2023-12-09

The Doctor and the Saint: The Ambedkar - Gandhi Debate by Arundhati Roy | Goodreads

The Doctor and the Saint: The Ambedkar - Gandhi Debate by Arundhati Roy | Goodreads





The Doctor and the Saint: The Ambedkar - Gandhi Debate

Arundhati Roy

4.32
2,098 ratings278 reviews

To best understand and address the inequality in India today, 
Arundhati Roy insists we must examine both the political development and influence of M. K. Gandhi and why B. R. Ambedkar’s brilliant challenge to his near-divine status was suppressed by India’s elite. 

In Roy’s analysis, we see that Ambedkar’s fight for justice was systematically sidelined in favor of policies that reinforced caste, resulting in the current nation of India: independent of British rule, globally powerful, and marked to this day by the caste system.

This book situates Ambedkar’s arguments in their vital historical context— namely, as an extended public political debate with Mohandas Gandhi. 

“For more than half a century—throughout his adult life—[Gandhi’s] pronouncements on the inherent qualities of black Africans, untouchables and the laboring classes remained consistently insulting,” writes Roy. 

“His refusal to allow working-class people and untouchables to create their own political organizations and elect their own representatives remained consistent too.”

In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy exposes some uncomfortable, controversial, and even surprising truths about the political thought and career of India’s most famous and most revered figure. In doing so she makes the case for why Ambedkar’s revolutionary intellectual achievements must be resurrected, not only in India but throughout the world.

“Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness.”
—Junot Díaz

“The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.”
—Alice Walker

GenresNonfictionIndiaHistoryPoliticsReligionRaceEssays
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184 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 2017
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Arundhati Roy
94 books11.3k followers

Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer who is also an activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays.

For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002.



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4.32
William2
770 reviews · 3,134 followers

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July 3, 2019
Damning. Insightful. I’ve been wanting just such a book. It’s a short history of untouchability, especially in the last century. It alters irremediably Gandhi’s reputation as the Saint of Nonviolence. 

Gandhi—unbelievably—was pro-caste. Written originally as an introduction to B.R. Ambedkar’s great work Annihilation of Caste. Much here is about Gandhi’s utterly contradictory nature: it reviews his pro-British role in South Africa; how he failed his fellow Indians there; his weird sexual life, which he reported to everyone; his odd romanticization of the Indian village, his hatred of cities, and machinery, and industry, though industrialists nevertheless subsidized him most of his life. 

Roy is herself tinged with the romanticism of Marx, but she wears it lightly. She is never ideological, and always scholarly. She despises the idea of gross over-accumulation of capital, and laments how big capital projects (usually dams) displace the poor. 

(In the U.S. there’s the additional burden of the poor always being on the front lines of industrial pollution, since they tend to live where the rent is lowest and illegal dumping rampant. I don’t doubt this happens in India also, the catastrophe caused by Union Carbide at Bhopal being just one example.) 

The Dalits are seen as a form of human pollution. That’s hard for the Western mind to grasp. All of Hindu India therefore, according to one source, 966 million people, is built on the idea of caste. At its lowest level are the Dalits or Untouchable castes, over 400 such groups, each with its heritary skill—cobbler, barber, milkman, potter, etc.—each with an iota less privilege the farther one descends the ladder, altogether some 130 million individuals. 

Gandhi comes off looking like a ruthless self-promoter and an advance man for corporations and the government. It’s very damning, his utter embrace of the caste system, the status quo. The introduction here to Dr. Ambedkar, born an Untouchable, ultimately a graduate of Oxford, historically the great advocate for Dalits, is something I’ll always be grateful for.

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Abhijit
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July 8, 2019
"The most famous Indian in the world, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi believed that caste represented the genius of Indian society. In 1921, in his Gujarati journal Navajivan he wrote:

'I believe that if Hindu Society has been able to stand, it is because it is founded on the caste system … To destroy the caste system and adopt the Western European social system means that Hindus must give up the principle of hereditary occupation which is the soul of the caste system. Hereditary principle is an eternal principle. To change it is to create disorder. I have no use for a Brahmin if I cannot call him a Brahmin for my life. It will be chaos if every day a Brahmin is changed into a Shudra and a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin.' "

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, a crime is committed against a Dalit by a non-Dalit every sixteen minutes; every day, more than four Untouchable women are raped by Touchables; every week, thirteen Dalits are murdered and six Dalits are kidnapped. In 2012 alone, the year of the Delhi gang-rape and murder, 1,574 Dalit women were raped (the rule of thumb is that only 10 percent of rapes or other crimes against Dalits are ever reported), and 651 Dalits were murdered. 

