Gandhi’s trusteeship doctrine never touched industrial or landed wealth

Evidence

Though Gandhi spoke of inequality and poverty, though he sometimes even sounded like a socialist, at no point in his political career did he ever seriously criticise or confront an Indian industrialist or the landed aristocracy. This was of a piece with his doctrine of trusteeship or what today goes by the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Expanding on this in an essay called “Equal Distribution”, Gandhi said: “The rich man will be left in possession of his wealth, of which he will use what he reasonably requires for his personal needs and will act as a trustee for the remainder to be used for society. In this argument, honesty on the part of the trustee is assumed.” … Gandhi’s ideas of trusteeship echo almost verbatim what American capitalists—the Robber Barons—like J.D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were saying at the time. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 276

Categorization

• XREF: Connects trusteeship/CSR critique to the reader’s analysis of how reformist frames preserve existing hierarchies intact.
• SEED: Angle: how ‘trusteeship’ and CSR function as absorbing egalitarian pressure while keeping power concentration—caste-annihilation parallel.