Why Ambedkar,Not Gandhi,Is India's True Father

Born in 1891, Bhimrao faced an India choked by caste. As a Mahar, deemed untouchable, his childhood was a gauntlet of humiliation. At nine, traveling to Koregaon, he and his siblings, well-dressed and articulate, were mistaken for Brahmins by a stationmaster. When Bhimrao revealed their caste, the man recoiled, abandoning them. Bullock-cart drivers refused to carry “polluting” passengers, forcing the boys to drive themselves, paying double fare. That night, hunger gnawed as they slept in the cart, denied water because no one would touch them. “No peon, no water,” he later wrote, recalling school days when he couldn’t drink unless a touchable opened the tap. 

He sat alone, on a separate gunny cloth, untouched by classmates or cleaners.Yet he defied the odds. The first untouchable to graduate from Bombay University, he earned scholarships to Columbia and London. Abroad, caste’s shadow lifted. “My five years in Europe and America wiped out any consciousness that I was an untouchable,” he wrote. 

Returning to India, reality struck. In Baroda, no hotel would take him; friends hesitated, fearing social ruin. Standing at the station, he wondered, “Where to go? Who will take me?” Manu Smriti’s ghost barring him from water, homes, humanity haunted every step.Ambedkar’s response was warfare, intellectual and moral. 

His 1936 book, The Annihilation of Caste, dismantled Hinduism’s caste system with precision. “The outcaste is a by-product of the caste system,” he argued. “Nothing can emancipate the outcaste except the destruction of the caste system.” He rejected varna’s hierarchy, calling Chaturvarnya a four-tiered ideal “a snare” perpetuating birth-based division. Converting to Buddhism in 1956, he signaled Hinduism’s failure to reform. He envisioned an industrialized India, not Gandhi’s village utopia. “Industrialisation is the soundest remedy for India’s agricultural problems,” he wrote, arguing it would ease land pressure and curb fragmentation. His party’s manifesto pushed state-owned industries to uplift the poor.

 As the architect of India’s Constitution, he enshrined equality, outlawing untouchability.His writings spanned Islam, communism, journalism, and more, each critique grounded in logic. On Hinduism, he said, “It creates an eagerness to separate… Hindu Society is only a collection of castes.” On Islam, he noted its brotherhood was “for Muslims only,” dividing as much as it united. His fearlessness made him a titan. He stood alone, appeasing no one, his intellect a blowtorch against orthodoxy. His vision wasn’t grey it demanded truth.Gandhi, by contrast, touched India’s soul but faltered in its mind. 

His support for caste was clear. In 1921, he declared, “Hindu Society has been able to stand because it is founded on the caste system.” He saw castes as divisions serving the whole, opposing inter-dining or intermarriage, calling food “as dirty an act as answering the call of nature.” Later, he backed varna, insisting occupations be hereditary. “A Shudra will not make learning a way of earning a living,” he said, confining millions to ancestral roles.His rationalization of violence was troubling. During the 1921 Moplah Massacre, when Muslims in Malabar killed Hindus, desecrated temples, and forcibly converted families, Gandhi blamed Hindus. “They have not cared for the Moplah,” he claimed, calling the attackers “brave” and “God-fearing.” When Maulana Hasrat Mohani justified the massacre as jihad, Gandhi excused him. Ambedkar saw jihad plainly: “The aim was to establish the kingdom of Islam by overthrowing the British.” Gandhi’s duplicity surfaced in his press. His English paper posed him as a caste opponent; his Gujarati one upheld orthodoxy. Ambedkar noted, “He was deceiving the people.”

In 1931, meeting Ambedkar, Gandhi patronized him. “I have been thinking of the Untouchables since my school days—when you were not born,” he boasted. Ambedkar retorted, “All elderly persons emphasize age.” Gandhi claimed to be an “untouchable by adoption,” insisting he represented Dalits better. “I repudiate his claim,” he said of Ambedkar. On temple entry, Gandhi fixated while Ambedkar dismissed it. “I have no interest in temples being thrown open,” Ambedkar said, prioritizing caste’s annihilation. Gandhi’s Khilafat Movement, backing a violent Islamic cause, baffled Ambedkar, who called it a “political stunt.” Gandhi’s plea for Hindus to die bravely rather than resist Muslim violence “If they kill us all, we shall usher in a new India” struck Ambedkar as absurd. “He never called Muslims to account,” Ambedkar wrote, “even for gross crimes against Hindus.”Gandhi’s charisma masked these flaws, but Ambedkar’s mind saw through them. India’s caste wound festers, and Ambedkar’s call for catharsis a collective reckoning remains unmet. 

In 2014, 47,064 crimes against Dalits were reported; in 2015, 45,003. Five rapes daily in 2013 one every five hours. In Ratlam, 2015, a Dalit bridegroom wore a helmet, stoned by onlookers. A Dalit dug a 40-foot well alone, denied village water. These are drops, not a wave, because India refuses to face them. Ambedkar urged a reckoning like Germany’s post-WWII confrontation with its Holocaust. Germans watched camp footage, held hands, and changed. India averts its gaze.His solutions were practical: make his books mandatory in schools; host monthly Dalit lectures; incentivize inter-caste marriages and community feasts. He saw caste’s roots in culture, not just law. “We are all Manu’s children,” he implied, urging shame as a catalyst. Crimes pile up 33,412 in 2009, 32,643 in 2010, 33,719 in 2011 yet no wave forms. Laws exist, but equality doesn’t. Fighting for guaranteed rights is absurd, Ambedkar knew. 

