, 5 April 1928; CWMG 41, 365.

139
Lelyveld 2011, 74.

140
Cited in Zinn and Arnove 2004, 265.

141
Ibid., 270.

142
Cited in Omvedt 2008, 219.

143
In Deshpande 2002, 25.

144
Ibid., 38–40.

145
Cited in Ambedkar 1945; BAWS 9, 276.

146
See Adams 2011, 263–5. Also see Rita Banerji 2008, especially 265–81.

147
CWMG 34, 201–2.

148
Hind Swaraj
in Parel 1997, 106.

149
Ibid., 97

150
See Gandhi’s Preface to the English translation of
Hind Swaraj
, in Parel (1997, 5).

151
Savarkar, the militant
Hindutva ideologue, said a true Indian is one whose
pitrabhoomi
(fatherland) as well as
punyabhoomi
(holy
land) is India—not some foreign land. See his
Hindutva
(1923, 105).

152
Parel 1997, 47–51.

153
Ibid., 66.

154
Ibid., 68–9.

155
Ramachandra Guha (2013b, 383) says: “Gandhi wrote
Hind Swaraj
in 1909 at a time he scarcely knew India at all. By 1888, when he departed for London, at the age of nineteen, he had lived only in towns in his native Kathiawar. There is no evidence that he had travelled in the countryside, and he knew no other part of India.”

156
Parel 1997, 69–70.

157
Gandhi says this in 1932, in connection with the debate around separate electorates for Untouchables, in a letter to
Sir Samuel Hoare, Secretary of State for India. Cited in BAWS 9, 78.

158
Indian Opinion
, 22 October 1910; CWMG 11, 143–4. Cited also in Guha 2013b, 395.

159
Guha 2013b, 463.

160
Ibid., 406.

161
Aiyar quoted in Lelyveld 2011, 21.

162
Personal communication,
Ashwin Desai, professor of sociology at University of Johannesburg.

163
Lelyveld 2011, 130.

164
Tidrick 2006, 188.

165
See Renold 1994. Also see Louis Fischer,
A Week with Gandhi
(1942), quoted by Ambedkar: “ ‘I said I had several questions to ask him about the Congress Party. Very highly placed Britishers, I recalled, had told me that Congress was in the hands of big business and that Gandhi was supported by the Bombay Mill-owners who gave him as much money as he wanted. ‘What Truth is there in these assertions’, I asked. ‘Unfortunately, they are true,’ he declared simply…‘What portion of the Congress budget,’ I asked, ‘is covered by rich Indians?’ ‘Practically all of it,’ he stated. ‘In this ashram, for instance, we could live much more poorly than we do and spend less money. But we do not and the money comes from our rich friends.’ ” Cited in BAWS 9, 208.

166
Cited in Amin 1998, 293.

167
Young India
, 18 August 1921; CWMG 23, 158.

168
Harijan
, 25 August 1940; CWMG 79, 133–4.

169
Ibid., 135.

170
Ibid., 135.

171
The Gospel of Wealth
(1889). Available at
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Carnegie.html
. Accessed 26 August 2013.

172
Cited in Amin 1998, 290–1.

173
Amin 291–2.

174
Tidrick 2006, 191.

175
Cited in Singh 2004, 124.

176
Tidrick 2006, 192.

177
Ibid., 194.

178
Ibid., 195.

179
Zelliot 2013, 48.

180
This is from the unpublished preface to Ambedkar’s
The Buddha and His Dhamma
(1956). It first appeared as part of a book of Ambedkar’s prefaces, published by
Bhagwan Das and entitled
Rare Prefaces
(1980).
Eleanor Zelliot later published it on the
Columbia University website dedicated to Ambedkar’s life and selected works.
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/ambedkar_buddha/00_pref_unpub.html
. Accessed 10 September 2013.

181
BAWS 4, 1986.

182
On 20 May 1857, the Education Department issued a directive that “no boy be refused admission to a government college or school merely on the ground of caste” (Nambissan 2002, 81).

