Splitting India V

Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed in The Friday Times questions the role of Pakistan’s first Foreign Minister Dr. Zafrulla in the Pakistan story.

After facing a tirade from Indian readers I must now confront an even more powerful onslaught from within Pakistan. The point which has generated most commotion is that I did not mention that the Pakistan demand goes far beyond 1940. For an informed public, as I believe The Friday Times readers are, to be reminded of the long pedigree of the idea of Pakistan is an insult. Some imaginative writers date the origins of the Pakistan idea to the arrival of Muhammad bin Qasim; on the way Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, Aurangzeb Alamgir, Shah Waliullah and then in the 20^th century the Kheiri brothers and so on. Many other protagonists of such an idea figure in histories of the Pakistan idea. In the chapter entitled ‘Genesis of the Punjab Partition 1900-1914’ (ibid, pages 52-53) of my Punjab book, Iqbal and Rahmat Ali are quoted verbatim because they were the most important before the March 1940 resolution. By saying that the idea of Pakistan originated in the office of the viceroy, I was dramatizing an important transformation: from merely an idea of aspirants to a political project sanctioned by the main power in India: the British. I should have made that point clear.

Zafrulla presented the Muslim League case with great competence and conviction

However, the main body of criticisms and attacks on the Internet – emails, Facebook and Twitter – has been launched by the hero-worshippers and admirers of Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, Pakistan’s first foreign minister. To informed Pakistani readers it should not be surprising that Sir Zafrulla is demonized by some and lionized by others. In my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed (Oxford 2012, pages, 271-2), Zafrulla emerges as an outstanding counsel who pleaded the Muslim League’s case before the Punjab Boundary Commission pertaining to claims to territory in a partitioned Punjab. I have also presented the views of two leading Muslim Leaguers, Syed Ahmed Saeed Kirmani (Sunni) and Syed Afzal Haider (Shia) who attended the proceedings of the Boundary Commission. They give full marks to Zafrulla for presenting the Muslim League case with great competence and conviction. I even quote the counsel for the Congress Party, Mr Setelvad, who paid glowing tributes to Zafrulla for his excellent brief. I did this not as a favour to Zafrulla, but as a scholar I have to be faithful to the findings of my research.

Sir Zafrulla Khan speaks with Saudi Arabia’s Shah Faisal

The problem of Zafrulla’s followers is that they are fostering a myth about him that does not stand the scrutiny of objective research. Let me begin with the most superlative eulogy to Zafrulla by Mr Hussain Nadim who wrote under the title, ‘Do we really need Jinnah’s Pakistan’ in the Daily Times dated 22 December 2012:

“[T]here needs to be a realisation that Jinnah was the ‘lawyer’ for the case of Pakistan. He argued for it, and won. However, Jinnah was never the visionary or a revolutionary strategic thinker to guide the course of the nation. If anybody at all in Muslim League was a strategic thinker, it was Sir Zafarullah Khan, who was also the author of the Lahore Resolution, which for the first time chalked out the idea of Pakistan. Khan, however, belonged to the then Islamic sect of Ahmadis and thus his role over the years was kept secret, until recently when documents and letters written by Lord Linlithgow revealed the centrality of his role. Hence, there should be a little less stress on ‘Jinnah’s Pakistan’, because honestly, there is none; and scratching out Jinnah’s vision forcefully has only served to confuse the people and obfuscate the roadway to progress”.

Pakistan originated in the office of the Viceroy

In an overall homage to Sir Zafrulla on his death anniversary by Moahmmad Ahmad: ‘A forgotten hero: Mohammad Zafrullah Khan’ in the Daily Times of 1 September 2013, he describes Mr Khan as ‘one of the greatest heroes of Pakistan’. He goes on to list his services to Islamic countries and takes up his historic speeches on Kashmir and Palestine. With regard to the Lahore Resolution he writes: ‘Mr Khan’s greatest contribution to the cause of Indian Muslims is his drafting of the Lahore Resolution, which is the rallying point of our nationalism as our founding document’.

Sir Zafrulla With President Kennedy

However, one commentator wrote the following in the comments on my last article:

(The comment has been edited for clarity –TFT)

“Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed needs to read the correspondence between the Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, and Secretary of State for India, Lord Zetland, that took place in the year 1940. I read that correspondence, preserved in the Viceroy’s Journal about 8 years ago at the British Library in London (which now houses the All India Office Library). The first letter on the Lahore Resolution was written by the Viceroy to Lord Zetland on the 26th of March. He mentions very clearly that he did not want an All India Muslim League meeting in Lahore to go ahead in the wake of the Khaksar tragedy which had taken place just a few days before. Sir Sikander Hayat, Premier of Punjab at that time, tried to persuade the Viceroy to convince Jinnah to postpone the session but made it explicit that it should not be disclosed to Jinnah that the suggestion had come from Sikander, because if Jinnah learnt of the source of the suggestion he would not accept it. The Viceroy sent Sir Zafrullah Khan to persuade Jinnah to postpone the Lahore session in the wake of the law and order situation prevailing in the city. The viceroy in his letter of 26th May clearly states that ZK went and tried to persuade Jinnah who listened to him patiently but refused to postpone the meeting. So much for the influence of Viceroy or ZK on Jinnah that Dr.Ishtiaq mentions in his article”.

Sir Zafrulla in New York

It is to be noted that Mr Mohammad Ahmad has not mentioned the source on which he is basing his claim that Zafrulla drafted the Lahore Resolution. However, while Mr Nadim depicts Zafrulla as the “strategic thinker” who masterminded the Pakistan demand while Jinnah was merely the lawyer who pleaded the case of Pakistan, the commentator’s intervention effectively negates any role of Zafrulla and Linlithgow in the framing of the Lahore resolution. If at all these two played any role, according to the commentator, it was an unsuccessful attempt to dissuade Mr Jinnah from going ahead with the Lahore session of the Muslim League. The commentator gives the credit exclusively to Jinnah for the drafting and passing of the Lahore Resolution. Both claim to have read the same recent primary source material. So, who should we believe? Either Nadim or the commentator is dead wrong, or, both are. One can even wonder if this new information which the two gentlemen claim to have read is credible in its own right.

With regard to the source material I have used, it is Wali Khan’s, Facts are Facts (New Delhi: Vikas, 1987, pages 29-30). Wali Khan too has claimed that he sat in the British Library and researched the material on partition and found out that Linlithgow sent Zafrulla to tell the Muslim League to demand separate Muslim states.

Sir M. Zafrulla Khan talks with Sir Carl A. Berendsen, New Zealand, before the 46th plenary meeting of the Second Session of the United Nations General Assembly

If now, as many of his followers and admirers claim that Zafrulla did play the key role in the formulation of the Lahore resolution the question is, did he do so as a free agent? He was a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council and such a position should effectively preclude him saying something that would jeopardize British interests. If not Linlithgow then some other British agency must have given him a nod to go ahead.

Another possibility is that the spiritual leadership of his Ahmadiyya community approved of such an idea and not the British directly? Such a possibility poses serious problems if one relies on available primary source material on it. Consider the following report of the Punjab Governor Sir Henry Craik, which he sent to the Viceroy Linlithgow two days after the Lahore Resolution, was moved:

“I had an interesting talk this morning with Pir Akbar Ali, a Unionist member of our assembly, who belongs to the Ahmadiyya community…Pir Akbar Ali gave me two items of information, which may interest you. The Ahmadis, he said, have always considered the Khaksar Movement a dangerous one and not a single Ahmadi has joined it. The second item was that the Ahmadis as a body have not been allowed by the religious head of their movement to join the Muslim League. Akbar Ali himself has been allowed to join as a member of the Unionist Party for a term of six months only. The question whether his followers should be allowed to join the League is, I understand, shortly to be considered by the head of the community” (Carter, Punjab Politics, Strains of War, New Delhi 2005, page 101).

We can step back some years and consider another claim. It is that it was the efforts of the Ahmedis that Jinnah was brought back from Britain where he had settled and established a flourishing practice. There are counter claims that assert that Liaquat Ali Khan convinced Jinnah to return. Then we have those who say that it was Allama Iqbal who persuaded Jinnah to come back and lead the Muslims. Whose supplications actually convinced Mr Jinnah to return can be nothing more than mere speculation. With regard to the Ahmadi claim that they were in the forefront of the Pakistan movement the Munir Report does not uphold it. It states that the Ahmadis were wary and reluctant of the movement (presumably out of fear that they could be persecuted, which I think was a perfectly justified reason to hesitate) and after much prevarication it was only just before partition that the Ahmadi community reached the decision to support it (Munir Report, Lahore: Government Printing Press, 1954, page196).

I now present some additional criticisms of Zafrulla. Jinnah appointed him as the foreign minister of Pakistan. I am sure such a choice was based on his competence and brilliance, but the fact that he had powerful connections to Western leaders must also have played an important role. He was known as the Pet Indian. However, when Jinnah died on 11 September 1948, Zafrulla did not participate in his funeral prayers. The Munir Report testifies to that (page 199). Revisionist apologies have explained away Zafrulla’s decision by saying that since Shabbir Ahmed Usmani did not consider Ahmadis Muslims Zafrulla could not have offered prayers led by Usmani (Sunni-Deobandi).

