Gandhi’s Vision of Swaraj

 

Mr. Ramchandra Guha, a renowned historian & a prolific author was invited as a resource person for a NIRMAN Workshop. Following is the transcription of his talk given in front of young NIRMAN participants on November 27, 2017.

I am going to give you a perspective as a historian on India’s journey since independence. It’s been 70 years since independence - what we have done, our achievements, failures, unfinished tasks, and I am going to use a frame of reference: Gandhi’s vision of Swaraj. It is a particular vision that Gandhi had which is, unfortunately, not well known. He wrote a book on Swaraj which was an important book but, in my view, it is a book of limited reference to India because it was written when Gandhi hardly knew India. Gandhi was an NRI in South Africa when he wrote about Swaraj. He wrote that book in 1909. At that stage the only India he knew was Kathiawad, where he grew up.

He was born in Porbandar, then he went to Rajkot, then he went to London, got a law degree and came back. He practiced briefly in Mumbai, Rajkot and went off to South Africa and in 1909 when Gandhi wrote about Swaraj, he had never been to an Indian village. So, that is why, his mentor Gokhale told him, ‘when you come back to India, spend your first year in India getting to know it’. So, he came back in 1915 and spent one year travelling across India, which deepened his acquaintance with the country. In 1917, he went to Chamaparanya, which was his direct engagement with peasants and workers and with laboring classes. Till then he had been in middle classes. He had given some speeches, but he had not interacted with working people. So in 1917, in Chamaparanya, he worked with peasants, with farmers. Then he comes to Ahmedabad, where he had already established his ashram. In 1918, he was involved in the famous Satyagraha for textile workers. The same year in Kheda, there was Satyagraha of peasants. Then in 1919 there was the Roulette’s act. In 1920, there was a non-cooperation movement and then he travelled all across India.

             4 Pillars of Gandhi’s Vision of Swaraj

So, the vision of Swaraj that I am going to give you is Gandhi’s vision of Swaraj, not a Hind Swaraj. It is a little old article that he wrote in 1921 at the height of non-cooperation movement. Now, the non-cooperation movement brought together for the first time a cross section of Indian society asking for freedom from British rule. So, it was North Indians, South Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, men, women, workers, peasants, lawyers, editors and so on, and it drew upon 6 years of intensive work that Gandhi had done. In the article he said, ‘my vision of Swaraj is like a bed upheld by four sturdy posts and these 4 posts are non-violence, Hindu-Muslim harmony, abolishment of untouchability and economic self-reliance (Swadeshi)’. Now this is the vision of Swaraj I want to begin with.

This is a beautiful image – that Swaraj will be solid, secured if it is based on these 4 pillars, the distinct pillars coming together. This was in 1921. Swaraj came much later. And now 70 years since Swaraj was formally achieved, since political freedom came, how robust are each of these pillars? Now that is the assessment I want to give you as a historian. It can be explained what each of those 4 pillars are.

When Gandhi said that the first pillar is non-violence, what he meant was that we are fighting against British using non-violence unlike other Colonial countries. When Gandhi said even Swaraj will based on nonviolence what he meant was that after we get independence, our disputes between different sections of India will be settled by debate and dialogue, not through violence. That is why he adopted a multi-party democracy, unlike in China whose freedom from Europeans was through violence and was exerted in one party state, which of course then consolidated and perpetrated violence of other kind. So, the first pillar of Gandhi‘s Swaraj was supposed to be multi-party democracy where Indians will exchange ideas and resolve disputes peacefully through debate. That is the first pillar.

                    The second pillar he called as Hindu-Muslim harmony. Now this was fundamental view of Gandhi. It was opposed by Jinnah – he wanted a separate Muslim country. It was opposed by Hindus, by Savarkar, who said that Hindus are superior to Muslims. But, Gandhi believed, when India will become free, it must be a non-denominational state, that its polity must not be defined by single community. But, he also believed that the content of Swaraj – its politics, social lives, its culture – must not be defined by a single language. This is a very great innovation of Gandhi! This Political Innovation is a departure from the way the rest of the world understood what nationalism is.