183
For an annotated edition of this essay, see Sharmila Rege (2013). It also appears in BAWS 1.

184
In
Autobiographical Notes
2003, 19.

185
Keer 1990, 36–7.

186
AoC 17.5.

187
Prashad 1996, 552. In his speech at the Suppressed Classes Conference in Ahmedabad on 13 April 1921, reported in
Young India
on 27 April 1921 and 4 May 1921 (reproduced in CWMG 23, 41–7), Gandhi discussed Uka at length for the first time (42). Bakha, the main protagonist in Mulk Raj Anand’s iconic novel
Untouchable
(1935), is said to be inspired by Uka. According to the researcher Lingaraja Gandhi (2004), Anand showed his
manuscript to Gandhi, who suggested changes. Anand says: “I read my novel to Gandhiji, and he suggested that I should cut down more than a hundred pages, especially those passages in which Bakha seemed to be thinking and dreaming and brooding like a Bloomsbury intellectual.” Lingaraja Gandhi further says: “Anand had provided long and flowery speeches to Bakha in his draft. Gandhi instructed Anand that untouchables don’t speak that way: in fact, they hardly speak. The novel underwent metamorphosis under the tutelage of Gandhi.”

188
Navajivan
, 18 January 1925; CWMG 30, 71. In the account of Gandhi’s secretary,
Mahadev Desai, this speech from Gujarati is rendered differently: “The position that I really long for is that of the Bhangi. How sacred is this work of cleanliness! That work can be done only by a Brahmin or by a Bhangi. The Brahmin may do it in his wisdom, the Bhangi in ignorance. I respect, I adore both of them. If either of the two disappears from Hinduism, Hinduism itself would disappear. And it is because seva-dharma (self-service) is dear to my heart that the Bhangi is dear to me. I may even sit at my meals with a Bhangi by my side, but I do not ask you to align yourselves with them by inter-caste dinners and marriages.” Cited in Ramaswamy 2005, 86.

189
Renold 1994, 19–20. Highly publicised symbolic visits to Dalit homes has become a Congress party tradition. In January 2009, in the glare of a media circus, the Congress party’s vice-president and prime ministerial candidate,
Rahul Gandhi, along with
David Milliband, the British foreign secretary, spent a night in the hut of a Dalit family in Simra village of Uttar Pradesh. For an account of this, see
Anand Teltumbde (2013).

190
Prashad 2001, 139.

191
BAWS 1, 256.

192
Keer 1990, 41.

193
Zelliot 2013, 91.

194
See Joseph 2003, 166. Objecting to Sikhs running a langar (free, common kitchen) for the satyagrahis of Vaikom, Gandhi wrote in
Young India
(8 May 1924), “The
Vaikom satyagraha is, I fear, crossing the limits. I do hope that the Sikh free kitchen will be withdrawn and that the movement will be confined to Hindus only” (CWMG 27, 362).

195
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, a Tamil Brahmin, known affectionately as Rajaji, was a close friend and confidant of Gandhi. In 1933, his daughter Leela married Gandhi’s son Devdas. Rajagopalachari later served as the acting Governor General of India. In 1947, he became the first Governor of West Bengal, and in 1955 received the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award.

196
Cited in Joseph 2003, 168.

197
Young India
, 14 August 1924; CWMG 28, 486.

198
Joseph 2003, 169.

199
Birla 1953, 43.

200
Keer 1990, 79.

201
Speaking at a
Depressed Classes Conference in 1925, Ambedkar said: “When one is spurned by everyone, even the sympathy shown by Mahatma Gandhi is of no little importance.” Cited in Jaffrelot 2005, 63. Gandhi visited Mahad on 3 March 1927, a fortnight before the first satyagraha, but unlike at Vaikom he did not interfere. For an account of the second
Mahad Satyagraha when a copy of the
Manusmriti
was burnt, see K. Jamnadas (2010).

