Gandhi refused commensality with Dalits even while staging solidarity visits

Evidence

In his history of the Balmiki workers of Delhi, the scholar Vijay Prashad says when Gandhi staged his visits to the Balmiki Colony on Mandir Marg (formerly Reading Road) in 1946, he refused to eat with the community: … ‘You can offer me goat’s milk,’ he said, ‘but I will pay for it. If you are keen that I should take food prepared by you, you can come here and cook my food for me’…Balmiki elders recount tales of Gandhi’s hypocrisy, but only with a sense of uneasiness. When a dalit gave Gandhi nuts, he fed them to his goat, saying that he would eat them later, in the goat’s milk. Most of Gandhi’s food, nuts and grains, came from Birla House; he did not take these from the dalits. Radical Balmikis took refuge in Ambedkarism which openly confronted Gandhi on these issues. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 311