From what I have heard, all sorts of Muslims took part in the public prayers arranged by the government and among them were Barelvis, Deobandis, Ahl-e-Hadith, Ahl-e-Quran and Shias, who ordinarily would prefer an alim of their own denomination to lead funeral prayers. They had no problem in standing behind Usmani because it was a very, very special occasion. Yet Zafrulla remained steadfast to the Ahmadiyya community’s practice of not taking part in such ceremonies because non-Ahmadis are not considered “Muslims” by the Ahmadis (Munir Report, page 199).

On the other hand, in the famous debate in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on the Objectives resolution in March 1949, Zafrulla supported its Islamic features. I have read the whole text of the debate. Allama Shabbir Ahmed Usmani spoke after Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. Zafrulla’s speech followed in which he deferred to the authority of Usmani. This happened at least half a year after the death of Jinnah. So Zafrulla has no problems speaking in support of a man behind whom he did not stand during the funeral rites of Jinnah! This was all politics. At that time the Cold War was raging and the Pakistani elite, which included Zafrulla, wanted Pakistan to take a categorical anti-secular stand and thus make credible its co-option in the anti-Soviet alignment in international politics.

If it is true that Zafrulla had no meaningful role in the drafting of the Lahore Resolution then the myth of Zafrulla as the great hero of Pakistan effectively bursts. A proper study of the role of Sir Zafrulla is needed in which all sides who have an opinion should be given a fair chance to present their views and the relevant official documents are examined and analysed.

A scathing criticism of Sir Zafrulla’s role exists among Pakistani Leftists

A scathing criticism of Sir Zafrulla’s role as Pakistan’s foreign minister exists among Pakistani Leftists. He is accused of having served imperialist interests rather than that of progressive Muslims during the Cold War. This is what Mian Iftikhar-ud-din said in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly:

”I am pleased to announce that Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan is leaving us. The House will join me in congratulating Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan on a rumoured Eisenhower Prize and Churchill Medal to him for having successfully and finally committed his country, in private at least if not in public, to the permanent slavery not only of British Imperialism but also of the rising powerful imperialism of the U.S.A. He has no need now to control our foreign affairs as in future we shall have no foreign affairs. Our foreign affairs will be dictated and controlled by Britain and even so by America. Sir Zafrullah will now, I understand, be entrusted to these great powers with the task of enslaving other Islamic countries…

It is hoped that as a practised hand and one who has acquired great prestige by having represented the biggest Muslim State of the world in international affairs, he will perform this task to the satisfaction of his employers and no doubt to the full detriment of the future of the Islamic and Asiatic States and will succeed in enslaving as certainly and permanently as he has enslaved his own unhappy land” (Abdullah Malik (ed), Selected Speeches and Statements of Mian Iftikhar-ud-din, Lahore: Nigarishat, 1970, pages 103-104).

Splitting India IV

Facing criticism from Indians and Pakistanis alike, Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed in The Friday Times tackles questions on the Hindu class system and religious nationalism  

As I argue my thesis that the partition of India, Bengal and Punjab was not necessarily the best option for Muslims – a point of view that in Pakistani nationalist historiography is inadmissible, to my very great surprise it has elicited quite bizarre reactions from some Indian readers. One of them, writing in the comments section after the publication of my second article dated 27 September 2013 considers me arguing my case in the same vein and wave-length as Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the head of the Jama’at-ud-Da’wah and formally of the defunct Lashkar-e-Tayyaba who advised Bollywood megastar Shahrukh Khan to migrate to Pakistan to rid himself of the cloud of suspicion he was under in India, despite being one of their most admired and loved artistes! This commentator asserts that the Indian constitution suffices to protect the rights of Muslims.

The partition lent legitimacy to religious nationalism in both India and Pakistan

May I add that Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar went public some years ago over their vain attempts to buy an apartment in Mumbai, the reason being that they are Muslims. The great thespian Dilip Kumar has been hounded by Shiv Sena for years. I need not say that these are very high profile Indian Muslims. The partition of India rendered every Indian Muslim a suspect for rightwing politicians. I have explained this at length in my earlier essays on this theme.

The architect of India’s secular constitution

Another gentleman found my article accusative because I drew attention to the vulnerable position and depressed status of Indian Muslims. To my third article in the series dated 5 October 2013, one commentator alleges that “the article reeks of hatred and prejudice against Hindus. Don’t know where to start.” He goes on to claim he has never heard about Manusmitri!

I can help him to start with the mid-1940s, with a scene described vividly by Mr Dina Nath Malhotra, son of the publisher of the notorious tract, Rangeela Rasul. The scene is from Nisbet Road Lahore, an upwardly mobile middle-class Hindu locality close to the heart of pre-partition Lahore’s cultural centre: Lakshmi Chowk and Royal Park:

“During the summer months in Lahore, young Hindu volunteers from good families used to haul trolleys of cool water, scented with kewra and sandal, on Nisbet Road and other areas, offering water in silver tumblers to every passer-by with courtesy. But it was limited to Hindus only. When any Muslim, even if decently dressed, came forward to get a glass of water, he was given water in a specially reserved inferior glass, the water being taken out from a bamboo funnel more than a yard long. This was most humiliating and repulsive. Such acts effectively made the Muslims feel discriminated against. Under the circumstances, it was inevitable that the exhortations of Jinnah had a telling effect on the mind of the Muslim community” (Malhotra, Dare to Publish, New Delhi, 2004: 59).

With regard to the Indian constitution let me say that a gap between a constitution as a theoretical instrument of rights and the actual practice of states has always existed, though over time if the political system adheres to constitutionalism then that gap narrows or even closes. I will give only a few examples. The US constitution (1787) famously declared that all men were created equal and endowed with equal rights, but till the mid-1960s racism was endemic in the southern states. African-Americans had to wage a protracted struggle to be included in the category of equal citizens. The French Revolution (1789) and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen ushered in the first democratic revolution in Western Europe, but it was not until 1945 that French women were granted the right to vote. The English arrogate themselves over the Magna Carta (1215) as the first constitutional instrument limiting the power of the king, which in 1769 was further strengthened by the English Bill of Rights but it was not until 1928 that the right to vote was granted to all men and women in Britain. As late as the 19^th century a child of 12 caught stealing a loaf of bread could be hanged under British law.

The Khilafat Movement temporarily brought Hindus and Muslims togther

The Indian constitution is indeed a great document and it goes to the full credit of the government of Jawaharlal Nehru that he helped get the evil practice of untouchability declared a penal offence in 1955. However, it would be naïve to imagine or believe that more than two thousand years of socialization into the doctrine of pollution and caste which divides Hindus into strict hierarchy no longer informs social attitudes and behavior. Attacks on Dalits take place all the time. There is a documentary film by K. Stalin on how widespread is the persecution and humiliation of Dalits in India. It is available on You Tube and anyone can see it. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has observed:

Even after 60 years of constitutional and legal protection and support, there is still social discrimination against Dalits in many parts of the country… Dalits have faced a unique discrimination in our society that is fundamentally different from the problems of minority groups in general. The only parallel to the practice of untouchability was apartheid. (28 December 2006, The Guardian, UK).

With regard to Indian Muslims, no doubt there is nothing in the Indian constitution which disqualifies them from enjoying citizenship on an equal basis with other Indians, but what do the facts tell us? In my article I have referred to the rabid anti-Muslim propaganda of Hindu extremist organizations such as the RSS and Shiv Sena, and I might as well add to that list the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal who together form the notorious nexus of Sangh Parivar, who constantly demonize Muslims as fifth columnists.

Indian Muslims felt that they were subjected to systematic discrimination

I also referred in my earlier article to the 2006 Sachar Report which found that Indian Muslims as a whole were a depressed community. It also reported that the Indian Muslims felt that they were subjected to systematic discrimination. Further, I drew attention to the infamous attack on the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the carnage of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Then what about the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984? It is clearly reminiscent of scenes that were enacted in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. An Indian friend of mine, a Sikh who served in the highest position in the Indian Foreign Service had to run for his life and sought refuge in a foreign embassy to save his life. I believe that the celebrated Sikh writer Khushwant Singh had to do the same. Let me develop this point even further. Attacks on Christians have also been taking place of and on. The horrendous attack on Father Staines and his family is one such case but not the only one.

In civilized societies there is no scope for mob revenge attacks

Of course one can make a case about the slaughter of Muslims in 2002 and of Sikhs in 1984 as reactions to terrorism that some Indian Muslims, possibly with the backing of the Pakistani ISI, and of Khalistani Sikhs had carried out, but in civilized societies there is no scope for mob revenge attacks and with the state being complicit in it. Those guilty have to be put on trial and if found guilty, punished in accordance with the law of the land.

Once again, I set forth my argument: the partition lent legitimacy to religious nationalism. Pakistan succumbed to it rather easily and naturally despite the famous 11 August 1947 speech of Mr Jinnah. The situation today is so bad that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan who till recently were being damned by the Pakistani media and politicians as RAW agents have now been conferred respectfully as “stakeholders” in the Pakistani state project! India will touch nadir if voters elect Narendra Modi to the same office which was once occupied by Jawaharlal Nehru who led India towards democracy, secularism and progressive social reform.

