Communist refusal to ally with Ambedkar handed Bombay’s seat to Congress.

Evidence

208 On the fallout with the Girni Kamgar Union, see Teltumbde (2012). For how Dange and the Communist Party worked towards ensuring Ambedkar’s defeat in the Bombay City North constituency in the 1952 general election, see S. Anand (2012a), and Rajnarayan Chandavarkar (2009, 161), where he says: “The decision by the socialists and the communists not to forge an electoral pact, let alone join together to combine with Ambedkar’s Scheduled Castes Federation, against the Congress lost them the Central Bombay seat. Dange, for the CPI, Asoka Mehta for the socialists and Ambedkar each stood separately and fell together. Significantly, Dange instructed his supporters to spoil their ballots in the reserved constituency for Central Bombay rather than vote for Ambedkar. Indeed, Ambedkar duly lost and attributed his defeat to the communist campaign. Although the communists could not win the Central Bombay seat, their influence in Girangaon, including its dalit voters, was sufficient to decisively influence the outcome. The election campaign created a lasting bitterness. As Dinoo Ranadive recalls, ‘the differences between the dalits and the communists became so sharp that even today it has become difficult for the communists to appeal to the Republicans’ or at any rate to some sections of dalit voters.” — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 554

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Left’s historical failure to ally with caste-oppressed movements, echoing the Frankfurt School chapters on Marxism’s blindness to non-class oppression.