Mahatma Gandhi expressed his disappointment at Ambedkar’s ‘unfortunate’ statement, stating that untouchability was on its last legs anyway. He went on to argue that he did not approve of conversion: religion, he said, was not a cloak one could put on or discard, but an integral part of one’s self. Ambedkar dismissed this argument with contempt as implying that a status conferred at birth could not be changed: ‘The difference between humans and animals is that animals cannot progress.
