Ambedkar’s and Gandhi’s very different utopias ought not to be appraised or assessed by the ‘end product’ alone—the village or the city. Equally important is the impetus that drove those utopias. For Ambedkarites to call mass struggles against contemporary models of development ‘eco-romantic’ and for Gandhians to hold Gandhi out as a symbol of justice and moral virtue are shallow interpretations of the very different passions that drove the two men.
