We have argued that the basis of much of the contemporary violence surrounding Untouchables is a conscious resistance to oppression. Consciousness of oppression may well be as old as the system of Untouchability itself, but the conditions for its development into militancy were put in place only during the period of direct British rule after the uprising of 1857. The present chapter sets out to explore this period, particularly the crucial quarter-century before Independence. This was the period dominated by Gandhi and Ambedkar. The narrative is a tangled skein of religion and politics: both Gandhi and Ambedkar ultimately committed themselves to an essentially religious solution to the task of attacking Untouchability. Gandhi was broadly consistent in his attitudes to the Untouchable question throughout his political life, though his commitment and tactics varied. The Untouchability of what Gandhi came to call ‘Harijans’ or ‘People of God’ was for him an historical corruption of Hinduism. It would be cured by caste Hindus purging themselves of the immorality that had insinuated itself into the pure body of Hinduism. Untouchables would join their fellow Hindus in a reborn equality.

Ambedkar, on the other hand, moved through several distinct phases in his thinking. One of his first campaigns in the late 1920s was an effort to force Hindu temples in Maharashtra to open their doors to Untouchables. But by the time Gandhi endorsed this strategy in the 1930s, Ambedkar had abandoned it. By then Ambedkar saw Hinduism as irredeemable, as having an essential and not merely an historical association with dehumanising discrimination.