ABSTRACT
The present excursus engages with the recent controversy in the aftermath of Arundhati Roy’s recent critical introduction to Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste entitled, “The Doctor and the Saint”. The present chapter counters allegations raised by Arundhati against Gandhi in a dispassionate argumentative manner through empirical substantiation. In analysing Roy’s diatribe against Gandhi, I would be incorporating Rajmohan Gandhi’s recent rebuttal of Roy and also the counter arguments of many other critics and observers who have commented on this controversy. The primary objective of this study is not to intensify the Roy Gandhi controversy but to arrive at a better fact-finding exercise through which greater service can be done to both Gandhi and Ambedkar. In matters of historical evaluation and social reform prejudiced perspectival approaches would do the biggest disservice to history itself and Roy in her premeditated and biased ways has actually missed the real Gandhi. Through painstaking analysis of Gandhi’s writings in the Harijan and in other resources, this chapter plans to restore the real Gandhi, the real social crusader who sacrificed his life for the ethos of social justice.