That’s just the rape and butchery. Not the stripping and parading naked, the forced shit-eating (literally), the seizing of land, the social boycotts, the restriction of access to drinking water. These statistics wouldn’t include, say, Bant Singh of Punjab, a Mazhabi Dalit Sikh, who in 2005 had both his arms and a leg cleaved off for daring to file a case against the men who gang-raped his daughter. There are no separate statistics for triple amputees.

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Kevin
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June 7, 2020
The story of liberal reformism, caste, and radicalism from two leaders in India’s independence movement.

Preamble:
--Really enjoy Roy’s longer essays... others include: Capitalism: A Ghost Story and Walking with the Comrades.
--I’ve read a few critiques of Roy from devotees of Gandhi and Ambedkar, the former saying she did not adequately contextualize Gandhi and his changes, while the latter critiquing her re-publication of Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste with this essay as the introduction (on this, let me say my review here is solely on this essay as a separate entity; I have not read Roy's annotated release of Annihilation of Caste)
--I get the sense the underlying issue is Roy’s prominence in readership, which does indeed come with responsibilities. Casual readers will read casually. However, diligent readers would never assume Roy’s extended essay is the final word on Gandhi/Ambedkar, and as an introduction it offers many compelling questions.
--I also do not see this work as a damnation of a mythical Gandhi, as I do not treat political figures in such a black-and-white manner. Gandhi was indeed part of the anti-colonial movement; it is his mystique that is not helpful, as it silences the many real-world contradictions that great actions must contend with. Gandhi devotees also say Ambedkar is romanticized here, and this is where they lose all credibility; clearly, they were too infuriated with critiques of Gandhi to notice how the same critiques were also redirected towards Ambedkar.

The Good:
1) On Liberal reformism:
--“Nonviolence” and “democracy” have become powerful cultural constructs in liberal capitalist societies. It is in the interest of power to obscure unequal power relations. Thus, “nonviolent” independence leaves much of previous violent hierarchies intact, while “democracy” is constrained to restrictive periodic votes while private domination (of production/distribution/finance/land) deters any semblance of participatory/economic democracy.
--Thus, we see Gandhi’s political career, from his troubled dealings with race/class/caste in South Africa to his incomplete evolution during India’s independence movement.
--Roy does point out Gandhi’s political tactfulness (essential against great colonial powers who rule by divide-and-conquer) and moments when he directly attacked power structures (i.e. Salt March). However, liberal reformism was prominent in Gandhi’s politics given his continued belief in the trusteeship of the rich, which Roy connects with today’s corporate social responsibility. Roy shows that Gandhi’s later visual demonstration of “poverty” hides the true nature of poverty: lack of power. Indeed, Gandhi was at the same time sponsored by industrialists (esp. G.D. Birla), which Roy amusingly connects to today’s corporate-sponsored NGOs.
--For a detailed analysis of the trappings of the liberal class compromise that was used to build a popular front for independence from colonialism, see The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World.

2) On Caste:
--Gandhi’s contradictions with caste is contrasted with Ambedkar, but Roy also applies the same critique to Ambedkar by pointing to his modernist prejudice towards indigenous Adivasi.
--A part that caught my eye with Ambedkar was his division with Indian Communists. Dalit “Untouchables” were a huge part of the mills’ labor force, but it seems the Communist Party unions could not yet overcome caste prejudice and fight for the equality of workers. This is a crucial topic to explore further: India And Communism
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Ravi Prakash
55 books · 63 followers

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February 2, 2020
If you are a fan of Gandhi and think that he was really a Mahatma, this is not for you. But if you think Gandhi was great and flawed, prejudiced and hypocritical, tricky and complex, you must read it.

