Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics in India, 1945-47

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3607102
AutoresSekhar Bandyopadhyay (0000-0003-2178-5268, Victoria University of Wellington, autor de correspondencia)
Año2000
Volumen34
Número4
Páginas893-942
Fecha de publicación2000-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x00003875
OpenAlexW2156919339
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15

Ever since its beginning, organized dalit politics under the leadership of Dr B. R. Ambedkar had been consistently moving away from the Indian National Congress and the Gandhian politics of integration. It was drifting towards an assertion of separate political identity of its own, which in the end was enshrined formally in the new constitution of the All India Scheduled Caste Federation, established in 1942. A textual discursive representation of this sense of alienation may be found in Ambedkar's book, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, published in 1945. Yet, within two years, in July 1947, we find Ambedkar accepting Congress nomination for a seat in the Constituent Assembly. A few months later he was inducted into the first Nehru Cabinet of free India, ostensibly on the basis of a recommendation from Gandhi himself. In January 1950, speaking at a general public meeting in Bombay, organized by the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, he advised the dalits to co-operate with the Congress and to think of their country first, before considering their sectarian interests. But then within a few months again, this alliance broke down over his differences with Congress stalwarts, who, among other things, refused to support him on the Hindu Code Bill. He resigned from the Cabinet in 1951 and in the subsequent general election in 1952, he was defeated in the Bombay parliamentary constituency by a political nonentity, whose only advantage was that he contested on a Congress ticket. Ambedkar's chief election agent, Kamalakant Chitre described this electoral debacle as nothing but a 'crisis

Alienation · Alliance · Cabinet (room · Caste · Constitution of India · General election · Hinduism · Legislative assembly · Nomination · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · History · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · Public Administration · Religious studies · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · South Asian Studies and Diaspora