          In 19^th century Europe, nationhood meant, to be French, you speak French. The state religion of France was Catholicism, which means Protestants were second class citizens and Jews were third class citizens, and we must have one common enemy called England. We must consolidate ourselves by fighting against England. If you cross the channel and go to England, you will see that the English definition of nationalism – who is great patriot of England? He who speaks in English! So, minority languages like Welsh, Gaelic were removed. One standard language has to be spoken by one region. English nationhood was defined by saying that we are superior to the French. Now that is the model of nationalism which was spread across Europe. This is not only a joke – Pakistan is a perfect European nation! Gandhi’s innovation was to say that Indian nationalism will be different. In fact Gandhi’s closest friend, C. F. Andrews, was an English Christian priest.

Religious and cultural pluralism, which includes linguistic pluralism, is the second pillar of Swaraj. Every Indian must have freedom to speak language of her choice and to worship the god of one’s choice or no god at all. There is lovely little old book on Gandhi called ’An atheist with Gandhi’. This is by man called Gora – Ramchandra Rao, he was well known Gandhian social worker in Andhra and played a big role in promoting the abolishment of untouchability in 40s and 50s. He was an atheist. He was a militant atheist like Richard Dawkins! So, the second pillar of Swaraj was the freedom to have your view, all faith or not faith at all. To speak whatever language you want and not to have language imposed on you. True religious, cultural, and intellectual pluralism was the second pillar.

          The third pillar is what Gandhi defined as abolition of untouchability. Remember this. In 1921, when non-cooperation movement started, Gandhi said that we will be fit for Swaraj only if we abolish untouchability! This is a very revolutionary act because no leader of congress party had said that or understood that. Tilak wanted the freedom from British rule. Gokhale, Bhagat Singh wanted that too but Gandhi said, ‘No, we are not fit for freedom if we oppress a section of our own society’. However, I would say that the Gandhian vision was incomplete. It has not included abolition of gender distinction because the two fundamental axes of inequality in India were and still are caste and gender.

        There are two ways in which Indians divide. First is horizontally, by language and religion. So, Maharashtrians are different than Gujaratis. That is horizontal division. Vertically, Indians were historically divided by caste and gender. Sawarnas are superior to Dalits and men are superior to women. Gandhi said a great deal about abolition of untouchability but he mentioned little less about gender distinction. However, the constitution took this idea forward. Ambedkar and Nehru were instrumental in drafting the constitution and were more progressive on this question than Gandhi was. So, the third pillar is abolition of social inequality, where everyone is an equal citizen, and that is what the constitution did.

The forth pillar is economic self-reliance. That was obvious and remains very important of course. The fourth pillar does not need much explanation. In 1920s and 1950s, India was a poor country, there was mass poverty. There was destitution, malnutrition, infant mortality. So that is the fourth pillar.

So, I am going to use that as my point of departure. These four pillars that Gandhi outlined for Swaraj were incorporated; we could say that the constitution is a detailed elaboration of these pillars. Constitution mandated democracy, the constitution abolished untouchability and constitution made men equal to women. The constitution designed a federal system where every state could devote to and promote economic development. 

The Post-Independence Scenario

So, now it is 70 years since independence. The in the second part of today’s session I am going to provide my assessment as to how robust each of these four pillars are. I am going to take these pillars one by one - democracy, religious and cultural pluralism, caste and gender inequality and economic self-reliance.   

              

To begin with – how robust is our democracy? Now, at a formal level we are been successful. That is, we have established a multiparty system based on free, fair and regular elections. And this is major achievement of Independent India. If we look around us at Pakistan, at Bangladesh, at Nepal, at African countries, India and Sri Lanka are the only two ex-colonial countries of Asia and Africa that, for entire period of independence, regularly held free and fair elections. Though money plays a part, the richest party can lose, as happened in Delhi last time or, as it happened in 1977 after the emergency. It happened in many states e.g. when Dravidian party first beat congress in 1967, they did not have the money, so on and so forth.