It is the genius of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru that they opted for secular democracy

I am convinced that in India most people are good and decent and common folk are able to accommodate religious and ethnic differences if given a chance. In fact one of the greatest strengths of Hinduism is that it has always let other religions go on with their belief systems. It has even tried to co-opt religious and spiritual leaders into its own traditions. The whole world can learn from this great capacity of Hinduism. On the other hand, Hinduism and Hindus must understand that the caste system effectively defeated any serious sense of community amongst them and it is because of that weakness that a handful of foreigners could come and exploit the divisions within Indian society and establish their rule. M J Akbar’s Siege Within (1985) has a long history and pedigree extending far back in time. It is the genius of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru that they opted for secular democracy and thus a foundation was laid for not only formal democracy but also substantive democracy. A reformed and progressive Hinduism, just like Western European Christianity would be a lovely cultural system, but before that happens a great deal of effort is needed to move in that direction.

Narendra Modi, widely tipped to be elected to the same office which was once occupied by Jawaharlal Nehru

Let me take up another matter on which people want my response: the Khilafat Movement (1919-24) and Gandhiji’s support for it. It was launched by anti-imperialist Sunni Muslims to protest the ruthless policy of the victorious allies, especially British Prime Minister Lloyd George, to dismember the Ottoman Empire. When the war broke out, Indian Muslims were confronted with a veritable moral and religious crisis: how to continue associating themselves religiously with the caliphate while simultaneously maintaining good relations with their British rulers. A way out was found by agreeing to remain loyal to the British on the understanding that the caliphate will be spared and sovereignty over Muslim holy places in the Middle East continue to be vested in the Ottoman sultan.

However, an Arab revolt in 1916, masterminded by British agents such as the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, under the leadership of Sharif Hussein of Mecca hastened the defeat of the Turks – they would have lost otherwise too, but that is another matter. Indian Muslims felt cheated. Consequently many stepped forward to mobilize support for Turkey. Gandhiji was looking for an opportunity to bring Muslims into the fold of the nationalist movement – since the 1909 separate electorates system Indian Muslims were alienated from the freedom struggle; exceptions were of course there too. On the other hand, the Muslim felt that without the support of Hindu leaders and masses they could not challenge British authority. Gandhi declared the Khilafat cause just and offered his support. He was invited to join the All-India Khilafat Committee that was set up in 1919. He served for a while as its president.

Consequently, a genuine nationalist upsurge took place in which Muslims and Hindus joined ranks at all levels against colonial rule. Som Anand, a Lahori Hindu remembers its positive effects in the following words:

“[T]he first current of change was felt during the Khilafat movement in the early twenties. Though the spirit of Hindu-Muslim amity received many reverses in later years, at the social level the urban elite had changed its code of conduct for the better. This was due, in part, to Western education. What this change meant was evident in my father’s attitude. When he was young, my mother used to recall, he would come back to change his clothes if a Muslim had touched him while walking in the bazaar; but during my childhood in Model Town, my father had several Muslim friends and he considered my mother’s inhibitions a sign of backwardness” (Lahore: A Lost City, Lahore: Vanguard  1998: 3-5).

I therefore pose this question: Did support for the Khilafat movement generate Mullah power? Not that I know of. For a while radical Muslims were in the streets and some commotion took place, but it petered out on its own. Gandhiji’s politics was meant to bring Hindus, Muslims and all other communities into one fold. To support a cause that was dear to Indian Muslims was to act in the best spirits of solidarity with a community he wanted to be part of a grand Indian nation of equal men and women.

I think I should be winding up this series, or else it will go on and on. So, other aspects and details will have to wait for another round of essays. However, I feel obliged to explain, one, how British policy impacted the partition process; and two, where do we go from here. As a social and political scientist I am always interested in proposing measures that can be useful to policy makers.

I do apologize for addressing Madam Mayawati as Shrimati, which is a designation for a married lady. It was just a slip. I knew she never married. I was just trying to be respectful.

Another inaccuracy in my last article occurred with regard to the issue of universal adult franchise. It now seems that both Congress and the Muslim League were in its favour. This then renders the issue of separate electorates all the more meaningless because that would have effectively ensured Muslim majority in the north-western and north-eastern zones of India, so Hindu domination would become impossible. Even under the 11 per cent restricted vote the Muslim majority was never in danger, but with universal adult franchise any disadvantage to it deriving from property and educational qualifications was out of the question. The Motilal Nehru Report was thus the best solution for everyone.

Since I have shifted recently to Lahore from Stockholm all my books have been left behind except those I need to teach some courses; hence the mistake in not checking the Muslim League position. In any case, it is interesting to note that the British had granted universal adult franchise to its Sri Lankan colony already in 1931. Not granting it to India then must have been determined by other considerations.

Splitting India III

Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed in The Friday Times continues his myth-busting series on the partition of India, Punjab and Bengal -  

A reader has pointed out that in my first article dated 20 September, I had given the wrong Hindu–Muslim ratio: 7: 4. I regret this error and it should be 9: 4, though even that is questionable as the official statistics from the 1941 census for the whole of India including the hundreds of princely states return 24.9 percentage of Muslim population. In the British administered areas the Muslim percentage went up slightly. In any case, the Muslims were between one-fourth and one-third of the total population of India.

Another reader has argued that Mr Jinnah was an ardent nationalist and it was Gandhi and Nehru who antagonized him and therefore they bear the responsibility for what happened later. This type of blame-game is the favourite haunt of nationalist historians whose heroes and villains are all too well-known. I am a political scientist and although I am examining the history of the partition of India I am not doing it as a historian. I do feel a bit sad when I am described as a historian. For me the partition of India and of Bengal and Punjab are processes with both intended and unintended consequences. No doubt leaders at the top and the games going on at the level of high politics played a very important role in determining the direction history would move in and it moved towards partition. But leaders are embedded in social and political webs and are trapped by their own doings and moves. This is what I proffer in the theory I have propounded to explain the partition of the Punjab in my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed. For me the partition of India, Bengal and Punjab is inexplicable without British strategic interests being brought into the analysis.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah leading a prayer

Let me state my case very, very candidly – the demand for the partition of India and the creation of Muslim states was originally masterminded by Lord Linlithgow who had his views conveyed to the Muslim League in great secrecy through Sir Muhammad Zafrulla, who was a member of the Viceroy Council and one of the most trusted friends of Great Britain. From 23 March 1940 onwards, the Muslim League never wavered even for a moment from its demand for separate states for the Muslims of India (which soon afterwards crystallized around one state, Pakistan) and anyone who seriously reads the speeches of Mr Jinnah would have no problem in identifying that he consistently and constantly laid stress on the Hindu-Muslim dichotomy. He was always ready for a peaceful settlement, but for him that was to partition India on a religious basis.

Anyone who has read the speeches of Mr Jinnah seriously knows that he consistently laid stress on Hindu-Muslim dichotomy

The truth is that two Congress decisions proved to be colossal mistakes: resigning the ministries in September 1939 and then the ill-fated Quit India movement of August 1942 whose chief merit was that the Congress was nowhere around to make a difference while the Muslim League filled that space and secured a mandate from the Muslims of India for a separate state. Had the Congress not earned the contempt and wrath of the British who considered the lack of support during the war as a betrayal that was tantamount to treason, the course of history would have been very different.

However, we need to step back some years to understand where things began to go wrong before they became impossible to repair. In this regard, I would like to draw attention to the 1928 Motilal Nehru Report. There was broad participation in its preparation. From the Punjab, Maulvi Abdul Qadir, grandfather of ex-foreign minister Mr Khurshid Mahmud Qasuri, took part in its preparation. It had three main elements: there will be no state religion; men and women will have equal rights as citizens; and India will be a federation with a strong centre. The conflict between Mr Jinnah and the Congress leaders was over weightage and separate electorates. Such problems can be made sense of only if one assumes that the right to vote would be restricted on the basis of property ownership and education. Till 1947 roughly only 11 percent had the right to vote in India. But if instead universal adult franchise had been adopted, as the Congress proposed – I have not seen any Muslim League document supporting universal adult franchise – the Muslim majorities in north-western and north-eastern India would have been permanent and irrevocable and thus the advantage the Hindus enjoyed in these areas because of greater ownership of property would have become redundant and obsolete. Scholars have not looked into this aspect of the conflict between Mr Jinnah and the Congress leadership.

Dr Ambedkar, a lower caste Hindu was made Chairman of the Constitution Comittee of India

Now, once all men and women are given equal citizenship rights theological Hinduism becomes a dead horse. It is the end of the dreadful Manusmriti, which apologetic Hindus now tell me was never the only social code that defined stratification of Hindu caste hierarchy. To them I say other regional codes were even worse (except some anti-caste remnants of the Bhakti-inspired and other such non-conformist movements) such as those in some areas of South India where to see an untouchable meant one got polluted. So, those unfortunate creatures had to come out only when night had fallen to the villages, if they had to. Hinduism has over the centuries lost members to other religions which in principle offered greater equality to them and that include Islam, Christianity and Sikhism and then Buddhism after Dr Ambedkar in 1956 decided to convert with thousands of his followers to that religion.

But was the Congress Party at any stage making a case for a Hindu India based on the caste system? I have not found any evidence of it but would welcome any corrections. In this regard the most vilified Congress leader on the caste question is undoubtedly Gandhi. As Perry Anderson has pointed out he did speak about the righteousness of the caste system on a number of occasions. But, there is the counterfactual too. In 1920, Gandhi spoke at the Harijan Congress and this is what he said:

‘We describe the government (British) as Satanic because of some of its policies but what restraint have we exercised in oppressing our untouchable brethren? We force them on their knees. We make them rub their noses in the dust. With red-shot eyes indicating our anger we force them out of railway compartments. We have become untouchables for the British because we have created untouchables in our own midst. The fact is that those who make others slaves, suffer the most themselves because of slavery. If I am to be born again then I would like to be born an untouchable so that I can experience and share their pain, problems and humiliation and then an occasion may come when I can convince them to struggle for their liberation. 

