‘Ambedkar, Gandhi on the same pole’

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Kochi: “At a time when the caste system refuses to fade from the Indian social scene, the ideologies of Gandhiji and Ambedkar have greater relevance,” said eminent historian Ramachandra Guha. He was delivering the Suku­mar Azhikode memorial lecture on the topic ‘Reconciling Gandhi with Ambedkar,’ at the Sree Sankara­charya University of Sanskrit at Kalady, on Monday.
Guha said that finding areas for reconciling did not mean following someone’s ideology blindly.
“Gandhiji, as a critic from within the portals of Hinduism, was trying to reconcile with the modern face of Hinduism by negating the vice called untouchability. But Ambedkar found untouchability as a vice embedded in the gene of Hinduism. Gandhiji on the contrary believed that untouchability was the product of the decay that happened to Hinduism during its later phase,” said Guha on the views of the two towering figures.
He said that Ambedkar had differences with Gandhiji over his economic philosophy. “Ambedkar negated the resuscitation of grama swaraj as enunciated by Gandhiji, in the light of the brutal discrimination of untouchability he faced in his village and wholeheartedly welcomed modernism,” he said.
Guha said that since the Constitution, prepared by Ambedkar, had become the foundation of modern India, there was no reason to believe that Ambedkar and Gandhiji stood at different poles.  Sanskrit University Malayalam department head Dr K.S. Ravikumar presided over the meeting.