The book was originally written as the Introduction of the annotated version of "Annihilation of Caste (1936)", a speech written by Ambedkar which couldn't be delivered because of its explosive intellectualism against the stigmatic caste-system in Hinduism. The speech was to be delivered among those whom Ambedkar considered as 'the most liberal Hindus', still after reading it, the so called liberals didn't allow and later Ambedkar published and distributed it as pamphlets. Gandhi who was considered the greatest soul of that time objected and mocked this essay. So, if Ambedkar says that it's contradictory to be a 'Hindu' and 'liberal' (in the context of caste) at the same time, you have to agree.

The book starts with a comparison between Malala Yousafzai and Surekha Bhotmaange. Oh, you certainly don't have any guess about the later. One had to face Islamic extremism and the other, barbaric casteism. Have they both, one from a country where terrorism is in the air and the other from a country which is considered the biggest democracy of the world, got the same justice and recognition? To know this, you have to read this book.

Any Gandhilover can blame Roy easily that she has focused a lot on his demerits, but to understand the inequality in present time, we have to go deep in the political developments during freedom struggle and Gandhi's overwhelming effect on it. We have to observe how a godly image was created, by fake narratives, of a person who always obstructed the path of an intellectual whose sole aim was to abolish caste. Later, Ambedkar got that it's impossible to amend or abolish this system and that's why he embraced Buddhism.

Allow me to write my own opinion and experience on this. I belong to OBC (Other Backward Class), a Shudra in Varna System. I spent my childhood in a rurban vicinity, mostly among Muslim friends. I have no such personal memories where someone discriminated me on the basis of religion or caste. In graduation and afterwards, a lot of General category( so called privileged class) friends came in circle. Many of them are still very close to me, we ate and eat oftenly in the same plate. This is because I love sharing food. And I shared that with my Dalit friends/students also. I neither discriminated nor I was discriminated. Still, the scenario is not that beautiful. I have seen "social boycotts" and "honor killings". I have gone through heated debates with many older and same age persons who still favor caste-system. You can get a lot of people even today who will tell you how beautiful labor-division our forefathers created by castes but if you tell them it's not the labor-division but it's a division of laborers, full of partiality made valid on religious ground, they will get angry.

Yesterday, I was returning home from a marriage ceremony, I had a friend too in the car. He was a Vaishy( a general category, privileged class person). I asked him,

" So buddy, when are you getting married?"

" I don't think I would. I can't marry the girlfriend whom I love for the last eight years. She belongs to OBC. I told my mother that I wanna marry her and she got very disappointed. She asked how could I think of that. She said that if I marry out my caste who will be ready to marry my sisters. What will we say to our relatives?"

This is the reality of caste today in India. When people of other advanved countries are thinking about how to settle on Mars, a lot of Indians' sole problem is the marriage of their own choice.

Well, there are many factors, but the main factor by which the caste-system is still thriving, is the controlling of women. Roy doesn't give any solution till the last, even she seems very disappointed, but I think, annihilation of caste is closely related to the liberation of women.

To be honest, Roy hasn't written much of her own opinion, she just have given the references, data, URLs, interviews, what Gandhi and Ambedkar said on caste on various occasions, and by all that she has tried to prove how greatly prejudiced Gandhi was on the topic of Race and Caste, and how the biggest democracy of the world didn't try to abolish this system but fortified and modernise it. She has been erudite in uncovering many secrets of Gandhi's years spent in Africa.

The style is lucid and well-researched mingled with a wry sense of humor.

Thank you.

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Savyasachee
148 reviews · 13 followers

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January 25, 2020
This is the first book of Arundhati Roy that I've picked up. It was, frankly, a very interesting book. However, while my first review was fairly glowing, a more critical look at this work exposes it for what it is: the work of an excited journalist who lacks scholarly vigor. This book is at best an ad hominem on Gandhi, and at worst a piece of deliberately disingenuous scholarship. Roy seems to miss quite a few nuances of Gandhi's position, often deliberately so.

Yes, Gandhi was both racist and a casteist as he started out, but frankly, it is astonishing how far he progressed and grew. It's difficult to understand the mindset with which Arundhati Roy wrote this book. Ambedkar is a God, while Gandhi is at best a politician, at worst a deceitful liar. Neither point makes much sense if given enough context: both were men, and the time was fairly complex. Gandhi had to navigate the maze of British imperialism and keep the masses happy. Ambedkar had no such constraints. To reduce their positions to such caricatures of what they were in order to prove a point which does not exist, is, frankly, both disingenuous and dishonest.