A Dalit, Shrimati Mayawati has been elected the chief minister of UP four times

The original book is in English and I have it in Stockholm. Here I have translated it from the Urdu translation, Gandhiji kee Ghair Mamuli Qyadat’ by Ambassador Pascal Alain Nazereth, Delhi: Urdu Academy, 2013. Here I find Gandhi practically subverting orthodox Hinduism, and it is not surprising that the Hindu extremists made three attempts on his life before getting him finally in January 1948.

There is no doubt that Dr Ambedkar was very suspicious of Gandhiji. He felt Gandhi had blackmailed him into accepting that his community was an integral part of the Hindu social system and thus deprived the Dalits of separate electorates. I would not challenge Dr Ambedkar’s assertion, but would like to add the following, once again from my vantage point of a political scientist. Unlike the Muslims who could press for separation from the rest of India in places where they were in majority – in north-western and north-eastern India the Dalits were everywhere but nowhere in a majority. They were roughly 15 to 20 per cent in all the regions of India. In political terms, for such a community the only way to find relief is through vertical movement upwards and not horizontal movement in a separatist direction. Therefore the 1932 Poona Pact between Gandhi and Ambedkar was the best option for them – unless one believed that the British would remain in India forever and take care of their interests.

People who assail Gandhiji have to explain something else too. Dr Ambedkar was never a member of the Congress Party and in fact remained hostile to Indian freedom under the leadership of that Party. However, he was made the chairman of the Constitution Committee. How? First of all the Constituent Assembly elected in 1946 had a clear Congress majority which became even greater when the Muslim League members shifted to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly after the partition. Reportedly Gandhiji suggested Ambedkar’s name to chair the constitution committee. Nehru reacted by saying it was not possible to make him the chairman when he was not a member of the Congress Party, but had opposed it all his life. Gandhiji then said, ‘Jawaharlal, are we making the constitution for India or for the Congress Party?’ That settled the matter. Now even if this story is a fabrication someone has to explain how Dr Ambedkar could have become the chairman of the constitution committee if the Congress Party had opposed him.

But Gandhi’s greatest passion was Hindu-Muslim unity. Here again I have found both rightwing critics and left-liberal detractors saying that he was a fraud. I have with me a recorded interview with Syed Ahmed Saeed Kirmani who attended one of the Morning Prayer meetings of Gandhi which began with a recitation from the Quran, followed by similar reading from the Bible and the Gita. Mr Kirmani said that he was profoundly touched by that experience and he found it very genuine. I need not remind the readers that Mr Kirmani was a student leader of the Muslim Student Federation which was the student wing of the Muslim League. He has remained convinced that it was important for Pakistan to come into being. That is his right and I respect it.

Even Mr Jinnah called Gandhi’s sacrifice a great act of humanity

Gandhiji was simply trying to establish the equality of all faiths and one God at the centre of their worship. If he was doing this all as a trick to make the Muslims agree to keep India united then that façade should have ended when despite his best efforts India was partitioned and India and Pakistan emerged as two antagonist neighbouring states. All his efforts had been in vain. There was no need then to go on fasting to ensure that Pakistan should have its due share of common colonial kitty and that Muslims who wanted to remain in India be given all the protection that any Indian citizen was entitled to. The homage paid to Gandhiji after his assassination on 30 January 1948 in the various Pakistani provincial legislative assemblies and in the Constituent Assembly is there for all to read. In Aftar Singh Bhasin’s 10-volume collection of India-Pakistan documents, India-Pakistan Relations, 1947-2007: A Documentary Study, New Delhi: Geetika Publishers; 2012, those proceedings can easily be read. Even Mr Jinnah called his sacrifice a great act of humanity and in the Constituent Assembly reference he graciously did not describe Gandhi as a great leader of the Hindu community. Gandhi died for the rights of those Muslims who had remained in India and there are very few examples in world history where someone gives his life for the community he is supposed to have been an enemy of.

I therefore do not find the Congress Party at any point in time seeking to impose a Hindu state on India. Once when Gandhi was asked what really Ram Raj was he said that there was no historical record of a government run by Ram, so it was only a metaphor for a good and chaste government. The only example he could think of a government based on Ram Raj was the governments of Hazrat Abu Bakr and Hazrat Umar. This statement is mentioned by Allama Shabbir Ahmed Usmani in the debate on the Objectives Resolution of 7 March 1949. I will be looking at that debate too in a forthcoming article in this series. Furthermore, Gandhiji said categorically that India would be a secular state with equal rights for all men and women. In fact the introduction of reservations in the Indian constitution for the Dalits and Adivasis (aboriginals) in my opinion is a major contribution to constitutional theory. It was all because of the the Gandhi-Ambedkar Poona Pact of 1932.

A Dalit, Shrimati Mayawati, has been elected four times as the chief minister of the biggest Indian state of Uttar Pradesh – the same population strength as Pakistan. From an orthodox Hindu point of view this is sacrilege; this is blasphemy. A Dalit should never have a right to vote and to have it on a par with a Brahmin is effectively a negation of the logic of the caste system. Imagine if all the Indian Muslims were also in a united India. It would have hastened the end of the caste system even quicker. No doubt the RSS and other rightwing Hindus, while hypocritically condemning Gandhi and Nehru for agreeing to the partition of India, are quite pleased that a very large portion of Muslims opted out of it and therefore their system of oppression can continue somewhat longer.

There is a philosophical debate as to whether by bringing religion into politics Gandhi created the basis for different sorts of religion-based nationalism. I shall be looking at it too, but once again all this is based on a flawed premise, which is that before he brought religion into politics, it was excluded from it. This is not true at all. The Hindu, Muslim and Sikh revivalist movements predate the emergence of Gandhi by at least 40-50 years. The Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj: Deoband’s Reshmi Rumal movement, the emergence of the Ahmadiyya movement with its theology radically breaking with Sunni and Shia beliefs and the response of the Sunni and Shia ulema to it; the conflicts within Sikhism over the control of the Gurdwaras and between the Sikhs and the Arya Samajists – all are pointers towards religion having very much arrived in Indian politics and in a very big way. The revivals were in fact religious nationalisms entering politics but in divisive ways. Gandhiji tried to convert such developments into an inclusive, essentially secular platform which sought to bring all faiths into a shared humanity. 

The politics of quota and merit

Suhrith Parthasarathy in The Hindu

There is unquestionable value in a general policy of reservation because it attacks caste-based inequities that have proved so damaging to our society; but through an ever-expanding scheme of reservation, we have lost sight of what our aims were in the first place

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s election manifesto, released on April 7, 2014, and its opponents’ reaction to the proposal, exemplifies the level of political debate in India today. In spite of an element of truth in claims that the manifesto is an impressionist’s version, the document nonetheless departs on certain crucial, philosophical issues. But, such is our reluctance to engage on matters of first principle that these departures are rarely, if ever, contested with anything resembling an intellectual vigour. Take, for instance, the issue of reservation. While the Indian National Congress and most other political parties have proposed detailed policy measures, including the prospect of reservation for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the private sector, the BJP’s manifesto is curiously silent on the issue. Even the promise contained in its 2009 declaration to introduce reservation for the economically weaker general class finds no mention in this term’s version. It is likely that this decision is a product of electoral strategy. But its failure to clarify its vision is nonetheless symptomatic of a larger malaise in the Indian political sphere: a mistrust of debate subsumed by core issues of moral concern.

Arguments on reservation

The Congress’ response is also familiar: the manifesto’s silence on reservation, according to the Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has been designed to “poison” voters with a majoritarian approach. If pressed further, Mr. Chidambaram ordinarily would tell us that affirmative action is not necessarily irreconcilable with merit. Yet, what he will not tell us is why the Congress’ approach to reservation is, in the party’s belief, the only means to fulfil the fundamental right to equality. And, he will also not tell us what the Congress intends to achieve through its reservation policies: are they aimed at ensuring more than mere formal equality (which would ensure that all castes achieve equal status) or are they a means to one day achieve a society that is completely rid of the caste system?

The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s answer to questions of whether there ought to be reservation along caste lines is similarly devious. He sings the same tune/s that he uses to counter any issue of economic inequality. According to him, the development and growth of the economy will bring with it a concomitant rise in both educational and employment opportunities, making the question of any community seeking reservation moot. But both Mr. Chidambaram’s claims about merit and Mr. Modi’s arguments about development skirt the real issue.

It is a matter of well-chronicled fact that the social and economic inequities prevalent in Indian society transcend ordinary conception. Any reasonable thinker would tell us that, as a matter of duty, our country’s resources ought to be dispersed evenly across all classes. But the argument on reservation, today, as evinced by Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Modi’s public statements, is no longer about such considerations. The questions, therefore, are: how did we get here, and what do we do now?

Expanding reservation policy

At its inception, the Constitution envisaged very limited reservation. Articles 15 and 16, which today occupy the bedrock on which our entire policy of affirmative action rests, were meant to entrench a system where no discrimination was permissible on grounds of race, religion, caste, etc. Even clause 4 to Article 16, which permitted reservation in public employment for any backward class of citizens, was viewed as subservient to larger goals contained in clauses 1 and 2. Any such programme for reservation justified under Article 16(4) had to be shown to further the objective of ensuring equality of opportunity to all citizens. But over time, the original philosophical outlook toward affirmative action has waned.

