432 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Narrator : But one didn’t have to be an opponent to be wary of the idea of a Mahatma. J. B.Kripalani, the Indian Socialist leader, was not an opponent. He was a follower from 1917 until Gandhi’s death.
J. B. Kripalani : He repudiated the idea of superman, he repudiated the idea of his becoming a Mahatma. He even said that if he were such a Mahatma, it would not be possible for us to understand him. Fundamentally, I believe, Gandhiji’s message was social, political, economic, and not spiritual in the sense in which spirituality is understood. I would say that we had enough of Gods and supermen. Gandhi was good enough as a man.
Dhirendra Mohan Datta : I never thought that Mahatma Gandhi was typically Indian.
Narrator : Dr. Datta is a well known philosopher now living at Santiniketan, the educational institution of Rabindranath Tagore which is now a University.
Dhirendra Mohan Datta : To modern Hindus, he was their very ideal, the very ideal which they could follow with their European education and their European background and so on they could very easily sympathize with the Hindu ideals. But the orthodox Hindus thought that he was betraying ………. that his Hinduism was not real Hinduism.
B. R. Ambedkar : He was absolutely an orthodox Hindu.
Narrator : Dr. Ambedkar thinks so. So did many but not all Muslims. Some of them felt that Gandhi’s attitude to Untouchability distinguished him.
H. N. Brailsford : He once put it in this way, that he represented eighty-five per cent of the Indian people. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, because he never did represent more than a mere fraction of the Muslims. But when it came to the rest, Hindu and Sikhs and even Untouchables, then his boast was correct.