202
According to
Anand Teltumbde’s unpublished manuscript on the two Mahad conferences, Resolution No. 2 seeking a ‘ceremonial cremation’ of the
Manusmriti
was proposed by G.N. Sahasrabuddhe, a Brahmin, who played an important role in the March events as well; it was seconded by P.N. Rajbhoj, a
Chambhar leader. According to Teltumbde, “There was a deliberate attempt to get some progressive people from non-untouchable communities to the conference, but eventually only two names materialised. One was Gangadhar Nilkanth Sahasrabuddhe, an activist of the Social Service League and a leader of the cooperative movement belonging to Agarkari Brahman caste, and the other was Vinayak alias Bhai Chitre, a Chandraseniya
Kayastha Prabhu.” In the 1940s, Sahasrabuddhe became the editor of
Janata
—another of Ambedkar’s newspapers.

203
Dangle, ed., 1992, 231–3.

204
Keer 1990, 170.

205
Cited in Prashad 1996, 555.

206
Gandhi outlined the difference between satyagraha and
duragraha in a speech on 3 November 1917: “There are two
methods of attaining one’s goal: Satyagraha and Duragraha. In our scriptures, they have been described, respectively, as divine and devilish modes of action.” He went on to give an example of duragraha: “the terrible War going on in
Europe”. Also, “The man who follows the path of Duragraha becomes impatient and wants to kill the so-called enemy. There can be but one result of this. Hatred increases” (CWMG 16, 126–8).

207
BAWS 9, 247.

208
On the fallout with the
Girni Kamgar Union, see Teltumbde (2012). For how Dange and the
Communist Party worked towards ensuring Ambedkar’s defeat in the Bombay City North constituency in the 1952 general election, see S. Anand (2012a), and Rajnarayan Chandavarkar (2009, 161), where he says: “The decision by the socialists and the communists not to forge an electoral pact, let alone join together to combine with Ambedkar’s
Scheduled Castes Federation, against the Congress lost them the Central Bombay seat. Dange, for the CPI, Asoka Mehta for the socialists and Ambedkar each stood separately and fell together. Significantly, Dange instructed his supporters to spoil their ballots in the reserved constituency for Central Bombay rather than vote for Ambedkar. Indeed, Ambedkar duly lost and attributed his defeat to the communist campaign. Although the communists could not win the Central Bombay seat, their influence in Girangaon, including its dalit voters, was sufficient to decisively influence the outcome. The election campaign created a lasting bitterness. As Dinoo Ranadive recalls, ‘the differences between the dalits and the communists became so sharp that even today it has become difficult for the communists to appeal to the Republicans’ or at any rate to some sections of dalit voters.” Republicans here refers to the
Republican Party of India (RPI) that Ambedkar had conceived of a short while before his death in December 1956. It came to be established only in September 1957 by his followers, but today there are over a dozen splintered factions of the RPI.

209
Kosambi 1948, 274.

210
For an account of this, see Jan Breman’s
The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class
(2004), especially chapter 2, “The Formalization of Collective Action: Mahatma Gandhi as a Union Leader” (40–68).

211
Breman 2004, 57.

212
Shankerlal Banker cited in Breman (2004, 47).

213
Annual Report of the Textile Labour Union, 1925, cited in Breman (2004, 51).

214
Navajivan
, 8 February 1920; cited in BAWS 9, 280.

215
Harijan
, 21 April 1946; CWMG 90, 255–6.

216
AoC 3.10 and 3.11.

217
AoC 4.1, emphasis original.

218
Zelliot 2013, 178.

219
Namboodiripad 1986, 492, emphasis added.

220
The text of the manifesto is reproduced in Satyanarayana and Tharu (2013, 62).

221
For a critical piece on the NGO–Dalit movement interface that traces it to the history of colonial and missionary activity in India, see Teltumbde (2010b), where he argues: “Unsurprisingly, most Dalits in Indian NGOs are active at the field level. Dalit boys and girls appear to be doing social services for their communities, which is what Ambedkar expected educated Dalits to do, and Dalit communities therefore perceive such workers quite favourably—more favourably, certainly, than Dalit politicians, who are often seen as engaged in mere rhetoric. The NGO sector has thus become a significant employer for many Dalits studying for their humanities degree, typically capped with a postgraduate degree in social work. Further, as the prospects of public-sector jobs have decreased since the government’s neoliberal reforms of the mid-1980s and later, the promise of NGOs as employers assumed great importance.”