ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the three of the finest examples of the reconciliatory efforts; namely, the work of Thomas Pantham, Ramachandra Guha, and Partha Chatterjee. Thomas Pantham, in a thoughtful and well-researched study of the complex relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Dr B. R. Ambedkar, and their respective discourses, seeks to follow Palshikar in his effort at 'building bridges between the two rich discourses of our times'. A first reading of Partha Chatterjee's The Politics of the Governed (2004) leaves the reader under the impression that Chatterjee's Ambedkar is irreconcilable with Gandhi. Indian postcolonial theorists – who preponderantly tend to equate enlightenment modernity with its co-incidental colonial/imperialist surge – have tended to ignore Ambedkar (and, partly as a result, Dalits) even in the process of attempting to write 'histories from below', subaltern studies, and, unbelievably, while striving to disclose the dynamics of hidden power-relations in South Asia in the light of colonization.
