Congress exploited caste divisions to repeatedly defeat Ambedkar in elections

Evidence

The ghost of the Poona Pact was to haunt the man who knew how the caste Hindus would use its logic to ensure the defeat of the best of Dalits. Thus the man who from 1946 to 1950 piloted the drafting of the Indian Constitution was humiliated twice at the hustings in independent India, both times by less able candidates that the Congress fielded. In the first ever polls to the Lok Sabha in 1951, contesting on the ticket of his party, the Scheduled Castes Federation, from the reserved part of the double-member Bombay North constituency, Ambedkar was defeated by 14,374 votes by Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar of the Congress. The Congress deliberately fielded a candidate who was a Chambhar, the largest Untouchable caste after the Mahars in the region. He was also a known opponent of Ambedkar, a Mahar. Kajrolkar had opposed Ambedkar on the Communal Award as well as over his call for conversion, saying “we are shocked at the advice given to us, Harijans, by our veteran leader Dr Ambedkar, to abandon the Hindu religion … It breaks our hearts to see…[that] Dr Ambedkar who gave us a prominent lead in the past, should ask us to commit suicide by abandoning our religion.” When Ambedkar tried his luck in the 1954 by-election from Bhandara, Maharashtra, he lost again, this time to another Congress candidate, Bhaurao Borkar, someone who earlier used to organise workers for the Scheduled Castes Federation, the party founded and led by Ambedkar. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1330

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did Congress reconcile fielding a Chambhar opponent against a Mahar leader with its claim to represent all Untouchables? The intra-Dalit caste angle deserves pursuit.