BR Ambedkar(L) and Mahatma Gandhi
BR Ambedkar(L) and Mahatma Gandhi

The Doctor and the Saint review| Vision and Politics

The Dalit question is examined from various angles such as its origins, its history and evolution, and its inhuman and brutal implementation.

In 1936, a Hindu reformist organisation named the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal invited Dr BR Ambedkar to address its members, all of whom were upper-caste Hindus. Ambedkar agreed, but was not destined to give the speech he prepared for the occasion. An advance copy of Ambedkar’s speech, read by the organisers, resulted in them disinviting Ambedkar. Ambedkar went on to publish the speech in the form of a pamphlet named Annihilation of Caste, a work that was an attack on Hinduism itself. 

Arundhati Roy’s The Doctor and the Saint: The Ambedkar-Gandhi Debate—Caste, Race and Annihilation of Caste was originally written as an introduction to an annotated version of Annihilation of Caste. As Roy explains in the preface to this book, “The Doctor and the Saint looks at the practice of caste in India, through the prism of the present as well as the past.”

The plight of the Untouchables, the Dalits or Harijan or whatever other appellation one may apply to the ‘lowest’ of Hinduism’s many castes, and the views on casteism of two eminent Indian personalities—Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, and Gandhi, by far the most widely-admired Indian in the world—form the bases of this book. Roy begins with a look at the situation of Dalits today, from the very rare Dalit in power (some important politicians, for example) to the rather more usual: a startling lack of Dalits in the judiciary, in administration, in the media, in business. And, most horrifyingly, the hair-raising statistics of anti-Dalit atrocities. 

In the course of a relatively short but intense book, Roy examines the Dalit question from various angles. Its origins in the chaturvarna; its history and evolution; its inhuman and brutal implementation; its ramifications not just for the Dalits themselves, but for others too—especially for politicians who have tried to balance political correctness with their own inherent prejudices. Its connections (or not) with what might appear to be similar movements, like that of the Adivasis. 

Most importantly, Roy examines, through their own abundant writings, the very contrasting stances of Ambedkar and Gandhi. While she provides an insight into Ambedkar’s life, his education and political career, it is on Gandhi that she focuses. The ‘Mahatma’, whose devotion to the cause of the ‘Children of God’, the ‘Harijan’ as he dubbed them, was among the many reasons he was pretty much deified in his own lifetime. 

And this is where Roy is especially effective, in proving—through Gandhi’s own words, his often contradictory statements—that the Father of the Nation used the Dalit cause as a means to further his own politics. From Gandhi’s sojourn in South Africa (where the truth of his relationship with the British and the Africans may come as a shock to many), to the Khilafat Movement and beyond, Roy traces a picture of a man of an immensely patriarchal, racist and casteist bent of mind. 

The Doctor and the Saint, ironically enough (or by design?), portrays the saint as being far from a saint—but, in the process, Roy makes a very pertinent point: that the plight of the Dalits is such that they have been used and abused, time and again, by others. Not just as performers of menial tasks the upper castes have considered beneath themselves, but as vote banks, as buffers between communities, as leverage, as a means to garner money and power. 

Distressingly enough, a situation which, given the examples from 21st century India that Roy presents, has not really changed much. Roy’s writing is lucid, well-researched and well-presented, and her wry sense of humour invariably hits the nail on the head. The Doctor and the Saint is a book that is both shocking and depressing in the insight it offers into the plight of the Dalits. It throws light on the intricacies of the Dalit system, and while it offers no solution—that is beyond the scope of this book—it is, at the very least, a much-needed eye-opener.

The Doctor and the Saint

By: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Pages: 165
Price: Rs 299

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