A quick look at the nameplates in India’s neighbourhoods will show you that caste is the primary language of spatiality in Indian cities. Despite such failings, B.R. Ambedkar rejected village life and encouraged Dalits to move to the city. Ambedkar said that an Indian village is “the working plant of the Hindu social order” and argued that it is the ideal place to understand caste. Gandhi, however, saw the Indian village as a self-reliant, equitable and a just non-violent order, and argued for the decentralisation of power to the villages through Gram Swaraj. In strong opposition, Ambedkar believed that the idealisation of Indian village life emerged either from the colonial romanticisation of the rural population or from the desire of Hindus to retain caste domination.
In the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar opposed the idea that villages should be recognised as autonomous administrative units and felt relieved that the Assembly rejected the idea. “For the untouchables, there could not have been a bigger calamity,” he wrote.
