The Mahatma spoke of the Indian National Congress, with its diverse and all-inclusive membership, as the sole representative of all Indian interests, classes, castes, faiths, and regions (and also of both genders, pointing to its several female presidents, something no other party could boast of). Ambedkar spoke of two themes in particular, the specific problems of the Depressed Classes and the future constitutional dispensation of free India. On the former subject, Ambedkar refused to be patronized. He disagreed openly with the Mahatma’s stand that no special provisions were required to cater to the needs of his community. When Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya (founder of Banaras Hindu University and a prominent Congressman) remarked that if the British had devoted enough resources to the eradication of illiteracy in India, there would have been no Depressed Classes to speak of, Ambedkar testily pointed out that his own extensive academic qualifications had made no difference to his being treated as an ‘untouchable’.
In the annals of India's social reform, two luminaries stand preeminent: Jotirao Phule and E.V. Ramasamy, colloquially known as Periyar. Their endeavours, ensconced in the 19th and 20th centuries, continue to sculpt the contemporary struggle against the entrenched caste system. Phule's educational renaissance Phule, born in 1827, was an intellectual vanguard who perceived education as the ultimate equaliser. He inaugurated the inaugural school for girls from lower castes in Pune, subverting the Brahminical hegemony that had long monopolized erudition. His Satyashodhak Samaj endeavoured to obliterate caste hierarchies through radical social reform. His magnum opus, "Gulamgiri" (Slavery), delineated poignant parallels between India's caste system and the subjugation of African-Americans, igniting a discourse on caste as an apparatus of servitude. Periyar's rationalist odyssey Periyar, born in 1879, assumed the mantle of social reform through the Dravidian moveme...
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