PATRIOTISM WITHOUT PEOPLE 27 BRINGING UNTOUCHABLES BACK INTO THE FOLD Hindu nationalism came from then on to regard the untouchable population as a political resource. But in its timing, this strategic awakening of Hindu nationalism was precarious. The lower caste population was by then, already alive to the prospects they enjoyed of a political role outside the fold of the Hindu community. In 1917, the Depressed Classes Federation, under the chairmanship of Narayan Chandavarkar, met in Bombay and resolved that the reforms then being worked out, should guarantee the Depressed Classes 'the right to elect their representatives in proportion to their numbers1.64 Further constitutional reform was perceived to be imminent. And the various social groupings were staking out their positions to drive the best bargains in the new political dispensation that the British had committed themselves to, in token of their appreciation of India's participation in their imperial war effort. For the different elite groupings that had banded themselves together, loosely under the Congress banner, political power seemed within grasp. But to fortify their claims to the exercise of power, they had to recruit larger popular masses to their cause. A Depressed Classes Federation that aspired to an autonomous political space for itself would have been a severe setback to the ambitions of this new social elite. A means had to be found to bring them into the embrace of the main body of nationalist consolidation—the Indian National Congress. Ambedkar has recorded, with a wealth of illustrations, how cynical self-interest led the Congress to introduce after years of neglect, the removal of 'all disabilities imposed by custom upon the Depressed Classes*, into their agenda for political action. Moving the resolution to this effect, G.A. Natesan, a representative from Madras at the 1917 Congress session asserted that the aim was not merely to prepare for self-government, but to ensure that all classes and creeds could enjoy the benefits of political freedom. Putting the weight of hi^ authority behind the resolution, Bhulabhai Desai asked rhetorically of the Congress how, without removing the disabilities of caste, they could demand self-government.65 The president of the Congress session that year, Ambedkar has wryly observed, was Annie Besant, who was never known to be a great friend of the lower castes. With an extended quotation, Ambedkar established that Annie Besant felt no greater empathy for the untouchable population than a certain lofty condescension.66 The Congress strategy clearly did not entail the empowerment of the non-caste population. It merely envisaged their subjugation in the scheme of political representation, to the leadership of the Congress elite. Ambedkar would have none of it. Till his arrival on the political scene in 1920, the untouchable movement had remained submerged within the fold of an anti-Brahminical tendency. But Ambedkar's