So, free, fair and regular election is an important achievement of independent India. But, other aspects of our democracy are less robust. E.g. parliament hardly functions and this was not always the case. If you see the debates in the 50s, 60s, 70s, they were very vocal. Now, no one wants to discuss what happened and the state assemblies function even less. So, the election is a major aspect of democracy but that is not the sole aspect of democracy. We are in danger of being reduced to what I call the ‘election only democracy’.

You have to understand what democracy means is that election gives you the right to be in power for five years but that does not give the right to be immune from criticism for five years. In fact with criticism you will govern better, you will have a healthy democracy. Vidhan Sabha is not meeting. The bureaucrats can’t give honest advice because they will be transferred. You want to control the press. If they are picking on you, you will withdraw advertising, you will set a tax case against the proprietors. Writers are being killed! This is not how a democracy functions.

If you go to the British parliament, there is a regular system in which maybe once in a week, maybe once in fortnight, the Leader of Opposition asks questions to the Prime Minister and it is telecasted live. ‘You have done this, this is not right. This is the problem, here are the facts, and this is the research showing’ and then Prime Minister has to answer back. So, this is how you can see how the government doing, how legitimate are their criticisms, how convincing is the defense of Prime Minister. That’s a very good custom. That’s how democracy should function. I am not saying that our democracy is crumbling from inside, because we do have freedom of movement. A very important part of democracy is the freedom of movement. That I can come from Bangalore to Maharashtra or you can go from Maharashtra to Arunachal Pradesh. So, our democracy is moderately well established. Some of the key institutions, such as parliament and press, are functioning below par.

Second pillar I defined as religious and cultural pluralism. Now, one of our great achievements is our sustenance of linguistic pluralism. I told you that one of Gandhi’s great innovations was to depart from European model of one language, one religion, and one country. Jinnah, the first governor of Pakistan, in his first speech of Pakistan told Bengalis that you have to learn Urdu. In 1948, that was his first speech and that sowed seeds for a civil war that led to separation of Bangladesh.

We have 17 languages on our rupee note. Why we have to have that? Because each of them has its own script and the script is sacred. First decision you make is what language you speak. Before you become Muslim or Hindu, you are Marathi speaker or Hindi speaker or Kannada speaker or Tamil speaker. And the script is different! French, German are different languages but use same script yet they are different. That is what I have to explain to my American friends. Tamil is older than Sanskrit. Oria, Kannada, Telagu, Malayalam – they are 1300-1500 years old. How can we deny those languages? Language is culture, history, everything! So, Gandhi in 1927 said every major language of India may have its own state in which it can conduct its business in its language. Maharashtrians can have Marathi, they can give school instruction, judiciary, court decisions, Government Offices and so on so forth in Marathi. That promise was made. The Kannadigas joined, Maharashtrians joined, Gujaratis joined and all joined the congress movement.

In 1947, after India’s independence battle, India was divided and Nehru and Patel went back on that promise. They were too scared of further division. This is the paranoid pattern of model of European nationalism and Jinnah’s position – if you speak another language, you become another country. So it was not considered. And then Patel died. There was revolt in all sections of congress party. At that time, congress party was ruling all over India. Congress was a very dominating party in 1950. But it was a democratic party. So, although Nehru was the dominating figure, he had to take account of sentiments of his party. He was forced to conjugate the states to the organizing commission. But the principle was accepted in 1956. Then in 1956, finally, the promise was honored that Gandhi had given.

Now, in the same year that PM Nehru considered that we will reorganize the map of India on linguistic lines, the PM of Sri Lanka S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike instituted the policy that made Sinhala the sole language. And Tamil speakers of the north were relegated to the 2^nd class status. They had to learn Sinhala to get into the civil service, to become a judge, to become teacher, anything. There was a debate in parliament and at the debate, a far-sighted Sinhala MP said to Bandaranaike, ‘Don’t do this. Two languages, one nation, one language, one long civil war’ and that’s what happened. Bandaranaike did not listen to him. He imposed Sinhala in Tamil areas and the result was a civil war. In India one language could have multiple civil wars.

