Question

"Dalit participation was limited in the Civil Disobedience Movement". Examine the statement.

Answer 1

Hint: Dalits are a community who were considered untouchable, they were excluded from the varna system. Dalits are now officially called the Schedule caste in India. During the civil disobedience movement, there wasn’t a lot of Dalit participation.

Complete answer: a. During the Civil Disobedience movement one group of people who didn’t participate were the Dalits.
b. The reason was that for a long time in India the Congress, the most significant political party of India had ignored the Dalits because they feared that talking or associating with them would offend the higher caste Hindus of the country.
c. However, Mahatma Gandhi found this unacceptable and said that Indian freedom would never become a reality if the Dalits or Harijan were not part of the struggle as they too were an important part of the Indian populace.
d. To break the ice and erase the stereotypes against Dalits, Gandhiji himself started doing things which Dalits did traditionally, like cleaning toilets and sweeping the floors. He was also against untouchability.
e. However the Dalit leaders wanted political empowerment, they wanted representation and reservation. They demanded separate electorates for themselves.
f. These were the reasons why the Dalits didn’t participate in the Civil disobedience movement.

Note: Dr B.R. Ambedkar was a prominent personality in the Dalit struggle, he also formed the Depressed Classes Association in 1930. At the second round table conference, B.R. Ambedkar demanded separate electorates for Dalits, and the British accepted his demand, however Gandhiji began a fast till death in protest of this decision as he felt that having separate electorates would widen the divide between Dalits and higher castes. Later Ambedkar and Gandhiji came to an agreement that gave the depressed classes reserved seats in legislative councils but no separate electorates.