The Social Vision of the Alternative Food Movement - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 536

Babasaheb Ambedkar
Among those that did not share Gandhi's Hind Swaraj worldview were the leaders of the
downtrodden and the underprivileged, particularly those who represented the lower
castes in India's hierarchical and hereditary caste system. One of the most important
critiques of Gandhi's Hind Swaraj worldview came from Babasaheb Ambedkar, one of
modern India's most important thinkers and leaders.
Bhimrao Ramji “Babasaheb” Ambedkar was born in 1891 to a family of untouchables,
who were (and are) at the very bottom of India's caste system. With his father serving
in the Army, young Bhimrao got a rare opportunity to acquire a modern education. He
eventually earned doctorate degrees from Columbia University in the United States and
from the London School of Economics in England, and he qualified as a barrister in
London. Ambedkar went on to become an important political figure in India and an
inspiring leader of the untouchables. Today, Ambedkar and his ideas are held in great
esteem by the Dalit movement (former untouchables now call themselves “Dalits,”
which means “oppressed”).
Ambedkar spent three years (1913-1916) at Columbia University in New York City—
three years that played a crucial role in his intellectual development. He later recounted
that it was at Columbia that he experienced social equality for the first time in his life,
and that “the best friends I have had in my life were some of my classmates at Columbia
and my great professors, John Dewey, James Shotwell, Edwin Seligman, and James
Harvey Robinson” (quoted in Pritchett 2013). Especially influential was John Dewey,
an intellectual giant of the American progressive era. Ambedkar, like Dewey, held that
reason and science had the potential—for all people everywhere—to challenge unex-
amined tradition and prejudices by cultivating a collective, democratic “will to inquire,
to examine, to discriminate, to draw conclusions only on the basis of evidence after tak-
ing pains to gather all available evidence” (quoted in Nanda 2003, 183). Ambedkar saw
scientific and technological progress as fundamentally emancipatory for the oppressed,
and the traditional rural socioeconomic order in India as fundamentally exploitative
of the lower castes—a vision that was almost diametrically opposed to Gandhi's Hind
Swaraj worldview.
A comparison of the words of Gandhi and Ambedkar demonstrates how much their
views of “civilization” differed from one another. Gandhi expressed his view in Hind Swaraj :
Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty.
Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe
morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know
ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means “good conduct.” If this defi-
nition be correct, then India . . . has nothing to learn from anybody else. . . . We notice
that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains
unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become.
Our ancestors therefore set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was
largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich or
unhappy because he is poor. . . . . Millions will always remain poor. Observing all this,