This is the great achievement that we have shown to the world that linguistic uniformity is not a precondition for patriotism. You can speak different language still you can be as good or as bad as an Indian. So, when it comes to Gandhi’s second pillar, which is cultural pluralism, the linguistic part is robust and solid because if India was to be anything at all it was something other than a Hindu Pakistan. And Gandhi would have been deeply distressed of insecurity and vulnerability of our minority communities especially in the last few years. So that’s the second pillar.

The third pillar is caste and gender inequality. Here again it has been both progress and regress. As I said, in our society, culture and religion, inequality was deeply entrenched. The caste system is legitimized by Hindus and by Muslims. And you will meet people who will try to confuse on this by quoting that one verse in a scripture. Against that 1 verse, I can tell you 5000 verses that show inequality. This is very important thing that in our ancestry and our heritage, there are some truly nasty things too. Inequality among us by caste and gender is deeply entrenched in Indian tradition, be it Hindu or Muslim or Christian. In churches in Kerala Dalit Christians had to pray outside. And, of course, women in most religious traditions can’t become priests. They are not allowed to interpret the holy texts or reinterpret it. So, we were in a deeply unequal society and our constitution makers recognized this. The greatness of the constitution is that it completely negates, in these respects, the Gita, the Quran, the Manusmriti, the Bible, everything, and it says we don’t care what these people say, as far as concerned, there can be no discrimination based on caste and gender and this should supersede all religious traditions when it comes to caste and gender because inequality of cast and in gender has disfigured our society.

Now, in 70 years we have made quite a lot of progress e.g. I see that 50% of you are women. Now, if in Sevagram, in 1967 there would have been a meeting of social workers, there would not have been 50% women. So, we have made slow and incremental progress towards becoming a more equal society. Two signs of this outside the realm of social work are that there is a steady delinking of caste from occupation. Once upon a time, a Brahmin could not become an entrepreneur, a Dalit couldn’t become a school teacher, and a Yadav couldn’t become a lawyer. This is one sign of the loosening hold of caste. The question of gender – there is steady delinking of family from marriage. More and more women can now choose their romantic partner. These are the two very important things that I like to put before you, because the choice of your profession and the choice of your life partner should be your choice, not what society says or tradition says. More and more individuals can decide what profession they want to choose regardless of what the caste they are from. More and more women are free. It’s slow but it’s happening.

 Martin Luther King famously said ‘the arc of history bends towards justice but it bends rather slowly’. So we would like it to have faster but when it comes to the challenge to caste and gender discrimination, India is progressing in right direction. May be you would like it to be faster, maybe it is faster in cities than in the countryside. Maybe it is more visible in southern and western than in north India. So, there are these regional variations but overall you can see the arc is bending towards justice. When it comes to social justice and discrimination in India, there is one exception, it is important, I have said this everywhere, it is particularly important in Shodhgram, Gadchiroli. When it comes to Dalits and women which are two traditionally discriminated groups in Indian society, arc of history is bending towards the justice slowly but, when it comes to the third group, the Adivasis, in many parts of India they may be even worse off. In Gadchiroli, because SEARCH and other organizations have been doing good work in the community, the Adivasis seem to be on the right track. But in Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand they are grievously discriminated. They are the ones who lost their lands to public sector, to power plants and dams. They are the ones who are losing their rights to mining companies today. They are unrepresented in the political class. Dalits and women are there in political class - Sushma Swaraj or Mayawati or Ramdas Athavale or Ramvilas Paswan. You have prominent Dalit leaders or women leaders; Mamta Banerjee, Sonia Gandhi etc. You don’t have a single prominent Adivasi leader. You have Dalit intellectuals, women intellectuals, women editors, Dalit High Court Judges. Adivasis are firstly discriminated economically. 40% of all those who have been displaced by developmental projects have been Adivasis. Historically, they are the 8% of population but 40% of those are displaced. If we look at the studies, when it comes to the access to education and health programs, they are worse off than the Dalits. So, economically and socially they are suffering and politically they are invisible.

