Gandhi’s innovation was fusing spiritual renunciation with mass political theater

Evidence

Gandhi’s genius was that he yoked his other-worldly search for moksha to a very worldly, political cause and performed both, like a fusion dance, for a live audience, in a live-in theatre. Over the years, he expanded his strange experiments to include his wife as well as other people, some of them too young to know what they were being subjected to. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 236

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s work on how ascetic performance underwrites political authority, echoing the caste-rishis tradition against which Ambedkar positions himself.