Now, as a matter of a very specific policy of the state, not only are backward classes of citizens often identified solely on the basis of their castes, but reservation has also stretched well beyond the realm of public employment, at its first instance. These actions of the State have been brought forth either in response to particular, contrarian judgments of the Supreme Court, or in furtherance of judgments supporting the state’s larger outlook, according these programmes a constitutional sanction.

When the Supreme Court in State of Madras v. Champakam Dorairajan (1951) struck down a government policy seeking to arrange admission to engineering and medical colleges based on divisions of caste and religion, the government’s response was to amend the Constitution. Article 15(4) was introduced to allow the State to make special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the SCs and STs. Yet, this amendment did not produce an immediate change in the Supreme Court’s thinking. The court continued to hold, as it did for example in M.R. Balaji v. State of Mysore (1963), that policies of reservation are exceptional measures, requiring strict constitutional defence. It also ruled that classification of backward classes of citizens could not be based solely on the caste of the citizen; such policies, wrote Justice Gajendragadkar, might “contain the vice of perpetuating the caste themselves.”

However, in 1975, the Supreme Court finally acquiesced to the state’s ever-expanding reservation policy. In a judgment that would have widespread consequences, the court ruled that Article 16(4) wasn’t as much an exception to the general rule contained in clause 1, as it was an integral component of the right to equality, properly understood (State of Kerala v. N.M. Thomas). In other words, Article 16(1), it was held, permitted classification on the basis of caste to achieve its broad goal: equality of opportunity for each citizen, as an individual. This was further validated in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992), by a nine-judge bench, which ruled that the Constitution permitted backward classes to be identified on the basis of caste. In so holding, the court provided the government the jurisprudential basis for formulating sweeping policies on reservation.

Through a series of constitutional amendments, beginning in 1995, Parliament allowed the state to make provisions for reservation in matters of promotion to SCs and STs, to carry forward any vacancies created through a failure to fill-up the reserved category from one year to the following year, and to provide specially for Other Backward Classes or SCs and STs in matters of admission to educational institutions, including in private institutions. Each of these amendments and the laws made to enforce their aims (including reservation in favour of the so-called “other backward classes”) was challenged at various stages before the Supreme Court. But, the Supreme Court, after providing Parliament the legal justification for its general policy on reservation, could not now strike down the laws that emanated as a consequence.

Political discourse vs. debate

Apart from holding these amendments to be in consonance with the Constitution’s basic structure, the court also ruled in these cases that the laws made in furtherance of these amendments, including the identification of Other Backward Classes on the basis of caste, were valid. What’s more, it found the doctrine of creamy layer, which, in principle, disallowed benefits applicable to certain groups based on their economic status, which they would have otherwise been entitled to as members of a certain caste, as inapplicable to SCs and STs. These decisions, in M. Nagraj v. Union of India and Ashoka Kumar Thakur v. Union of India, are a product of a sustained change in the court’s jurisprudential thinking on the subject. But it ought to be asked: how does the exclusion of SCs and STs from the doctrine of creamy layer fit with the purported objectives?

Unfortunately, neither the Supreme Court nor our Parliamentarians are willing to engage with these fundamental issues. There is unquestionable value in a general policy of reservation because it attacks caste-based inequities that have proved so damaging to our society; but through an ever-expanding scheme of reservation, we have lost sight of what our aims were in the first place. We, therefore, need to address the debate at a more basic level.

We need to ask ourselves, once again, whether it is equality of opportunity that we strive for, or whether we want to rid our society of the caste system. If indeed the reservation policies are aimed at achieving both these ideals, we ought to be shown proof of how the present policies are working. If Other Backward Classes have to be equated with SCs and STs, the state ought to empirically prove why the doctrine of creamy layer should be applicable to the former and not to the latter, and how such thinking links to the larger goal of ensuring a supposed equality of opportunity. We also need to ask ourselves whether these policies, as Justice Gajendragadkar suggested in 1963, have the effect of perpetuating the caste system.

Regrettably, our political discourse appears unsuited for genuine debate on such questions. If the BJP supports a change in policy, it is its bounden duty to tell us what such new policy would be, and why it would work. If the Congress believes its present policy is effective, it ought to show us how the policy fulfils the Constitution’s ideals. Instead, we are left meandering in the politics of quota and merit. Our most ingrained social inequities are, in the process, further entrenched. And as a result, the abstract ideal of equality, which the Constitution guarantees, continues to wither toward insignificance.

(Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate in the Madras High Court.)

"We Need Ambedkar--Now, Urgently..."

Saba Naqvi's interview of Arundhati Roy in Outlook India

In 1936, Dr B.R. Ambedkar was asked to deliver the annual lecture by the Hindu reformist group, the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal (Forum for Break-up of Caste) in Lahore. When the hosts received the text of the speech, they found the contents “unbearable” and withdrew the invitation. Ambedkar then printed 1,500 copies of his speech at his own expense and it was soon translated into several languages. Annihilation of Caste would go on to have a cult readership among the Dalit community, but remains largely unread by the privileged castes for whom it was written.

Ambedkar’s landmark speech has now been carefully annotated and reprinted. What will certainly draw contemporary public attention to it is the essay written as an introduction by the Booker prize-winning author Arundhati Roy, titled The Doctor and the Saint.
Almost half of the 400-page book is Roy’s essay, the other half Annihilation of Caste. Roy writes about caste in contemporary India before getting into the Gandhi-Ambedkar stand-off. Taking off from what Ambedkar described as “the infection of imitation”, the domino effect of each caste dominating the ones lower down in the hierarchy, Roy says, “The ‘infection of imitation’, like the half-life of a radioactive atom, decays exponentially as it moves down the caste ladder, but never quite disappears. It has created what Ambedkar describes as the system of ‘graded inequality’ in which even the ‘low is privileged as compared with lower. Each class being privileged, every class is interested in maintaining the system’”.

However, the thrust of Roy’s powerful but disturbing essay deals with her exploration of the Gandhi-Ambedkar debate, and the man deified as the father of the nation does not come off well in this book. She writes: “Ambedkar was Gandhi’s most formidable adversary. He challenged him not just politically or intellectually, but also morally. To have excised Ambedkar from Gandhi’s story, which is the story we all grew up on, is a travesty. Equally, to ignore Gandhi while writing about Ambedkar is to do Ambedkar a disservice, because Gandhi loomed over Ambedkar’s world in myriad and un-wonderful ways.”

The Doctor and the Saint, your introduction to this new, annotated edition of Dr Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, is also a deeply disturbing critique of Gandhi, especially to those of us for whom Gandhi is a loved and revered figure.

Yes, I know. It wasn’t easy to write it either. But in these times, when all of us are groping in the dark, despairing, and unable to understand why things are the way they are, I think revisiting this debate between Gandhi and Ambedkar, however disturbing it may be for some people, however much it disrupts old and settled patterns of thought, will actually, in the end, help illuminate our path. I think Annihilation of Caste is absolutely essential reading. Caste is at the heart of the rot in our society. Quite apart from what it has done to the subordinated castes, it has corroded the moral core of the privileged castes. We need Ambedkar—now, urgently.

Why should Gandhi figure so prominently in a book about Ambedkar? How did that come about?

Ambedkar was Gandhi’s most trenchant critic, not just politically and intellectually, but also morally. And that has just been written out of the mainstream narrative. It’s a travesty. I could not write an introduction to the book without addressing his debate with Gandhi, something which continues to have an immense bearing on us even today.

Caste is at the heart of the rot in our society. Quite apart from what it has done to the subordinated castes, it has corroded the moral core of the privileged castes. We need to take Ambedkar seriously.

Annihilation of Caste is the text of a speech that Ambedkar never delivered. When the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal, an offshoot of the Arya Samaj, saw the text and realised Ambedkar was going to launch a direct attack on Hinduism and its sacred texts, it withdrew its invitation. Ambedkar publi­shed the text as a pamphlet. Gandhi published a response to it in his magazineHarijan. But this exchange was only one part of a long and bitter conflict between the two of them...when I say that Ambedkar has been written out of the narrative, I’m not suggesting that he has been igno­red; on the contrary, he is given a lot of attention—he’s either valorised as the ‘Father of the Constitution’ or ghettoised and then praised as a “leader of the untouchables”. But the anger and the passion that drove him is more or less airbrushed out of the story. I think that if we are to find a way out of the morass that we find ourselves in at present, we must take Ambedkar seriously. Dalits have known that for years. It’s time the rest of the country caught up with them.



Have you always held these views about Gandhi, or did you discover new aspects to him as you explored him vis-a-vis Ambedkar?

I am not naturally drawn to piety, particularly when it becomes a political manifesto. I mean, for heaven’s sake, Gandhi called eating a “filthy act” and sex a “poison worse than snake-bite”. Of course, he was prescient in his understanding of the toll that the Western idea of modernity and “development” was going to take on the earth and its inhabitants. On the other hand, his Doctrine of Trusteeship, in which he says that the rich should be left in possession of their wealth and be trusted to use it for the welfare of the poor—what we call Corporate Social Responsibility today—cannot possibly be taken seriously. His attitude to women has always made me uncomfortable. But on the subject of caste and Gandhi’s attitude towards it, I was woolly and unclear. Reading Annihilation of Caste prompted me to read Ambedkar’s What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. I was very disturbed by that. I then began to read Gandhi—his letters, his articles in the papers—tracing his views on caste right from 1909 when he wrote his most famous tract, Hind Swaraj. In the months it took me to research and write The Doctor and the Saint I couldn’t believe some of the things I was reading. Look—Gandhi was a complex figure. We should have the courage to see him for what he really was, a brilliant politician, a fascinating, flawed human being—and those flaws were not to do with just his personal life or his role as a husband and father. If we want to celebrate him, we must have the courage to celebrate him for what he was. Not some ima­gined, constructed idea we have of him.