1/5, because that's as low as I can go. It took me time to find enough information to be able to criticise this book, and I managed to do that because I had the resources to do so. For people who have no other viewpoints and resources to consult, this book would give them a fairly biased view of a very nuanced conversation.
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Chinar Mehta
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January 2, 2020
Do yourself a favour and just read Annihilation of Caste. If you are still inclined to read further, Ambedkar's essay about "Gandhism" is a good start to view Gandhi critically. There are several edited collections of Ambedkar, and this is not one of the good ones. This introduction is not worth reading.

If you are curious as to why this may be the case, Hatred In The Belly is a good start to learn about how Ambedkarite politics have been appropriated (badly) in India, and by upper-caste writers/activists.

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Madhulika Liddle
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June 24, 2019
In 1936, a Hindu reformist organization named the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal invited Dr BR Ambedkar to address its members, all of whom were upper-caste Hindus. Ambedkar agreed, but was not destined to give the speech he prepared for the occasion. An advance copy of Ambedkar’s speech, read by the organizers, resulted in them disinviting Ambedkar. Ambedkar went on to publish the speech in the form of a pamphlet named Annihilation of Caste, a work that was an attack on Hinduism itself.

Arundhati Roy’s The Doctor and The Saint: The Ambedkar-Gandhi Debate – Caste, Race and Annihilation of Caste was originally written as an introduction to an annotated version of Annihilation of Caste. As Roy explains in the preface to this book, “The Doctor and the Saint looks at the practice of caste in India, through the prism of the present as well as the past.”

The plight of the Untouchables, the Dalits or Harijan or whatever other appellation one may apply to the 'lowest’ of Hinduism’s many castes, and the views on casteism of two eminent Indian personalities—Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, and Gandhi, by far the most widely-admired Indian in the world—form the bases of this book. Roy begins with a look at the situation of Dalits today, from the very rare Dalit in power (some important politicians, for example) to the rather more usual: a startling lack of Dalits in the judiciary, in administration, in the media, in business. And, most horrifyingly, the hair-raising statistics of anti-Dalit atrocities.

In the course of a relatively short but intense book, Roy examines the Dalit question from various angles. Its origins, in the chaturvarna; its history and evolution; its inhuman and brutal implementation; its ramifications not just for the Dalits themselves, but for others too—especially for politicians who have tried to balance political correctness with their own inherent prejudices. Its connections (or not) with what might appear to be similar movements, like that of the Adivasis.

Most importantly, Roy examines, through their own abundant writings, the very contrasting stances of Ambedkar and Gandhi. While she provides an insight into Ambedkar’s life, his education and political career, it is on Gandhi that she focuses. The ‘Mahatma’, whose devotion to the cause of the ‘Children of God’, the ‘Harijan’ as he dubbed them, was among the many reasons he was pretty much deified in his own lifetime.

And this is where Roy is especially effective, in proving—through Gandhi’s own words, his often contradictory statements—that the Father of the Nation used the Dalit cause as a means to further his own politics. From Gandhi’s sojourn in South Africa (where the truth of his relationship with the British and the Africans may come as a shock to many), to the Khilafat Movement and beyond, Roy traces a picture of a man of an immensely patriarchal, racist and casteist bent of mind.

The Doctor and The Saint, ironically enough (or by design?), portrays the saint as being far from a saint—but, in the process, Roy makes a very pertinent point: that the plight of the Dalits is such that they have been used and abused, time and again, by others. Not just as performers of menial tasks the upper castes have considered beneath themselves, but as vote banks, as buffers between communities, as leverage, as a means to garner money and power.

Distressingly enough, a situation which, given the examples from 21st century India that Roy presents, has not really changed much.

Roy’s writing is lucid, well-researched and well-presented, and her wry sense of humour invariably hits the nail on the head. The Doctor and The Saint is a book that is both shocking and depressing in the insight it offers into the plight of the Dalits. It throws light on the intricacies of the Dalit system, and while it offers no solution—that is beyond the scope of this book—it is, at the very least, a much-needed eye-opener.

(From my review for The New Indian Express: http://www.newindianexpress.com/magaz...)

