Gandhi’s Mahatma status authorized his self-appointed representation of the Untouchables

Evidence

How could a privileged-caste Bania claim that he, in his own person, represented forty-five million Indian Untouchables unless he believed he actually was a Mahatma? Mahatmahood provided Gandhi with an amplitude that was not available to ordinary mortals. It allowed him to use his ‘inner voice’ affectively, effectively, and often. It allowed him the bandwidth to make daily broadcasts on the state of his hygiene, his diet, his bowel movements, his enemas and his sex life, and to draw the public into a net of prurient intimacy that he could then use and manipulate when he embarked on his fasts and other public acts of self-punishment. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 180

Categorization

• DEFINE: Mahatmahood defined here as a social status granting moral amplitude and the license to claim universal representation.