You could be accused of selectively picking out quotes from his writing to suit your own imagined, constructed idea of Gandhi....

When a man leaves behind 98 volumes of his Collected Works, what option does anybody have other than to be selective? Of course I have been selective, as selective as everybody else has been. And of course, those choices say a lot about the politics of the person who has done the selecting. My brief was to write an introduction to Anni­hilation of Caste. Reading Ambed­kar made me realise how large Gandhi loomed in Ambedkar’s universe. When I read Gandhi’s pronoun­cements supporting the caste system, I wondered how his doctrine of non-violence and satyagraha could rest so comfortably on the foundation of a system which can be held in place only by the permanent threat of violence, and the frequ­ent application of unimaginable violence. I grew curious about how Gandhi even came to be called a Mahatma.

I found that the first time he was publicly called Mahatma was in 1915, soon after he returned to India after spending 20 years in South Africa. What had he done in South Africa to earn him that honour?

Ambedkar challenged Gandhi not just politically and intellectually, but also morally. To excise him out of the mainstream narrative is a travesty.

That took me back to 1893, the year he first arrived in South Africa as a 24-year-old lawyer. I followed Gandhi’s writings about caste over a period of more than 50 years. So that answers questions like—“Did Gandhi change? And if so, how? Did he start off badly and grow into a Mahatma?” I wasn’t really researching Gandhi’s views on diet or natural cures, I was following the caste trail, and in the process I stumbled on the race trail, and eventually, through all the turbulence and mayhem, I found coherence. It all made sense.


It was consistent, and consistently disturbing. The fact is that whatever else he said and did, and however beautiful some of it was, he did say and write and do some very disturbing things. Those must be explained and accounted for. This applies to all of us, to everybody, sinner and saint alike. Let’s for the sake of argument imagine that someone driven by extreme prejudice ransacks the writings of Rabindranath Tagore. I am not a Tagore scholar, but I very much doubt that he or she would find letters, articles, speeches and interviews that are as worrying as some of the writings in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.

You say that Gandhi harboured attitudes that can only be described as racist towards the Blacks during his years in South Africa, you seem to see his positions as flawed and hypocritical. Would you agree with that?

I have not used those adjectives. I think you have inferred them from Gandhi’s speeches and writings reproduced in my introduction, which is perfectly understandable. Actually I don’t think Gandhi was a hypocrite. On the contrary, he was astonishingly frank. And I am impressed that all his writings, some of them—in my view at least—seriously incriminating, have been retained in the Collected Works.

That really is a courageous thing. I have written at length about Gandhi’s years in South Africa. I’ll just say a couple of things here about that period. First, the famous story about Gandhi’s political awakening to racism and imperialism because he was thrown out of a ‘whites only’ compartment in Pietermaritzberg is only half the story. The other half is that Gandhi was not opposed to racial segregation. Many of his campaigns in South Africa were for separate treatment of Indians. He only objected to Indians being treated on a par with ‘raw kaffirs’, which is what he called Black Africans. One of his first political victories was a ‘solution’ to the Durban post office ‘problem’. He successfully campaigned to have a third entrance opened so that Indians would not have to use the same door as the ‘kaffirs’. He worked with the British army in the Anglo-Boer war and during the crushing of the Bambatha rebellion. In his speeches he said he was looking forward to “an Imperial brotherhood”. And so it goes, the story. In 1913, after signing a settlement with the South African military leader Jan Smuts, Gandhi left South Africa. On his way back to India he stopped in London where he was awarded the Kaiser-e-Hind for public service to the British Empire. How did that add up to fighting racism and imperialism?

But ultimately he did fight imperialism, did he not? He led our country to freedom....

What was ‘freedom’ for some was, for others, nothing more than a transfer of power. Once again, I’d say the Gandhi-Ambedkar debate deepens and complicates our understanding of words like “imperialism” and “freedom”. In 1931, when Ambedkar met Gandhi for the first time, Gandhi questioned him about his sharp criticism of the Congress, which at the time amounted to criticising the struggle for the homeland. Ambedkar’s famous, and heart-breaking, reply was: “Gandhiji, I have no homeland. No untouchable worth the name would be proud of this land.”

Even after he returned from South Africa, Gandhi still saw himself as a ‘responsible’ subject of Empire. But in a few years, by the time of the first national non-cooperation movement, Gandhi had turned against the British. Millions of people rallied to his call, and though it would be incorrect to say that he alone led India to freedom from British rule, of course he played a stellar part. Yet in the struggle, though Gandhi spoke about equality and sometimes even sounded like a socialist, he never challenged traditional caste hierarchies or big zamindars.

The rise of Dalit parties has been dazzling. The real worry is that even as Dalits become more influential in parliamentary politics, democracy itself is being undermined in serious, structural ways.

Industrialists like the Birlas, the Tatas and the house of Bajaj bankrolled Gandhi’s political activity and he took care never to cross swords with them. Many of them had made a lot of money during the First World War, and had now come up against a glass ceiling.


They were irked and limited by British rule and by their own brushes with racism. So they threw their weight behind the national movement.

Around the time Gandhi returned from South Africa, mill workers who had not benefited from the managements’ windfall profits had become restive and there were a series of lightning strikes in the Ahmedabad mills. The mill-owners asked Gandhi to mediate. I have written about Gandhi’s interventions over the years in labour disputes, his handling of labour unions and his advice to workers about strikes—much of it is very puzzling. In other areas too, the famous Gandhian ‘pragmatism’ took some very strange turns. For example, in 1924, when villagers were protesting against the Mulshi Dam being built by the Tatas some distance away from Pune, to generate electricity for the Bombay mills, Gandhi wrote them a letter advising them to give up their protest. His logic is so very similar to the Supreme Court judgement of 2000 that allowed the construction of the World Bank-funded Sardar Sarovar Dam to proceed...so Ambedkar was spot-on when he said, “The question whether the Congress is fighting for freedom has very little importance as compared to the question for whose freedom is the Congress fighting?”

Photograph by Corbis, From Outlook 10 March 2014

In the past you have written powerful political essays based on reporting from the field or on contemporary events as they unfold. But in this work, you seem to have done some very serious historical research and drawn very different conclusions from many known historians who have worked on the national movement, Gandhi and Ambedkar. You are obviously going to be challenged. Do tell us about the journey that writing The Doctor and the Saint involved.

You say I’ll be challenged? Oh, and here I was imagining that it was me that was doing the challenging! Several years ago, S. Anand, the publisher of Navayana, gave me a spiral-bound copy of Anni­hilation of Caste and asked me if I would write an introduction to it. I read it and found it electrifying. But I was intimidated by the prospect of writing an introduction to it—a real introduction, not just some quotes patched together with praise and banalities. I didn’t feel that I was equipped to do that. I knew it would mean swimming through some pretty treacherous waters. Anand said he would wait, and he did.

On the issue of Muslims, there were serious differences between Gandhi and the Hindu Right. But on the issues of caste, religious conversion and cow protection, Gandhi was in stride with the Hindu Right.

Meanwhile, he began work on the annotations which placeAnnihilation of Caste in a context and make it an extraordinarily rich resource for scholars interested in the subject. I was writing fiction and had promised myself that I wasn’t going to write anything that involved footnotes anymore. But of course, when I started writing the introduction, given the way my argument developed, I had to reference almost every sentence. After a while I began to enjoy myself. The notes are not just references, they’re almost a parallel narrative, in and of themselves. I hope at least some people take the trouble to read them....


But coming back to your question of The Doctor and the Saintbeing a challenge—many historians have criticised Gandhi before, for other reasons, so I don’t think I am alone on this one at all. Many Dalits and Dalit scholars have, over the decades, been very sharply critical of Gandhi and Gandhism. Having said that, if this book begins another debate, a real debate, it can only be a good thing. I think it’s high time that there was one. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to weigh in on it.

Given what happened to Wendy Doniger’s book, are you worried?

Not about this book in particular, no. It’s Ambedkar’s book. But it’s true that we are becoming less and less free to write and say what we think. What the irreverent Mirza Ghalib could say in the 19th century about his relationship with Islam, what Saadat Hasan Manto could say about mullahs in the 1940s, what Ambedkar could say about Hinduism in the 1930s, what Nehru or JP could say about Kashmir—none of us can say today without risking our lives. The argument between Gandhi and Ambedkar that followed the publication of Annihilation of Caste was a harsh, intense debate between two extraordinary men—they were not afraid of real debate. Unlike contemporary bigots who demand book-banning, Gandhi—who found the text of Ambedkar’s speech disagreeable—actually wanted people to read it. He said, “No reformer can ignore the address.... It has to be read only because it is open to serious objection. Dr Ambed­kar is a challenge to Hinduism.”

Your introduction begins with a powerful critique of the all-pervasive domination of traditional upper castes in the establishment, including the media, and you suggest that there has been a ‘project of unseeing’ across the political establishment. Don’t you think that the post-Mandal realities of contemporary India have actually made caste a fundamental unit of all politics?

