Gandhi and Patel blocked Untouchables from seeking legal redress

Evidence

14 Following a Bombay government ruling, in August 1935, that Untouchable students should be admitted to schools, the Untouchables of Kavitha village enrolled four children in the local school. This invoked both physical assaults and social boycott, and the Untouchables turned to the Harijan Sevak Sangh, an organisation founded by M.K. Gandhi, for help. Gandhi and ‘Sardar’ Vallabhbhai Patel opposed the Untouchables’ efforts at taking recourse to law, and forced them to withdraw their complaint. Ambedkar, while recounting this incident, does not mince words (BAWS 5, 43): “With all the knowledge of tyranny and oppression practised by the caste Hindus of Kavitha against the Untouchables all that Mr Gandhi felt like doing was to advise the Untouchables to leave the village. He did not even suggest that the miscreants should be hauled up before a court of law. His henchman, Mr Vallabhbhai Patel, played a part which was still more strange. He had gone to Kavitha to persuade the caste Hindus not to molest the Untouchables. But they did not even give him a hearing. Yet this very man was opposed to the Untouchables hauling them up in a court of law and getting them punished. The Untouchables filed the complaint notwithstanding his opposition. But he ultimately forced them to withdraw the complaint on the caste Hindus making some kind of a show of an understanding not to molest, an undertaking, which the Untouchables can never enforce. The result was that the Untouchables suffered and their tyrants escaped with the aid of Mr Gandhi’s friend, Mr Vallabhbhai Patel.” — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1041

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the book’s central thesis that nationalism and Congress leadership preserved rather than dismantled caste privileges.