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Narrator : It was, at all events, sincere. Most deeply of all, he felt the cause of the Untouchables to be his own. Brailsford had some private talks with him about this.
H. N. Brailsford : He spoke with a passion that meant, I think that he was suffering under a terrible sense of vicarious guilt. He knew how abominably his people, the Hindu Nation, had treated these outcasts ; and he was determined, just for that reason, that it should be his people, the Hindu Nation, that put matters right.
Narrator : Gandhi’s own attempt to put matters right was at that time a new campaign, a new passion. Dr. Verrier Elwin was with him a few months earlier in India, almost at the start of things.
Verrier Elwin : Yes, that was in 1931, and when I went with him to a temple which belonged to a leading mill-owner in Ahmedabad, and Gandhi took a party of Untouchable children into the temple. I still remember the faces of the orthodox priests when this happened, they didn’t like it at all, but afterwards Gandhi had a meeting and in the course of it he said that in future the Untouchables should be called the children of God, the Harijans, by which name they’ve been known ever since.
Narrator : But there was a new and formidable face at the Round Table Conference. Dr. Ambedkar, born an Untouchable, had pulled himself up by his own gifts and character, and didn’t want any Caste Hindu to do penance for him.
B. R. Ambedkar : Give us a separate electorate, you see.
Narrator : Dr. Ambedkar was direct and implacable. Even afterwards he never changed towards Gandhi.
B.R. Ambedkar : All this, talk about Untouchability was just for the purpose of making the Untouchables drawn into the Congress, that was one thing, and secondly, you see, he wanted that the Untouchables should not oppose his movement of Swaraj. I don’t think beyond that he had any real motive of uplift.