When you look at India, through the prism of caste, at who controls the money, who owns the corporations, who owns the big media, who makes up the judiciary, the bureaucracy, who owns land, who doesn’t—contemporary India suddenly begins to look extremely un-contemporary. Caste was the engine that drove Indian society—not just Hindu society—much before the recommendations of the Mandal Comm­ission. A long section of The Doctor and the Saint is an analysis of how, in the late 19th century, when the idea of ‘empire’ began to mutate into the idea of a ‘nation’, when the new ideas of governance and ‘representation’ arrived on our shores, it led to an immense anxiety about demography, about numbers. For centuries before that, millions of people who belonged to the subordinated castes—those who had been socially ostracised by privileged castes for thousands of years—had been converting to Islam, and later to Sikhism and Christianity to escape the stigma of their caste. But suddenly numbers began to matter. The almost fifty million “untouchables” became crucial in the numbers game. A raft of Hindu reformist outfits began to proselytise among them, to prevent conversion. The Arya Samaj started the Shuddhi movement—to ‘purify the impure’—to try and woo untouchables and Adivasis back into the ‘Hindu fold’. A version of that is still going on today with the VHP and the Bajrang Dal running their ‘Ghar Vapasi’ programmes in which Adivasi people are ‘purified’ and ‘returned’ to Hinduism. So yes, caste was, and continues to be, the fundamental unit of all politics in India.

So how can you call it a ‘project of unseeing’?

The ‘project of unseeing’ that I write about is something else altogether. It’s about the ways in which influential Indian intellectuals today, particularly those on the Left, for whom caste is just a footnote—an awkward, inconvenient appendage of reductive Marxist class analysis—have rendered caste invisible. To say “we don’t believe in caste” sounds nice and progressive. But it is either an act of evasion, or it comes from a position of such rarefied privilege where caste is not encountered at all. The ‘project of unseeing’ exists in almost all of our cultural practice—does Bollywood deal with it? Never. How many of our high-profile writers deal with it? Very few. Those who write about justice and identity, about the ill effects of neo-liberalism—how many address the issue of caste? Even some of our most militant people’s movements elide caste.

Is there a version of Communism that I endorse? I don’t know, I am not a Communist. But we do need a robust, structural critique of capitalism.

The Indian government’s churlish reaction to Dalits who wanted to be represented at the 2001 World Conference against racism in Durban is part of the ‘project of unseeing’. In the same way, the Indian census entirely elides caste in its data collection—leaving us all in the dark about what’s really going on—the scale of dispossession and violence against Dalits is part of the ‘project of unseeing’. Here’s something to think about—in 1919, during what came to be called ‘The Red Summer’ in the United States, approximately 165 Black people were killed. Almost one century later, in 2012 in India—the year of the Delhi gang-rape and murder—according to official statistics, 1,574 Dalit women were raped. And 651 Dalits were murdered. That’s just the criminal assault against Dalits. The economic assault, notwithstanding the emergence of a clutch of Dalit millionaires, is another matter altogether.


You say that caste in India—“one of the most brutal modes of hierarchical social organisation that human society has known—has managed to escape censure because it is so fused with Hinduism, and by extension with so much that is seen to be kind and good—mysticism, spiritualism, non-violence, tolerance, vegetarianism, Gandhi, yoga, backpackers, the Beatles—that, at least to outsiders, it seems impossible to pry it loose and try to understand it”. You argue that caste prejudice is on a par with racial discrimination and apartheid but has not been treated as such. Many would argue that electoral politics and reservation are adequate to deal with historical injustice. But recen­tly a senior Congress leader, Janar­dhan Dwivedi, said reservation should be discontinued. How would you respond to such an argument?

It was an outrageous thing for anyone to say. Reservation is extremely important, and I have written at some length about it. To be eligible for the reservation policy, a Scheduled Caste person needs to have completed high school. Govern­ment figures say more than 70 per cent of Sche­duled Caste students drop out before they matriculate. Which means for even low-end government jobs only one in every four Dalits is eligible. For a white-collar job, the minimum qualification is a graduate degree. Just over 2 per cent of Dalits are graduates. Even though it actually applies to so few, the reservation policy has meant that Dalits at least have some representation in the echelons of power. This is absolu­tely vital. Look at what one Ambedkar, who had the good fortune to get a scholarship to study in Columbia, managed to do. It is thanks to reservation that Dalits are now lawyers, doctors, scholars and civil servants. But even this little window of opportunity is resented and is under fire from the privileged. And the track record of government institutions, the judiciary, the bureaucracy and even supposedly progressive ins­titutions like jnu in implementing reservation is appalling. There is only one government department in which Dalits are over-represented by a factor of six.

Almost 90 per cent of those designated as municipal sweepers—people who clean streets, who risk their lives to go down manholes and service the sewage system, who clean toilets and do menial jobs—are Dalits. Even this sector is up for privatisation now, which means private companies will be able to subcontract jobs on a temporary basis to Dalits for less pay and with no guarantee of job security. Of course there are problems with people getting fake certificates and so on. Those need to be addressed. But to use that to say reservation shouldn’t exist is ridiculous.

But surely you agree that the rise of Dalit parties like the BSP marks something close to a revolution in Indian democracy?

The rise of Dalit political parties has been a dazzling phenomenon.
But then our electoral politics, in the present shape, cannot really be revolutionary, can it? The book, and not just the introduction, deals with it in some detail. Ambedkar’s confrontation with Gandhi at the Second Round Table Conference in London in 1931 had precisely to do with that—with their very different views on the matter of political representation of and for Dalits.

Ambedkar believed that the right to representation was a basic right.

Reductive Marxist class analysis renders caste invisible. Very few high-profile writers deal with it. Our most militant people’s movements elide the issue. It finds no place in Indian census data. It’s a Project of Unseeing.

And all his life he fought for untouchables to have that right. He thought and wrote a great deal about the first-past-the-post electoral system and how untouchables would never be able to emerge from the domination of privileged castes in such a system because the population was scattered in a way that they would never form a majority in a political constituency. Gandhi, who worked among untouchables with missionary zeal, was not prepared to allow them to represent themselves. And he explicitly worked against that possibility. His Harijan Sevak Sangh—funded by G.D. Birla—which fronted the Temple Entry movement was made up only of privileged caste members. In the Mahajan Mazdoor Sangh, the mill workers’ union that Gandhi started in Ahmedabad, workers, many of whom were untouchables, were not allowed to be office-bearers, they were not allowed to represent themselves. At the Second Round Table Conference in London in 1931, Gandhi said, “I claim myself, in my own person, to represent the vast mass of untouchables.” In S. Anand’s note on the Poona Pact at the back of the book, he writes of how Gandhi, in a reply to a question from an untouchable member of the Congress party asking if he would ensure that Harijans were represented in state councils and panchayat boards, said the principle was “dangerous”.


Gandhi played a great part in seeing to it that Ambedkar’s project of developing untouchables into a political community that was aware of its rights, that could choose its own representatives from among themselves, was thwarted and undermined. Even today Dalits are paying the price for that. Despite these odds, the Bahujan Samaj Party has emerged in UP. But even there, it took more than half a century for Kanshi Ram—and then Mayawati—to succeed. Kanshi Ram worked for years, painstakingly making alliances with other subordinated castes, to achieve this victory. The BSP needed the peculiar demography of Uttar Pradesh and the support of many OBCs. But if it is to grow as a political party, it will have to make alliances that will dilute its political thrust. For a Dalit candidate to win an election from an open seat—even in UP—continues to be almost impossible. Still, notwithstanding the charges of corruption and malpractice, I don’t think anybody should ever minimise the immense contribution the BSP has made in building Dalit dignity. The real worry is that even as Dalits are becoming more influential in parliamentary politics, democracy itself is being undermined in serious and structural ways.

Your account of the manner in which Gandhi prevailed over Ambedkar on the issue of the Communal Award, in which the British awarded a separate electorate for untouchables, is fascinating—the description of how Ambe­dkar had to give up his dream and sign the Poona Pact in 1932. But I have a question about the issue of separate electorates. Many histo­rians argue that this idea really was at the root of the problems that would lead to Partition. And many would argue against separate electorates. Do you think that India still needs separate electorates?

I think our first-past-the-post electoral system is gravely flawed and is failing us. We need to rethink it. But I think we should be careful of collapsing all these very contentious issues about separate electorates, the Communal Award and Partition into one big accusatory mess. As I said earlier, Ambedkar had thought out the demand for a separate electorate and separate representation for untou­chables very carefully. I really don’t want to restate what I’ve written...but let’s just say that he had come up with a brilliant and unique plan.
His idea really was to create a situation in which Dalits could develop into a political community with its own leaders. His proposal for a separate electorate was to last for only 10 years. And we are talking here about a people who were ostracised by the privileged castes for thousands of years in the most unimaginably crude and cruel manner—people who were shunned, who were not allowed access to public wells, to education, to temples, besides other things. People who were not entitled to anything except violence and abuse. But when they asked for a separate electorate, everybody behaved as though the world was ending.

Ambedkar speaks about the Adivasis in the same patronising way as Gandhi speaks about untouchables. It’s hard to understand how a man who saw the insult to his own people so clearly could have done that.

