![]() Ambedkar pronounced Gandhi "devious and untrustworthy." Between 19, Gandhi suspended his efforts no fewer than three times, leaving in the lurch more than 15,000 supporters who had gone to jail for the cause. Ambedkar, who spoke for the country's 55 million Untouchables (the lowest caste of Hindus, whose very touch was thought to defile the four higher classes). Yet Gandhi's uncanny ability to irritate and frustrate the leader of India's 90 million Muslims, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (whom he called "a maniac"), wrecked any hope of early independence. With 300 million Indians ruled over by 0.1% of that number of Britons, the subcontinent could have ended the Raj with barely a shrug if it had been politically united. Ward, in his review of Joseph Lelyveld’s Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India (March 27), concluded, It is hard to see what remains of. ![]() ![]() ![]() ILLUSTRATION: Hulton Archive/Getty Imagesįor all his lifelong campaign for Swaraj ("self-rule"), India could have achieved it many years earlier if Gandhi had not continually abandoned his civil-disobedience campaigns just as they were beginning to be successful. ![]()
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