The answer lies in culture: unlearning prejudice, mixing genes, embracing Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam one human family.Science backs him. Population genetics shows India’s gene mixing halted 2,000 years ago, with Manu Smriti’s rise. Diversity strengthens species; isolation weakens them. Ambedkar’s industrialization push aimed to break rural caste strongholds, fostering mobility. His Constitution outlawed untouchability, but hearts lagged behind. Catharsis requires courage to face the skulls tumbling from our cupboard, to feel shame, to reform.Ambedkar’s critiques of religion were fearless. 

On Hinduism, he wrote, “The Caste System is a degenerate form of the Chaturvarna… Hindu Society is only a collection of castes.” He left Hinduism for Buddhism, a stinging rebuke.

 He didn’t spare Islam. In Pakistan or the Partition of India, he said, “Islam’s brotherhood is for Muslims only… For those outside, there is contempt and enmity.” Its allegiance, he argued, lies with faith, not nation, dividing India’s soul. “Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland,” he wrote, citing its division of the world into Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war). He rejected conversion to Islam, fearing it would “denationalise” Dalits and bolster Muslim dominance.Both religions, he believed, fueled intolerance. Hinduism’s caste sins were publicized by books like Mother India, but Ambedkar noted Muslims shared similar evils child marriage, purdah, and caste-like divisions. 

“Muslims have all the social evils of the Hindus and something more,” he wrote, pointing to purdah’s grip. His vision was secular: unity over dogma, mind over scripture. Historians, craving patronage, hide these truths, inventing myths to make villains into heroes. Gandhi and Ambedkar are appropriated Gandhi by the soulful, Ambedkar by the fearful. Yet Ambedkar’s words endure, urging us to shun grey dogma for reform.On communism, he was equally sharp. “The Communist Party wants a Constitution based upon the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” he said, rejecting it for parliamentary democracy. “Communism is like a forest fire; it goes on consuming anything and everything.” On journalism, he lamented, “It has no more moral function than the manufacture of soap… Indian journalism is written by drum-boys to glorify their heroes.” His clarity cut through every field economics, law, politics always logical, never polemical.India’s historians cherry-pick Ambedkar’s critiques, amplifying his attacks on Hinduism while burying his views on Islam. This selective reading paints Hinduism as uniquely flawed, ignoring that intolerance runs in all our veins, mainstreamed by holy texts. 

Ambedkar saw through this hypocrisy, calling out both faiths’ failures. His book Pakistan or the Partition of India is rarely discussed, lest it turn him into a bigot in the eyes of his Left-leaning admirers. Yet he wrote without apology, grounding his words in evidence, not fiction.He psychoanalyzed Muslim politics with precision. “The Muslims have no interest in politics as such,” he wrote. “Their predominant interest is religion.” A Muslim constituency, he argued, cares less for a candidate’s program than for promises to repair mosques or fund feasts. “Muslim politics is essentially clerical,” he said, recognizing only the Hindu-Muslim divide, subordinating all else class, labor, justice to faith. This stagnation, he believed, stemmed from a perpetual struggle against Hindus, not a quest for reform. “The Muslims think that the Hindus and Muslims must perpetually struggle,” he wrote, prioritizing unity over progress.Ambedkar’s critique wasn’t hatred; it was diagnosis. He warned that Muslim allegiance to faith over nation rooted in tenets dividing the world into abodes of Islam and war made India a battleground, not a motherland. “A Hindu is a Kaffir,” he quoted, unworthy of respect in Muslim eyes. This religious lens, he argued, fueled political stagnation, as 

Muslims prioritized communal strength over social change. He contrasted this with Hindus, whose caste obsession similarly fractured unity. Both, he believed, needed to shed dogma for a shared future.History, for us, is to be hidden or invented. We tell what we like, scrunching the rest under the mattress. Ambedkar knew this, offering us a choice: discuss his views openly or bury them. We chose the latter, fearful of truth. 

As he wrote in his preface to Pakistan or the Partition of India, “I have not allowed myself to be influenced by fears of wounding either individuals or classes… I have often felt regret in pursuing this course, but remorse never.” His words, tender yet forceful, tried to goad us like a physician rousing paralyzed organs. But we remain fearful, indifferent, paralyzed.Nations that fear their past fear their future, and fearful nations worship, not follow, their greats. 

Ambedkar is no exception. Gandhi reflects our biases our selective outrage, our grey comfort. We see ourselves in him, forgiving his flaws because they mirror ours. Ambedkar demands we shed that grey, his anger a cry for reform, his urgency a plea to annihilate caste, not appease it. Gandhi’s compromises on caste, violence, truth comforted a nation unwilling to face its sins.

 Ambedkar’s logic forced us to.Who is a father? Not one who stirs the heart, but one who purifies the mind. Ambedkar’s Constitution, his books, his life, gave India a chance at catharsis. We haven’t taken it. Crimes mount, drops collect, but no wave crashes because we lack his courage. Yet hope remains. Teach his words, share his stories, mix our lives India can change. Choose Ambedkar’s mind over Gandhi’s soul, and we’ll build a nation that faces its past to forge its future.

Source :- @AnandRanganathan