Gandhi went on an indefinite hunger strike and public pressure forced Ambedkar to give up his demand and sign the Poona Pact. It was preposterous. How can we possibly say that Ambedkar’s demand for a separate electorate led to Partition? The impulse was exactly the opposite. He was trying to bring liberty and equality to a society that practised a vicious form of apartheid. He was talking about justice, brotherhood, unity and fellow feeling—not Partition. But caste hierarchy means that only the privileged can close the door on Dalits.


When Dalits close the door on themselves, it is made out to be an act of treachery. Also, while we like to place all the blame for Partition on Jinnah—using the word ‘blame’ presupposes that everybody agrees that Partition was a terrible thing, but even that is not true—we forget that people like Bhai Parmanand, a founder-member of the Ghadar Party, a pillar of the Arya Samaj in Lahore, and later an important leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, suggested, as far back as 1905, during the partition of Bengal, that Sindh should be joined with Afghanistan and the North West Frontier Province, and should be united into a great Muslim Kingdom. Partition happened because a whole set of forces was set into play, and it all spun out of the control of the men who had positioned themselves at the helm of affairs.

You criticise Ambedkar quite harshly for his views on Adivasis.

Ambedkar speaks about Adivasis in the same patronising way that Gandhi speaks about untouchables. It’s hard to understand how a man who saw the insult to his own people so clearly could have done that.

Ambedkar was a man of reason, and a man with a keen sense of justice. I bel­ieve he would have taken the criticism seriously and would have changed his views. But that’s not the only criticism I have of him. In his embrace of Western liberalism, his support of urbanisation and modern ‘development’, he failed to see the seeds of catastrophe that were embedded in it. I have written about this at some length too.

You have also explored the great failure of Communists to address caste. You write that “they treated caste as a sort of folk dialect derived from the classical language of class analysis”. I think all Communists should read your precise take on the great trade union leader S.A. Dange. My question to you is this: Party communism has disappointed you. But is there any version of Commu­nism that you support and endorse?

My criticism of the way mainstream Communist parties have dealt with caste goes all the way back to The God of Small Things. When the novel came out in 1997, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was extremely angry with the book. They were angry with my depiction of a character called Comrade K.N.M. Pillai who was a member of the Communist Party and his prejudices against Velutha, a Dalit who was one of the main characters in the book. Communists and Dalits ought to have been natural allies, but sadly that has just not happened. The rift began in the late 1920s, quite soon after the Communist Party of India was formed. S.A. Dange—a Brahmin like many Communist leaders tend to be even today, and one of its chief ideologues—organised India’s first Communist trade union, the Girni Kamgar Union with 70,000 members. A large section of the workers were Mahars, untouchables, the caste that Ambedkar belonged to. They were only employed in the lower-paid jobs in the spinning department, because in the weaving department, workers had to hold the thread in their mouths, and the untouchables’ saliva was considered polluting to the product. In 1928, Dange led the Girni Kamgar Union’s first major strike. Ambedkar suggested that one of the issues that ought to be raised was equality and equal entitlement within the ranks of workers. Dange did not agree, and this led to a bitter falling out. That was when Ambedkar said, “Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.” There is a very very compelling section in Annihilation of Caste in which Ambedkar writes about Caste and Socialism. Is there a version of Communism that I support and endorse? I’m not sure what that means. I am not a Communist. But I do think that we are in dire need of a structural and robust criticism of capitalism, and I do not mean just crony capitalism.

Right now, the new player on the political scene, the Aam Aadmi Party, which is obviously inspired by Gandhian symbolism, is taking on crony capitalism. It has attacked Mukesh Ambani and RIL, who you wrote about in your last big essay Capitalism: A Ghost Story. What are your views on AAP?

It’s a little difficult to have a coherent view on AAP because it doesn’t seem to have a coherent view of itself. I am not an admirer of anti-corruption as a political ideology, because I think corruption is the manifestation of a problem, and not the problem itself. Of course, it gets a lot of political traction in an election year—after all even the corrupt are against corruption—but eventually it will lead us down a blind alley. But I was one of the people who cheered when AAP took on Mukesh Ambani. Suddenly everybody, the mainstream media as well as the social media, began to discuss the Ambanis and the gas-pricing issue—these are things that hardly anybody dared to even whisper about only a few months ago. We all remember how the news of the Ambani car crash in Mumbai was just blanked out. On this score, the Aam Aadmi Party has put a little steel into everybody’s spine. They identify themselves with the Gandhi cap, but going after industrial houses in this way is very un-Gandhian activity, and I’m all for it. I just hope it doesn’t end in a gladiatorial inter-corporate war, where a new monster takes the place of the old one. Mud-slinging and allegations about who has been bought over or bribed by whom is good entertainment, but the rot is deeper than corruption and bribery. The real problem as I see it is that the big corporations—Tata, Reliance, Jindals, Vedanta and several others—run so many businesses simultaneously. Mukesh Ambani is personally worth something like 1,000 billion rupees. But the Tatas, Vedanta, Jindals, Adanis are not all that different. Even if everything is completely above board there is a problem. Even if you are a hard-core classical capitalist you have to see there is a problem here. This kind of cross-ownership of businesses, this scale of profits—limitless profits—accruing to fewer and fewer people, the conflict of interest between corporates and the media—how can you have a free press that is owned and run by corporations? I understand that as a political strategy, AAP is singling out Mukesh Ambani and taking him on for the sheer spectacle of it. Having a 27-storeyed tower built as a personal residence—it’s hubris, he was asking, begging, to be taken down. But at some point I would be glad to see the problem being addressed in a more serious and structural way. Particularly since we are looking to AAP to put a few roadblocks in the way of what is being called the rise of Moditva—which is basically corporate capitalism fused with primitive fascism.

Many people will take issue with your interpretation when you say “there was never much daylight between Gandhi’s views on caste and those of the Hindu Right. From a Dalit point of view Gandhi’s assassination could appear to be more a fratricidal killing than an assassination by an ideological opponent”. You then go on to say that Narendra Modi is able to invoke Gandhi without the slightest discomfort because of this. Are you therefore handing Gandhi over to the Hindu Right? He is someone they have been eager to appropriate, so are you not playing into their hands?

Gandhi’s not a stuffed toy, and who am I to hand him over to anyone?
Let me just say this—on the issue of Muslims and their place in the Indian nation there surely were serious ideological differences between Gandhi and the Hindu Right, and for this Gandhi paid with his life. But on the issues of caste, religious conversion and cow protection, Gandhi was perfectly in stride with the Hindu Right. At the turn of the century—the 19th and 20th centuries—when various reformist organisations were proselytising to the untouchable population, the right-wing was, if anything, more enthusiastic. For example, V.D. Savarkar, a disciple of Tilak’s, and a hero of the Hindu Right, supported the 1927 Mahad satyagraha which Ambedkar led, for the untouchables’ right to use water from a public tank. Gandhi’s support was less forthcoming. Who were the signatories to the Poona Pact?

There were many, but among them were G.D. Birla, Gandhi’s industrialist-patron, who bankrolled him for most of his life; Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, a conservative Brahmin and founder of the Hindu Mahasabha; and Savarkar, who was accused of being an accomplice in the assassination of Gandhi. They were all interconnected in complex ways.

One cannot have a coherent view on AAP as it doesn’t have one of itself. But it has put steel in everyone’s spine. I just hope it doesn’t end in a gladiatorial inter-corporate war, where a new monster replaces the old.

Birla funded Gandhi as well as the Arya Samaj’s Shuddhi movement. When the RSS was banned after the assassination of Gandhi, Birla lobbied for the ban to be lifted. A recent report in Caravan about Swami Aseemanand, a major RSS leader and the son of a devout Gandhian, who is in jail, being tried for orchestrating a series of bomb blasts including the Samjhauta Express blast, in which about 80 people were killed, describes how boys in his ashram in Gujarat were made to chant the Ekata mantra every morning, an ode to national unity that invokes Gandhi as well as M.S. Golwalkar, the most important RSS ideologue.


Narendra Modi delivers many of his hissy pronouncements from a spanking new convention hall in Gujarat called Mahatma Mandir. In 1936, Gandhi wrote an extraordinary essay calledThe Ideal Bhangi which he ends by saying—“Such an ideal Bhangi, while deriving his livelihood from his occupation, would approach it only as a sacred duty. In other words, he would not dream of amassing wealth out of it.” Seventy years later, in his book, Karmayogi (which he withdrew after the Balmiki community protested), Narendra Modi said: “I do not believe they have been doing this job just to sustain their livelihood. Had this been so, they would not have continued with this kind of job generation after generation.... At some point of time somebody must have got the enlightenment that it is their (Balmikis’) duty to work for the happiness of the entire society and the Gods; that they have to do this job bestowed upon them by Gods; and this job should continue as internal spiritual activity for centuries.” You tell me—where’s the daylight?

When Arundhati Roy does a scathing critique of a man as revered as Mahatma Gandhi, it gets noticed around the world. Some would argue that keeping a beautiful idea alive is more important than undermining it with a certain reality.

That’s a good question. I actually thought about that quite a lot—as any writer would, or should. I decided it was completely wrong, completely unacceptable. That kind of a cover-up—and it would be nothing less than a cover-up—comes at a price. And that price is Ambedkar. We have to deal with Gandhi, with all his brilliance and all his flaws, in order to make room for Ambedkar, with all his brilliance as well as his flaws. The Saint must allow the Doctor a place in the light. Ambed­kar’s time has come.