PATRIOTISM WITHOUT PEOPLE 29
not a little hostility from belligerent non-Brahmin activists, Gandhi made haste to clarify his position on the question of caste. 'Vamashram', he said, 'is inherent in human nature and Hinduism has simply reduced it to a science'. One's caste is ascribed at the moment of birth, and to not live by one's caste 'is to disregard the law of heredity'.71
The untouchable population—variously called 'panchama' and 'Harijan'—was in the Gandhian discourse to be uplifted through the benevolence of the upper castes. Writing in Young India in 1924, Gandhi amplified upon his ideas of Swaraj, which for him meant 'freedom for the meanest of our countrymen'. But, he went on: 'If the lot of the panchama is not improved when we are all suffering, it is not likely to be better under the intoxication of swaraj. If it is necessary for us to buy peace with the Mussalmans as a condition of swaraj, it is equally necessary for us to give peace to the panchama before we can with any show of justice or self-respect, talk of swaraj'.72
The turn of phrase is crucial in understanding the attitude, and bears emphasis: the Congress in Gandhi's view, has to buy peace with the Muslims, i.e., deal with them from a position of equality. But where the untouchables are concerned, the Congress is in the position to dictate terms, to give what it deems is warranted to obtain their consent to its leadership.
But all through the 1920s, the Congress obviously did not give sufficiently to the untouchables or succeed in buying very much peace from the Muslims. The decade was marked by communal strife that tore across the country, claiming one town after another in its baleful embrace. Writing in Young India in 1927, Gandhi signalled effectively that the battle had been lost: 'If the reader does not see me now often refer to the question (of Hindu-Muslim relations) in these pages, it is because the sense of humiliation has gone too deep for words. It matters little to me whether the perpetrators of evil deeds are Hindus or Mussalmans. It is enough to know that some of us are blaspheming a patient God and doing inhuman deeds in the sacred name of religion'.7^
Equally critically, the 1920s was a decade of lower caste awakening and self-assertion. Though widespread across the country, it was under Ambedkar's leadership in Maharashtra that the most dynamic. activity was witnessed. The Mahad satyagrah of 1927 was especially significant, when Ambedkar led a march of untouchables to a municipal reservoir in a small town in the Konkan, to assert the unfettered right to draw water from a public source. Alarm bells rang in orthodox circles, and the backlash of Hindu bigotry was quick and violent. The event provoked a famous retort from Ambedkar: 'We want equal rights in society. We will achieve them as far as possible while remaining within the Hindu fold, or, if necessary, by kicking away this worthless Hindu identity'.74