APPENDIX I
A VINDICATION OF CASTE BY MAHATMA GANDHI
(A Reprint of his Articles in the " Harijan ")
Dr. Ambedkar's Indictment I
The readers will recall the fact that Dr. Ambedkar was to have presided last May at the annual
conference of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal of Lahore. But the conference itself was
cancelled because Dr. Ambedkar's address was found
by the Reception Committee to be unacceptable. How far a Reception Committee is
justified in rejecting a President of its choice
because of his address that may be objectionable to it is open to question. The
Committee knew Dr. Ambedkar's views on caste and
the Hindu scriptures. They knew also that he had in unequivocal terms decided
to give up Hinduism. Nothing less than the address
that Dr. Ambedkar had prepared was to be expected
from him. The committee appears to have deprived the public of an opportunity of listening to the original views of a man, who
has carved out for himself a unique position in society. Whatever label he
wears in future, Dr. Ambedkar is not the man to allow himself to be forgotten.
Dr. Ambedkar was not going to be beaten by the Reception
Committee. He has answered their rejection of him by publishing the address at
his own expense. He has priced it at 8 annas, I would suggest a reduction to 2
annas or at least 4 annas.
No reformer can ignore the address. The orthodox will
gain by reading it. This is not to say that the address
is not open to objection. It has to be read only because it is open to serious
objection. Dr. Ambedkar is a challenge to Hinduism. Brought up as a Hindu,
educated by a Hindu potentate, he has become so disgusted with the so-called Savarna Hindus for the treatment that he and his
people have received at their hands that he proposes to leave not only them but
the very religion that is his and their common heritage. He has transferred to
that religion, his disgust against a part of its professors.
But this is
not to be wondered at. After all, one can only judge a system or an institution
by the conduct of its representatives. What is
more. Dr. Ambedkar found that the vast majority of Savarna Hindus had not only
conducted themselves inhumanly against those of their fellow religionists, whom they classed as untouchables, but
they had based their conduct on the authority of their scriptures, and when he
began to search them he had found ample warrant for their beliefs in untouchability and all its implications. The author
of the address has quoted chapter and verse in proof of his three-fold indictment—inhuman conduct itself, the unabashed
justification for it on the part of the
perpetrators, and the subsequent discovery that the justification was warranted
by their scriptures.
No Hindu who prizes his faith above life itself can afford to underrate the importance of this indictment. Dr Ambedkar is not alone
in his disgust He is its most uncompromising exponent and one of the ablest among them. He is certainly the most irreconcilable among
them. Thank God, in the front rank of the leaders, he is singularly alone and as
yet but a representative of a very small minority.
But what he says is voiced with more or less vehemence by many leaders belonging to the depressed
classes. Only the latter,
for instance Rao Bahadur
M. C. Rajah and Dewan
Bahadur Srinivasan, not only do not threaten to give up Hinduism
but find enough warmth in it to compensate for the
shameful persecution to which the vast mass of Harijans
are exposed.
But the fact of many leaders remaining in the Hindu
fold is no warrant for disregarding what Dr. Ambedkar
has to say. The Savaraas
have to correct their belief and their conduct. Above all
those who are by their learning and influence
among the Savarnas have to give an authoritative interpretation of
the scriptures. The questions that Dr. Ambedkar's indictment
suggest are :
(1) What are the scriptures ?
(2) Are all the printed texts to be regarded as an integral part of them or is any part of them to be rejected as unauthorised
interpolation ?
(3) What is the answer of
such accepted and expurgated scriptures on the
question of untouchability, caste, equality of status, inter-dining and
intermarriages ? (These have been all examined by Dr. Ambedkar in his address.)
I must reserve for the next
issue my own answer to these questions and a statement
of the (at least some) manifest flaws in Dr. Ambedkar's
thesis
(Harijan, July II, 1936)
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VARNA VERSUS CASTE - II
VARNA VERSUS CASTE - II
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