Gandhi idealized India’s unchanging past as morally superior civilization

Evidence

A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich or unhappy because he is poor. The rich are often seen to be unhappy, the poor to be happy. Millions will always remain poor … Observing all this our ancestors dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures. We have managed with the same kind of plough as it existed thousands of years ago. We have retained the same kind of cottages we had in former times and our indigenous education remains the same as before. We have had no system of life-corroding competition. Each followed his own occupation or trade. And charged a regulation wage. It was not that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our forefathers knew that, if we set our hearts after such things we would become slaves and lose our moral fibre … A nation with a constitution like this is fitter to teach others than to learn from others. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 252

Categorization

• XREF: This is Gandhi’s own rhetoric quoted by Ambedkar early in Annihilation of Caste itself; connects to later chapters where Ambedkar dismantles this village-idealization. — connects to: Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj glorified poverty as a chosen moral simplicity — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1063; Gandhi erased cities from Indian history to posit a classless idyllic village past — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1065
• DEFINE: Shows the construction Gandhi built his whole civilizational claim on: static tradition as moral fibre.