Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition

by B.R. Ambedkar

Ambedkar’s report on the seriousness with which Gandhi attended the conference is worth quoting at length: I am sure I am not exaggerating or misrepresenting facts when I say that the Congress point of view at the Round Table Conference was that the Congress was the only party in India and that nobody else counted and that the British should settle with the Congress only. This was the burden of Mr Gandhi’s song at the Round Table Conference. He was so busy in establishing his own claim to recognition by the British as the dictator of India that he forgot altogether that the important question was not with whom the settlement should be made but what were to be the terms of that settlement. As to the terms of the settlement, Mr Gandhi was quite unequal to the task. When he went to London he had forgotten that he would have before him not those who go to him to obtain his advice and return with his blessings but persons who would treat him as a lawyer treats a witness in the box. Mr Gandhi also forgot that he was going to a political conference. He went there as though he was going to a Vaishnava Shrine singing Narsi Mehta’s songs. When I think of the whole affair I am wondering if any nation had ever sent a representative to negotiate the terms of a national settlement who was more unfit than Mr Gandhi.6