A more dangerous opposition to Ambedkar could be sensed in the ‘sensible’ writings of Congressist leaders such as C. Rajagopalachari, a Tamil Brahmin, also known as Rajaji. In a book entitled Ambedkar Refuted, which came out in the year 1946, +

just two years prior to the publication of Ambedkar’s The Untouchables, Rajaji took a more condescending route to belittle Ambedkar. The book was a response to Ambedkar’s What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (1945), a precise theoretical attack +

on the pretensions of Gandhism and centrist Congressism. Rajagopalachari, true to his ideological character, says ‘We have to look for a materialist explanation for [why] Dr Ambedkar and other educated leaders of the Scheduled Castes [ignore & understate the achievements of +

Congress under Gandhi]. These castes are scheduled for special favours intended for their uplift. Though these concessions are made for the benefit of the scheduled communities as a whole, the advantages accrue most to the educated leaders. +

Thriving on the scheduled status it is no wonder that many of them want that undesirable status to continue intact. They become detractors and enemies of any efforts that seek to remove the bar, for it may tend to the termination of the special favours based in the depressed +

condition of their community. It is a paradox but it is true that it is natural for educated & favoured leaders of Scheduleld Classes to do their utmost for the continuation of the isolation of their community&to oppose and belittle all efforts at the removal of untouchability. +

This is the material explanation for the violent dislike of Gandhiji exhibited by Dr Ambedkar who looks upon this great and inspired reformer as the worst enemy of the “untouchables”, meaning thereby of the educated and +

ambitious among them who find that the depressed status furnishes a short cut to positions’ (Rajagopalachari 1946, 33–4).