Left, depressed class and communal politics

The national movement was never a single stream: socialists and communists pressed class questions, Ambedkar pressed caste and representation, and communal organisations pressed religious community claims, sometimes in alliance with the Congress and sometimes against it. A concrete example is the Poona Pact of 1932, in which Gandhi's fast against separate electorates for the depressed classes ended in reserved seats within joint electorates. This chapter untangles these three strands and shows why independence negotiations had to settle social as well as constitutional questions.