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Dmitri
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May 26, 2021
In this 2014 introduction to B R Ambedkar's undelivered 1936 speech, "Annihilation of Caste", Arunhati Roy reveals the shameful treatment of India's untouchables, the Dalits. The famous but forgotten debate on caste between the great soul Gandhi and Ambedkar, drafter of the constitution and champion of the downtrodden, helped to define the era.

Roy examines the plight of the outcastes with an economy of words, yet in heart rending detail. Their condition is described from colony to republic, within the framework of religion and politics. Short biographies of Gandhi and Ambedkar are given, as well an analysis of the demographic upheavals that occurred during the partition of Pakistan.

For Gandhi, the living saint, an end to caste struck at the heart of Hinduism. He did not challenge caste except to condemn untouchability and encourage social mixing. Rights to public water, schools and roads would need to be fought for. Ambedkar argued for separate electorates and reserved appointments for Dalits, opposed by Gandhi during his life.

Conversions to Islam and Buddhism resulted from Hindu social rejection of outcastes. British rule exacerbated the problem by institutional reduction of four thousand castes into four. Ambedkar, outcaste and convert, came to view Buddhism as a solution to the caste system. Gandhi's campaign to embrace Dalits would greatly stem the tide.

This is work is best read alongside the text of the address, and the subsequent debates of Gandhi and Ambedkar. The combined tracts are available in a different edition. If you read one book on the social background of modern India this might be it. There are also insights into the roles Hindu nationalism and Marxism have played on the public stage.
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Kshitij Chaurel
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June 19, 2019
Gandhi we know is just the face of him which has been constructed by the power. His views on caste sytem and untouchability make him as guilty as any person that discriminates on the basis of caste.

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Review
"Arundhati Roy is one of the few great revolutionary intellectuals in our time . . . courageous, visionary and erudite . . . The Doctor and the Saint puts a spotlight on the great B. R. Ambedkar, who is wrongly overshadowed by Gandhi. In short, Roy is a grand figure who challenges us all!" --Cornel West
"If you've ever wanted confirmation that you must never deliberately humiliate or harm anyone, read The Doctor and the Saint: Caste, Race, and Annihilation of Caste: The Debate Between B. R. Ambedkar and M. K. Gandhi, by Arundhati Roy. In this book we learn almost more than we can bear about the miserable treatment in India of the 'Dalits' or 'those who are broken to pieces.' We also learn, with pain, that Gandhi, as much as we venerate and are grateful to him for all the social and spiritual illumination he has cast around the world, could never quite speak up decisively on the question of destroying the horrendous system in India that lives on to this day, causing intolerable pain and suffering to people whose only 'fault' is the caste into which they are born. What we learn also is that there was someone else, during Gandhi's time, someone more sure that the caste system must be completely destroyed, a man, an 'untouchable' who became a lawyer, who struggled hard for his people and for India, a man most of us never heard of: B. R. Ambedkar. It is this man's work on which Roy shines a light, reminding us perhaps that behind every 'great' being we've heard about, there stands another whose work and service to humanity we may never know, until the universe locates a messenger equal to the task of helping us see."

--Alice Walker

About the Author
Arundhati Roy studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives. She is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel has been translated into forty languages worldwide. She has written several non-fiction books, including Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers and Capitalism: A Ghost Story.
Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Haymarket Books; Annotated edition (16 May 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 184 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 160846797X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1608467976
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 1.02 x 22.86 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 250,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
204 in Nationalism
376 in Globalization (Books)
448 in Sociology of Class
Customer Reviews: 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars    809 ratings
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Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is the author of a number of books, including The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997 and has been translated into more than forty languages. She was born in 1959 in Shillong, India, and studied architecture in Delhi, where she now lives. She has also written several non-fiction books, including Field Notes on Democracy, Walking with the Comrades, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, The End of Imagination, and most recently Things That Can and Cannot Be Said, co-authored with John Cusack. Roy is the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize, the 2011 Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing, and the 2015 Ambedkar Sudar award.

