Dalits saw Gandhi’s village as oppressive while his legacy now symbolizes anti-development justice

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. Meanwhile, Gandhi—whose mythical village is so blind to appalling, inherent injustice—has, as ironically, become the talisman for these struggles for justice. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 125

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The political inversion — development as liberation for Dalits but catastrophe for environmentalists, and Gandhi’s oppressive village becoming the icon of environmental justice — is a dense irony worth sitting with.