             Now we come to the last pillar – Economic Self-reliance. This is a subject on which I am not an expert, I know much more about culture, society than economy. So I will not speak at length. Again, I will say we have made substantial progress in last twenty five years. There has been steady increase in wealth in nation, poverty rates are going down across India. All this is important and necessary. I will say briefly that for all the economic progress we have made, there remain two dark spots. One dark spot is the phenomenon of jobless growth. Although we have very impressive rate of economic growth, this wealth is not creating enough jobs, unlike say countries like China, Vietnam, South Korea and even Bangladesh, where economic growth has been powered by manufacturing and job creation. The service sector, which is capital intensive, creates very few jobs and all across India we have angry young men. They are promoting violence for different causes - from right wing Hindu fundamentalism to left wing Maoist extremism. They are men who can’t get dignified employment because our economic growth is not creating jobs. These are all men who can’t get jobs in Infosys. Sometimes they kill themselves. Even the farmer suicides are mostly men. So, this is something to ponder upon that we have made major progress in economic self-reliance but we have done it without creating enough jobs for men and women. Secondly, we have done it with little regard to environment. Our pattern of economic growth, though it is wealth creating, it is environmentally disastrous. India is an environmental basket case. Our rivers are biologically dead. Our cities are polluted – worst in the world. Our forests have been degraded or destroyed. Our ground water level is depleting massively. We have not really integrated environment parameters into our economic policies.   

Citizenship & Democracy

So, I have given you broad brushed picture from how we have done since independence and given you the picture which tells you what starting with Gandhi’s vision of Swaraj would be, trying to take each of these 4 pillars – politics, culture, society and economy. I have tried to show you whatever the things we have done to make these things robust, what ways we have failed to give you a sense that there is much work yet to be done. Young people like you who will take a major role in taking this forward. I would like to end with an image of my own. I gave you Gandhi’s vision of Swaraj, I will give you an image of citizenship and democracy. Democracy rests on a three legged stool and what are the three legs? First leg is state or government. Second leg is the private sector and third leg is civil society. Each of these three legs must contribute.

The state must be run by people who are hardworking and committed of whole values of constitution – that is the first leg. Unless you have an efficient, fair and transparent government, you can’t have a stable democracy. The second leg is private sector. They are very important because we were and still are very poor country. We need to create well-paying jobs and entrepreneurs, enterprises to get us out of this grinding. And the third leg is Civil Society. 

What is the role of civil society? The role of civil society is to make up for the failures of other two. How do you make up? In two ways. One is civil society has an activist dimension and the other is constructive dimension. So if the private sector pollutes the river, civil society will start dharanas, they will put the press, they will file PIL and force the government to act. In economic terms it is known as externality. Somebody else is paying for it. So, to increase your profit, you will pollute the river. Pollution has sound economic logic from the point of view of the pollutant. So, civil society’s job is to sharp spotlight on the failures of governments. The RTI movement is another example. Or if police do too much violence, human rights activist will show the conditions of prison. So, civil society has two pros - one is to spotlight on the failures of the first two legs – government and private sector and the second is constructor. In Gadchiroli, since the government hospital is malfunctioning, and maximum private hospitals are not going, Abhay and Rani Bang setup this hospital and so on. So, these are the two aspects of role of civil society. Now you all are young and I should say something about these two aspects. Both are valid. Some individuals are trying to go towards path A, some are inclined to path B. And it is not that A is superior to B. It’s often a matter of what the situation calls for and what your temperament demands. Medha Patkar has a certain kind of temperament, those who found Shodhgram have certain type of temperament. Both are important. Unfortunately, in the civil society movement, activists are looked down upon. Those who do constructive work think that activists are doing this only for publicity. Activism must always be nonviolent and constructive work must always make use of high quality science. As a citizen and someone who is scholar and who has studied both activist groups and constructive work, I felt that both are good. Few people can combine both in their lives. One of my great heroes, who lead Chipko Andolan and nonviolent Satyagraha in which women were major participants to stop commercial felling in Himalaya. But once felling was stopped, he turned his attention to constructive work i.e.to re-vegetate the barren lands.

