ROLE OF ......................... INDIAN DEMOCRACY 117
In his letter home Dr. Ambedkar foretold that the Round Table Conference would end in a fiasco, and in his opinion Gandhi was responsible for that failure. According to Dr. Ambedkar, Gandhi’s partiality, discriminating conduct in solving the problem of the minorities, his equivocal manner of dealing, his absolute disregard for the other representatives, the insults he inflicted upon them—all these qualities did not help Gandhi to solve the problem tactfully, Dr. Ambedkar further observed that Gandhi’s diabolical way of playing one community against another was now quite clear ! His undemocratic mental set-up, Dr. Ambedkar concluded, had given a rude shock to a man like Harold Laski, and Congress leaders, like Vithalbhai Patel. were murmuring disapproval of Gandhi’s mishandling the situation !
Gandhi’s hostility to the demands put forth by Dr. Ambedkar had wide repercussions and reaction in the quarters of the Untouchables all over India. The All-India Depressed Classes Conference. under the presidentship of Rao Bahadur M. C. Rajah, at its Gurgaon session, declared that Gandhi was misrepresenting the case of the Untouchables, and strongly denounced the claim made by Gandhi that the Congress had been taking care of the Untouchables from the beginning and had championed the cause of the Untouchables. “I say,” said Rajah, the President of the Conference, “that these statements are untrue.”
The Conference supported the demands put forth by Dr. Ambedkar and declared that no constitution would be acceptable to the Depressed Classes which did not include in it the system of Separate Electorates for the Depressed Classes. Messages requesting Dr. Ambedkar not to put faith in Gandhi and in the Congress were sent to Dr. Ambedkar in hundreds by the Depressed Classes leaders and associations from all parts of India, and by public meetings and conferences held at Tinnevelly, Robertson (Madras), Lyallpur, Karnal, Chidambaram, Calicut, Banaras, Kolhapur, Yeotmal, Nagpur, Chanda, Kanpur, Kamptee, Belgaum, Dharwar, Nasik, Hubli, Ahmedabad, Tuticorin, Colombo and at several other places.
These vociferous cablegrams demonstrated who was the real representative of the Depressed Classes. Gandhi, no doubt received a few cables, but they were insufficient to meet the queries which Gandhi was pestered with in his talks and discourses at