Dr. Ambedkar on Gandhi

Some parts of the speech –

“As I met Mr. Gandhi in the capacity of an opponent, I’ve a feeling that I know him better than most other people, because he had openly real fangs to me, and I could see the inside of the man….

“I feel quite surprised at the interest of the outside world — Western World, particularly, seems to be taking in Mr. Gandhi. I cannot understand that. So far as India is concerned, he was, in my judgment, an episode in the history of India, never an epoch maker….

“He was all the time double-dealing. He conducted two papers. One in English…. In Gujarati, he conducted another paper…. If you read the two papers, you will see how Mr. Gandhi was deceiving the people. In the English paper, he posed himself as an opponent of the caste system, and of untouchability, and that he was a Democrat. But if you read his Gujarati magazine… he has been supporting the caste system and all the orthodox dogmas which have been keeping us down all through the ages…

“The Western World only reads the English paper, where Mr. Gandhi, in order to keep himself in the esteem of the Western people, who believe in democracy, was advocating democratic ideals. But you have to see what he actually talked to the people in his vernacular paper.”

“We want untouchability to be abolished. But we also want that we must be given equal opportunity so that we may rise to the level of the other parties…. Mr. Gandhi was totally opposed…. He wasn’t like Garrison, in the United States, who fought for the Negroes.”