The Round Table Conferences confirmed what they had been set up
to confirm – that Indians could not agree amongst themselves. In 1932,
a ‘Communal Award’ designed by British Prime Minister Ramsay
Macdonald perpetuated separate electorates for Muslims and proposed to
extend the logic of protecting minorities in this way to the ‘Backward
Castes’, untouchables and low castes in the ‘Hindu’ social order. According
to the logic of colonial representation, the Backward Castes had a spokes-
man who would speak for those who could not speak for themselves:
Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who had studied economics and had a PhD in public
finance from Columbia University in New York; he was of low-caste
origin and had managed to finance his higher education through the
patronage of the ruler of the Princely State of Baroda. Ambedkar wished
to utilise British state power to improve the position of backward castes,
and accepted the British award of special status. But here Gandhi
intervened in a way he had been unable within the rules of the Conferences
themselves – he went on a ‘fast unto death’.
Gandhi’s claim was that if ‘Backward Castes’ were recognised as a
separate community, it would be a failure of ‘Hindus’ to have a properly
humane and inclusive religion. The fact that many of these castes had been
so systematically excluded from mainstream ‘Hindu’ society as to never
have properly belonged to the category ‘Hindu’ at all, or that the category
‘Hindu’ was itself to a large extent a neologism, was not considered.
Gandhi had, of course, campaigned for the abolition of caste restrictions
among Hindus. But the fact that this continued to be a long and hard
task was itself evidence that the ‘Backward Castes’ were not about to be
welcomed into ‘Hindu’ society overnight. Be that as it may, Ambedkar
gave in and signed the ‘Poona Pact’: the Backward Castes would not be
separately represented, and in effect they were to be Hindus. Perhaps
unwittingly, Gandhi had greatly strengthened the position of Hindus in
the colonial numbers game that was to be so important a feature of politics
in the last stages of colonial rule. Ambedkar was extremely bitter about
the fact that Gandhi had outmanoeuvred him: he did not want to be
responsible for the great man’s death and ever afterwards be considered a
traitor to his country. A fact that seemed to once again escape unnoticed
was how important the selectedrepresentatives of ‘communities’ were in
deciding the fate of those ‘communities’.
‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39 73