Mahatma Gandhi and the Depressed Classes

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It is a matter of great pleasure to bring out this highly illuminating monograph of much historical import entitled Mahatma Gandhi and The Depressed Classes, comprising the Biennial Professor H.K. Barpujari Endowment Lectures (2005-06) delivered by Dr. Atul Chandra Pradhan, Formerly Professor of History, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar at the Institute on 21 and 22 February, 2006. Professor Pradhan has well analysed the character of the Gandhian movement for the Depressed Classes which constitutes an important chapter of the history of social liberation in modern India. We offer our heartfelt thanks to Professor Pradhan for presenting the manuscript for publication without delay. The book has been well dedicated to the sacred memory of Mahatma Gandhi, the 'Father of the Indian Nation'. Our thanks are also due to the Aruna Printers for the timely printing of the book. Dr. Ashoke Kumar Chakraborty, the Registrar of the Institute, and other members of our office staff also deserves thanks for helping the publication of the book. We firmly believe that the publication of this highly thoughtful work will be greatly appreciated by scholars and general readers alike.

I was invited by.the Director, Institute of Historical Studies, Kolkata to deliver the Biennial Professor H. K. Barpujari Endowment Lectures (2005-2006) for which I am extremely thankful to him and the management of the Institute. This monograph with the title Mamatma Gandhi And The Depressed Classes is the product of the lectures delivered by me at the Institute on 21st and 22nd February, 2006.

Mahatma Gandhi is well known not only as the 'Father of the Indian Nation' but also as a great benefactor of the Depressed Classes who are otherwise known as Harijans, Scheduled Castes or Dalits. Though the movement against untouchability had been going on in the country long before the emergence of Mahatma Gandhi as the leader of the Indian National Congress, he gave a new direction and orientation to the anti-untouchability movement and the movement for the uplift of the Depressed Classes in various ways; first, he incorporated the removal of untouchability in the constructive programme of the Congress; secondly, he evolved a strategy to remove untouchability in a non-violent way; thirdly, he organised a nationwide movement against untouchability by means of personal campaign and organisational network throughout the country. Above all, Gandhi gave the untouchables a sense of dignity and self-respect by way of personal contacts with them. Gandhi's moral and essentially non-political approach to the problem of Depressed Classes had to contend against the communalised and politicised approach of the British Government and the distrustful and critical approach of several Depressed Classes spokesmen, such as B.R.Ambedkar. The final incorporation of provisions in the Constitution of India for safeguarding the interests of the backward sections of society as well as promoting their uplift was the outcome of synthesis of these divergent approaches. An attempt has been made to examine the character of Gandhian movement for the Depressed Classes and Gandhiji's differences with the British and Depressed Classes spokesmen like B.R.Ambedkar on the question of their amelioration as also to highlight the ultimate outcome of the interaction of the divergent approaches.

The roots of community backwardness which forms the basis of the constitutional provision for protective or compensatory discrimination can be traced back to pre-colonial antiquity. In the Vedic Varna system there were aboriginal Shudras who were kept aloof from sacrificial rituals, and there were certain groups of people outside the pale of Chaturvarma. The caste system which developed later is a hierarchy based on purity-pollution scale, i.e., 'ascending scale of reverence' and 'descending scale of contempt'. Outside the castes there have existed aboriginal tribes, more or less isolated from the caste society. The colonial ethnographers and administrators recognised, standardised and legitimised the divisions and stratifications in Indian society by treating caste Hindus (Brahmin and non-Brahmin), untouchable castes and aborigines as three separate entities. The Census of 1901 adopted the principle of classification of the Hindu castes on the basis of "social precedence as recognized by native public opinion". At the time of the Census of 1911 the Provincial Census Superintendents were instructed to enumerate these castes and tribes who were earlier classed as Hindus but did not "conform to certain standards' or were 'subject to certain disabilities". In the Census of 1931 the Hindu untouchable castes, i.e., the castes in the lowest rung of hierarchy, were separately enumerated and given the nomenclature of Exterior Castes. These castes, variously called in Indian vocabulary, such as Avarna, Antyaja, Panchama, Asprishya, Chandal, Svapacha, Bhangi, Atishudra, Adi Dravida (in South India), Adi Hindu (in North India), Adi Dharmi (in Punjab), Harijan etc., were generally known as Depressed Classes in official parlance during the colonial era. Sometimes the term 'Depressed Classes' was loosely applied to criminal and wandering tribes, aboriginal tribes and backward Hindu castes, and the untouchable Hindu castes have also been given other epithets like 'Oppressed', 'Suppressed', 'Repressed', 'Submerged', 'Unregenerate', 'Unprivileged', 'Low Castes', 'Outcastes', 'Non-caste Hindus'. The Indian Franchise Committee of 1932 held that for the purpose of representation the term 'Depressed Classes' should be applied to those castes who were "denied access to the interior of ordinary Hindu temples" and caused "pollution (a) by touch and/or (b) within certain distance". In the Government of India Act, 1935 these castes were designated as Scheduled Castes, an expression which was subsequently adopted in the Constitution of the Indian Union. According to the Census of 1931, these castes constituted 21% of the Hindu population and 14% of the total population.

Though the Depressed Classes performed some useful socio-economic functions within the Hindu caste system, such as sweeping, scavenging, removal of carcasses, skinning of dead cattle, basket-making, beating of drums in marriages and religious ceremonies, and above all rendered service as agricultural labourers, yet they were socially segregated and subjected to certain degradations and disabilities; they were denied the use of village wells and some roads as also admission to schools; they were not allowed to live with dignity; they were not allowed to wear golden ornaments; they were not allowed to build good houses; they were not allowed to enter the temples, even though they were within the fold of Hindu religion. These castes were generally poor and landless. Because of centuries of acculturation and conformism, these castes did not raise any voice of protest against their customary degradation and disabilities. Mahatma Gandhi thus describes the condition of the Depressed Classes.