Now, I have given you this image of 3 legs of democracy – State, private sector and civil society. In the 1950 and 60s, when republic was established the first leg, that of the state, was absolutely outstanding. I can tell you and this is the judgment of a historian, Nehru was the greatest PM of independent India. I am not saying that he did not make mistakes, he did. He stayed too long and should have retired in 1958. Sardar Patel was greatest home minister that we ever had, B.R. Ambedkar was the greatest law minister we had. But, not only at the level of politicians, but we also had outstanding civil servants. In my book ‘India after Gandhi’, I described a man - Sukumar Sen who set up electoral system. There has been no chief election commissioner like him. So, our state performed outstandingly and politicians, bureaucrats, judges were outstanding and they made up for non-performance of the other two legs. Civil society was really weak in 50-60s. And only in 1970s, it started becoming strong. Likewise private sector in 1950-60 was very timid, risk aversive, not at all dynamic. So, for the first two decades, Indian democracy was kept together by visionary political class and extremely competent and incorruptible civil service. Now it has become reverse. Political class has become self-serving, provoking discord and violence. The bureaucracy has become timid, subservient to political class and often corrupt. But, the private sector and civil society are doing much better than they did before. You have a very active and creative civil society but our state is under performing. So your responsibility is greater and you will have much more exciting journey.

Thank You!

 

 

Q & A 

Q1. My question is about democracy. As we see representative democracy is not working as we want to work it. Can we see a direct democracy as a solution and what are the dangers of that?

I repeat what Winston Churchill said, whom I normally don’t quote positively. He said, ‘parliamentary democracy is the worst form government except for all the others’. So, I believe, and I have thought about this very seriously, representative democracy is not functioning optimally so we change it to something else. Firstly, how do we change it? Can we make it function better? I believe we can make it better in two ways. When we became independent in 1947, because we had just been divided into India and Pakistan, there was a lot of nervousness. Princely states were not yet been integrated. Hyderabad was an independent state, J&K was independent state so we needed a strong center. Now, as we become a more mature, confident and older republic, we are not nervous that we will break apart. So, we need to give more power to states that is already happening today. We have to take one step forward and give more power to the Gram Panchayat, district officers. This is the next step. This is not happening.

          In 50s, 60s and 70s, the PM was nervous about giving power to the CM that has changed. Today CMs are nervous to give power. MLAs do not want to give power to the bureaucrats. We have to have the third layer of democracy stronger and stronger which means that we also have to give financial power. In some states this is not happening. So that is the one way in which we can reform our system.

Q2. European concept that you talked about – one country, one language, one enemy, one religion, so notwithstanding the currently popular vulgar definition of nationalism, what can be the factors which can create that nationalistic feeling which will probably prevent the country from falling apart?

