158 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
picture of the substitutes and added that he was not a man to run after a mirage. The atmosphere of dullness gave place to grim despair. At noon Jayakar, Sapru and Malaviya saw Gandhi in the Jail. They were followed by P. Baloo and Rajah, who promised Gandhi that they would secure an agreement that would satisfy him.
Late in the evening Dr. Ambedkar, accompanied by Jayakar, Birla, Chunilal Mehta and Rajagopalachari, went to meet Gandhi in the jail. It was the gravest political crisis. When the party entered the prison court, Gandhi was lying on a white iron-cot with a jail mattress on it, under the thick shade of a low mango tree, and Sardar Patel and Sarojini Naidu sat near Gandhi. Near the cot were bottles of water, sodabicarb and salt.
When Dr. Ambedkar approached the cot, there was an echoless silence and a breathless eagerness. Would the entangling silence move Dr. Ambedkar ? Jayakar had foretold that Dr. Ambedkar’s intransigence would collapse when he saw Gandhi. Would the entrancing sadness in the atmosphere deepened by the twilight inveigle Dr. Ambedkar ? Dr. Ambedkar was now in the presence of the enveloping personality of Gandhi who had cast his spell on powerful men and drowned them in the flood of his magnetic mysticism. Amidst the fierce whirlwind raging outside the jail and the entangling silence prevailing inside, Dr. Ambedkar was calm and collected. A lesser man would have been buried alive in such a cyclone of happenings. Dr. Ambedkar loved his people more than his life and cared more for the happiness of his people than for his own.
Gandhi was weak. He lay in his bed. The talk began. Sapru narrated to Gandhi the whole story. Malaviya put the Hindu point of view. Then in a soft, slow flow Dr. Ambedkar began. He said in a low voice:” [1]
“Mahatmaji, you have been very unfair to us.” “It is always my lot to appear to be unfair,” replied Gandhi, “I cannot help it.”
1 :Keer, Pp. 210-12.