Gandhi idealized traditional Indian poverty as morally superior to modernity

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. This nation had courts, lawyers and doctors, but they were all within bounds…Justice was tolerably fair. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 252

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the critique of Gandhi’s romanticized village in Annihilation of Caste proper — this is the vision Ambedkar’s whole argument dismantles. — connects to: Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj glorified poverty as a chosen moral simplicity — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1063
• QUESTION: How directly does Ambedkar’s actual caste-annihilation argument respond to this specific Hind Swaraj passage? Worth tracing the explicit engagement.