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Nath invokes another, very different, tradition to justify his stance, that of nationalist-socialist reform which has shaped both him and his wife Seva: 'The old social reformers did not stop with making speeches and writing articles on widow remarriage. Many of them actually married widows' (p 28). He is excited when Jyoti informs the family that her intended is a dalit: 'if my daughter had decided to marry into a high caste, it would not have pleased me as much...' (p 8). Indeed, his disappointment is that, between Jyoti and Arun it has not been love at first sight, or indeed strong passion at all: 'no surge of intense feelings in your heart? No rainbow-hued notes played upon your nerves?'(p 11).15 Nevertheless, this is a match that makes him feel that 'he has broken the caste barrier in the real sense. My home has become Indian in the real sense of the term' (p 23).
But inter-caste marriage was in fact not part of mainstream nationalist social reform, unlike widow remarriage, raising the age of consent, and the 'upliftment' of the lower castes. Gandhi was at pains to assure his followers that it was not on his agenda. As is well known, it was B R Ambedkar, who argued that
the real remedy is inter-marriage. Fusion of blood can alone create the
feeling of being kith and kin and unless this feeling of kinship, of be-
ing kindred, becomes paramount the separatist feeling - the feeling of
being aliens - created by Caste will not vanish... Where society is al-
ready well-knit by other ties, marriage is an ordinary incident of life.
But where society is cut asunder, marriage as a binding force becomes
a matter of urgent necessity. The real remedy for breaking Caste is
inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of Caste.16
Whereas Nath suggests that his support of Jyoti's marriage with Arun is a simple extension of the tradition of social reform (as well as an alignment of political tradition and personal action), Ambedkar, had, as early as 1936, succinctly pointed out the difference. Addressing the Jat Pat Todak Mandal, a Hindu social reformist organisation of Lahore, he insisted that it was
necessary to make a distinction between social reform in the sense of
the reform of the Hindu Family and social reform in the sense of the
reorganisation and reconstruction of the Hindu Society. The former
has relation to widow remarriage, child marriage etc, while the latter
relates to the abolition of the Caste System. The Social Conference was
a body which mainly concerned itself with the reform of the high caste
Hindu Family. It consisted mostly of enlightened high caste Hindus
who did not feel the necessity for agitating for the abolition of caste or
had not the courage to agitate for it. They felt quite naturally a greater
urge to remove such evils as enforced widowhood, child marriages
etc, evils which prevailed among them and which were personally felt
by them. They did not stand up for the reform of the Hindu society.
The battle that was fought centred round the question of the reform of the family. It did not relate to the social reform in the sense of the
break-up of the caste system. It was never put in issue by the reformers
(emphasis added).
When Gandhi criticised this speech, Ambedkar in turn indicted Gandhi for being not only insufficiently radical, but also a hypocrite when it came to the caste question and not practising what he preached.17
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