Many scholars have analysed Mahatma Gandhi’s stand on caste, but this work
by the young academic Nishikant Kolge comes across as a landmark study.
For one thing, Kolge’s examination is thorough. He asks precise questions, and
for answers, he goes to the entire range of what Gandhi said or wrote, and, quite
appropriately, to what Gandhi did. Unlike ‘theorists’ whose doctrines may be
examined without reference to their lives, those who resorted to ‘action’ to
change the condition of their peoples—persons like Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi,
B.R. Ambedkar, Mao Zedong, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr, to
name them in the order of their birth—cannot be understood solely from their
words.
This was a point that Gandhi made himself, and frequently. Kolge informs us that
Gandhi also very categorically says: ‘What you do not get from my conduct, you
will never get from my words.’ He goes a step further and suggests that ‘as a
matter of fact my writings should be cremated with my body’. Another quote
from him says: (p.x) ‘What I have done will endure, not what I have said or
written.’ This does not imply, however, that Gandhi’s writings are not to be
carefully examined; rather it means that Gandhi expects to be judged and
understood by his conduct and not by his writings alone. It also implies that
should some contradictions and inconsistencies appear in his writings, they
should be resolved in the light of his practices. Gandhi himself says: ‘To
understand what I say, one needs to understand my conduct....’