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Samyak Bansod
5.0 out of 5 stars Right Time to Read Ambedkar
Reviewed in India on 25 May 2021
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While Dr. Ambedkar's books have proved to be emblematic in giving us an insight into the 'horror' 'caste' was pre-independence, this essay by Arundhati Roy helps us understand why caste system has been kept alive even today by its champions after she is done with critically elucidating the views and perceptions of one of its most staunchest supporters - M.K. Gandhi. The fallout of the system and new forms it has taken in the contemporary world has also been examined with relevant examples. The ones who have been habituated to invoking Gandhi and Gandhism as the primary solutions to every injustice prevailing in the world will be seriously left to ruminate about their biases after they have finished reading about his 'true colours' which this essay reveals and adopt a more rational approach to things, especially contentious ones. Moreover, one will learn about why it has become so necessary to read Ambedkar today and have good scholarships on Ambedkar which have been lacking just because of indifferent approach of the governments into collecting and preserving all his writings. So, I recommend you to read it.
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Robby
5.0 out of 5 stars Great experience
Reviewed in India on 20 April 2023
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Great reading experience, paper quality..& delivery by Amazon.
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Prashant
4.0 out of 5 stars If you haven’t read “The South African Gandhi”.
Reviewed in India on 8 November 2021
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I feel If you have read “The South African Gandhi” and picking this book mainly for Gandhi then you may skip it because the broad picture that it carries is more or less similar to that one. Well, this does not mean that you will not enjoy it as this book is not just about Gandhi but also about Ambedkar.
Nevertheless give it a try as it takes only a day to read it, it is that short and easy read.
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poornima
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone who are curious about Indian law markets!
Reviewed in the United States on 10 February 2021
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Just in 124 pages, Roy changes our perspective about Hinduism, Ghandi and a lot of events of Indian independence movement as we know it..

The book delves deep into the historical oppression of dalits by casteist Hindus, their transformation into political fodder by opportunist political parties during independence movement and how Gandhi(the saint) and Ambedkar (the doctor), end up in a face-off situation with regards to the rights and acceptance of the untouchables of India..

Reading Gandhi’s hypocritical, racist , castiest statements in his own words could make us uncomfortable.. makes us question the credibility of history lessons we were taught in schools..

reveals deeply embedded insitutionalised forms of discrimination on the basis of caste
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Anton Prem Thilak
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic writing
Reviewed in India on 30 August 2019
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This is a very good book to understand the dynamics of relationship between Gandhi and Ambedkar. It's like Brand Gandhi has been imprinted and integrated into the genes of us Indians, it is very difficult to change the mindset about him. As said by Arundhati Roy, Ambedkar's legacy is not propagated as much one would have expected considering the amount of work he has carried out for the depressed class. But I am really surprised to learn about the brahmanical thought Ambedkar had about Adivashis. As said by Yuval Noah Harari, it's always about Us vs Them and it is and will be very difficult to get humanity out of this mindset. Only immense investment in knowledge can take us there.
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shalakha punekar
5.0 out of 5 stars A book full of facts and so much knowledge
Reviewed in India on 2 March 2022
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Amazing book. Arundhati gives a neutral point of view when describing both the personalities. Liked her writing style and learnt so much which indian school curriculum history books don’t even mention. Must read for those who are fond of intense reading.
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Prasanna K
5.0 out of 5 stars Concealed history exposed with proof
Reviewed in India on 25 December 2018
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History has been always written by those who win. Even by the winners, they cannot portray someone else as bad because of their innate qualities and lifelong fight. This is what the reality of India in which Gandhi is portrayed as Mahatma and Ambedkar is given a position as one of the leaders. In a society dominated by upper castes (except many good souls in it), who have the strong power to make commoners (including Scientists, doctors) believe with superstitions like " If you dont do this yaga, your upcoming generations will suffer", we really need rational writers like Arundhati Roy who have the ability to see through the neutral prism and bring the shocking truth. I highly recommed this book to this generation.
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Severus
5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening!
Reviewed in India on 17 August 2021
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Packs a lot of fresh perspective for its little size. The author has tried to be pretty objective while describing both the men and that's refreshing. I feel it's a must read for everyone that's still shackled with the black and white narrations of our old school textbooks.
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Yoga Girl
5.0 out of 5 stars Illuminating
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 June 2021
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Illuminating. Must read
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Oshin Tiwari
5.0 out of 5 stars If can look the truth in the eye, then go for this book.
Reviewed in India on 30 June 2020
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It was a tough read, really. Right from the first few pages, i was taken aback when i read of the horror she reflected of an untouchable family. And I'll rate this book 5 for bringing out huge disappointment about the other face of Hinduism and its great reformers. 'Why i am a Hindu' and 'the doctor and the saint' together are deadly combination which can leave the reader unsettled.
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Ranjan
2.0 out of 5 stars Unnecessary conflicts, genuine intent
Reviewed in India on 31 December 2021
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Authors personal ill will towards communities has been magnified throughout the book. Gandhi must be judged based on the ideals of late 19th century rather than that of millennial India. Gandhi's words on reality of those days has been manipulated to make it seem scandalous.
Ambedkar was a radical thinker, and he was in the right to bring out the injustice suffered by his people through centuries.
But there was no need to pit two greats against eachother. If they had lived through 1950's and 60's, they would have worked as allies. The differences never stopped them from personally praising eachother for there virtues and achievements.

