Dalit yearning for justice aimed at cities because villages upheld caste oppression

Evidence

To Ambedkar, and to most Dalits, Gandhi’s ideal village was, understandably, “a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism”. The impetus towards justice turned Ambedkar’s gaze away from the village towards the city, towards urbanism, modernism and industrialisation—big cities, big dams, big irrigation projects. Ironically, this is the very model of ‘development’ that hundreds of thousands of people today associate with injustice, a model that lays the environment to waste and involves the forcible displacement of millions of people from their villages and homes by mines, dams and other major infrastructural projects. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 125

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of Indian development politics and environmental justice movements that today adopt Gandhi as figurehead.