M.K. Gandhi was not so much the ‘Father of the Nation” as the mother of all debates regarding its future. All his life he fought in a friendly spirit with compatriots whose views on this or that topic diverged sharply from his. He disagreed with communists and the Bhadralok on the efficacy and morality of violence as a political strategy. He fought with radical Muslims on the one side and with radical Hindus on the other, both of whom sought to build a state on theological principles. He argued with Nehru and other scientists on whether economic development in a free India should Centre on the village or the factory. And with that other giant, Rabindranath Tagore, he disputed the merits of such varied affiliations as the English language, nationalism and the spinning wheel.
In some ways the most intense, interesting and long-running of these debates was between Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar. Gandhi wished to save Hinduism by abolishing untouchability, whereas Dr. Ambedkar was a solution for his people outside Hinduism. Gandhi was a rural romantic who wished to make the self-governing village the bedrock of free India. Dr. Ambedkar an admirer of city life and modern technology who dismissed the Indian village as a den of iniquity. Gandhi was a crypto-anarchist who favored nonviolent protest while being suspicious of the state, Dr. Ambedkar a steadfast constitutionalist, who worked within the state and sought solutions to social problems with the aid of the state.
Perhaps the most telling difference was in the choice of political instrument. For Gandhi, the Congress represented all of India, the Dalits too. Had he not made their cause their own from the time of his first ashram in South Africa? Dr. Ambedkar however made a clear distinction between freedom and power. The Congress wanted the British to transfer power to them but to obtain freedom the Dalits had to organize themselves as a separate bloc to form a separate party so as to more effectively articulate their interests in the crucible of electoral politics. It was thus that in his lifetime, and for long afterwards Dr. Ambedkar came to represent a dangerously subversive threat to the authoritative and sometimes authoritarian, equation: Gandhi Congress =nation.