I gave a long lecture on this which is up on YouTube. It’s called patriotism vs. jingoism. I defined patriotism, what I called constitutional patriotism and I said jingoism is the one where to be good Indian, you have to be Hindu, speak Hindi and hate Pakistan. And why in jingoism on the rise? Because Congress party is in the hands of the Rahul Gandhi! How can congress party claim to speak on inheritance of freedom struggle? They are just a family firm! Firstly they don’t understand what Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru were. Those three showed us how to love your country with its richness and its diversities and be immersed in it, serve it without succumbing to this European mode of nationalism. Why is that tradition gone? So the reason is the congress party. Main vehicle of what I called constitutional nationalism has degenerated into the corrupt and useless family firm. Second reason is that in India, the Left is very influential. They shape the discourse – scholars, media people, lawyers, many professors, thinkers, great playwrights of Maharashtra have been leftist. The Left in India, what I call them ‘Antipatriotic Left’. They have very amiable features. They struggled, they worked for equality. In Kerala and in Bengal, there are no Hindu-Muslim riots. They have some very good features. They have no Swiss bank accounts but they are antipatriotic. All their heroes are foreigners. In the CPM annual convention, there are four pictures- Marx and Angles- two 19^th century German thinkers, Lenin and Stalin- two 20^th century Russian dictators, not a single Indian. I told my Marxist friend that ‘Bhagat Singh ko waha daal dijiye’. He is leftist like you. So it continues till present and JNU has been the battleground for this. I have said this in my talk. In 1960 they said Chairman Mao is our Chairman. Today they say Hugo Chavez is greater than Mahatma Gandhi. And their contempt for Gandhi is greater than the RSS’s contempt for Gandhi which was great enough. So I think these are failures of the liberals.

Q3: About Gandhi-Ambedkar debate

          This is a very important question and I have written about this is various places – the second volume of my Gandhi biography has hundreds of pages on this. But, let me make a few points. Firstly, the way social change happens in India or in any society, the way you move towards a more just society, is when there is expression from below and above. The closest comparison to caste discrimination in India is racial discrimination in North America. In the 19^th century, you had abolitionists like Fredrick Douglas who were black and you had Lincoln who was a white who said you have to end slavery & that led to the civil war. A 100 years later you had Martin Luther King’s movement and you had Lyndon Johnson and his white advisors who saw the moral force of King’s words and were willing to change the laws accordingly. So, change comes only when there is expression from below and above. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela needed FW de Klerk, who was a white president who told the national party, ‘abandon your racism’. That is very important. So, India needed Gandhi and Ambedkar both, at that stage, though they were adversaries, and we still need them both, because their tasks are unfinished. Now, unfortunately it has become polarized. The Amedkarites are obsessed with Gandhi and hating Gandhi but the Gandhians have also failed. The Gandhi’s movement in the 50’s should have carried on attacking untouchability; Vinoba Bhave & others didn’t recognize this. If Gandhi had lived for more 15 years, and he would have seen the caste discrimination, he would have organized a satyagraha. So the Gandhians failed, in the 50s and 60s. Not just the Gandhians, upper class Hindus failed. Upper caste Hindus who were swayed by Gandhi to open their temples went back to their old ways and then in the 60s the Ambedkarites organized – the Dalit Tiger movement happened. No major politician of the congress party or no major social worker of the Gandhian stand took the abolition of untouchability as a major part of his movement.

Gandhi and Ambedkar you can draw upon them in different ways, you don’t have to choose. A Dalit can say I am more inspired by Ambedkar, because Ambedkar showed me the way. Someone like me can say I am more inspired by Gandhi but I also admire Ambedkar. But, if you understand this fundamental principle of social change – effective social change happens when there is expression from below and above. Ultimately, the social movement from below has to be complemented with change from above or the system won’t change. Totally different example, in gender is great British political thinker John Stuart Mill, who in the 1870s wrote an article why women must have the vote. Few years later, women got the vote. Gandhiji himself was impressed by the suffragettes in London. So, it is a very important thing that – how to communicate that to radical Ambedkarite thinkers – but I think Gandhian’s also have to bear a share of the blame because they focused on many things in the 60s and 70s. Of course Marxists didn’t understand caste at all, but the Gandhians also – post Gandhi Gandhian movement, I mean if you read Vinoba, if you read JP, they didn’t think about caste issue. Gandhi understood it very clearly but not Nehru, not Patel. In fact, the only person among Gandhi’s contemporaries who understood this was, Mahadev Desai who died in 42, and to a limited extent Rajagopalachari. So I think these are some issues but, my view as someone who was born after both Gandhi and Ambedkar had died is that, it was very fortunate for us that we had both of them because both of them should not pass society in different ways, we need both of them to move towards a more just, more inclusive, more democratic society; we needed them then and we need them today.