I must respect author's genuine intent to bring the suffering of great number of people to light. But the historical ponder author has carried out doesn't answer it's origin, it's present, or it's solution.
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Dhawal
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read ...May be you find something in it...
Reviewed in India on 30 September 2020
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I have read this book in pdf format (only some portion of it) and that was enough to order this book....
And as I get this book ..
it's good in shape and
the quality is very good .......
And
What to say
About
Arundhati Roy
She is living Legend of our time
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Mohan lal verma
5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks Arundhati Roy for another milestone in trouble soil
Reviewed in India on 2 June 2019
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Roy is precisive & critical in the work as she explorer the conflicts of caste basis or Bhraminical order. Most glaring focus of writer turned activist is to decipher why Gandhi failed to rid off the untouchablilty and Why Dr. Ambedkar failed miserably to root out the mence from a modern state. The present order not only inculpable but succeeding to gain in form of polarisation as the faultline help it to desecrete both the apostles
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Uday Kumthekar
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic book
Reviewed in India on 12 September 2020
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Fantastic book analysing the different view points and approaches by Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar to look at the question of untouchables. Offcourse, I endorse and see that Ambedkar's approach seeing more success in future. There is no honour or social equality for dalits to achieve staying in Hinduism.
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Sheena Malhotra
5.0 out of 5 stars Brave and unflinching
Reviewed in the United States on 27 April 2020
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Roy’s ability to write difficult truths without flinching, to make connections that damn the halo of the Mahatma is admirable and exhilarating. It is a revolutionary call to overthrow a system of discrimination, even if that system is a religion.
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Walter D. Teague
5.0 out of 5 stars A very useful introduction to the subject.
Reviewed in the United States on 21 September 2020
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As usual, Aaron. Arundhati Roy writes knowledgeably and clearly about the subject of race and caste and the classic Indian book on the subject.
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Amitrajit Saha
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read as a primer or foreword to reading Ambedkar
Reviewed in the United States on 12 August 2018
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Demolishing myths and shining a light on Babasaheb Ambedkar that helps us understand this incredible and complex man and his incredible work. Rescuing Dr. Ambedkar from the dustbins of history, Arundhati writes with erudition, skill and great anger. She is unsparing of all. Not to be missed.
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The Doctor and the Saint
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Doctor and the Saint

First edition
Author Arundhati Roy
Country India
Language English
Genre History
Indian Literature
Publisher Haymarket Books
Publication date 2017
Pages 128

The Doctor and the Saint is a book written by Arundhati Roy. It was published in 2017 by Haymarket Books.[1][2]

Reception
The New Indian Express wrote in a review "As Roy explains in the preface to this book, The Doctor and the Saint looks at the practice of caste in India, through the prism of the present as well as the past.”[3]

The Firstpost wrote in a review "The Doctor and the Saint is strongest when it sets about its primary task: to scrutinise the historiography of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and to remind readers of some inconvenient truths about the man, facts that make the Mahatma’s mythologists very uncomfortable indeed."[4]

References
 Roy, Arundhati (2014-03-01). "The Doctor and the Saint". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
 Vij, Shivam. "Why Dalit radicals don't want Arundhati Roy to write about Ambedkar". Scroll.in. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
 "The Doctor and the Saint review| Vision and Politics". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
 "Arundhati Roy's The Doctor and the Saint: Strongest when scrutinising Gandhi, but falters on Ambedkar". Firstpost. 2019-05-19. Retrieved 2022-09-01.

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