Gandhi’s fast unto death forcibly reversed the Communal Award’s separate electorates for Untouchables

Evidence

If the Communal Award of 16 August 1932 was a victory of sorts for those who sought to take social difference seriously in India, the Poona Pact of 24 September 1932 was a defeat. At a time of urgent political and ideological contestation over the future of India, the pact abruptly came in the way of more ambitious ways of fashioning a democracy that would suit a subcontinent made up essentially of caste, religious, regional and linguistic minorities, what B.R. Ambedkar termed a “congeries of communities”. This was a time when Ambedkar, with radical foresight, was trying to stymie the adoption of a first-past-the-post system, which he feared in the Indian context would result in a Hindu communal majority parading as a political majority. M.K. Gandhi, on the other hand, opposed special representation to every other community except the Muslims and the Sikhs. He argued that separate electorates “would simply vivisect and disrupt” Hinduism, and suggested that the Communal Award “will create a division in Hinduism which I cannot possibly look forward to with any satisfaction whatsoever”. It was to oppose the political rights granted to the Untouchables by the Communal Award that Gandhi took a dramatic and coercive step—a fast unto death on 20 September 1932 that culminated in the Poona Pact only four days later. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1292

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the parallel in ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ — both show Gandhi-style coercion via moral-religious framing overriding political claims.