Lajpat Rai and Gandhi’s counterintuitive paths on caste

MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI was a Modh Bania from Gujarat and Lajpat Rai was an Agarwal from Punjab –  both from Vaishya, or mercantile, castes. Though each of these Indian freedom fighters engaged deeply with caste, the trajectories of their understanding could not have been more different. One telling example of their often divergent positions involved the first ever attempt to legalise inter-caste marriage.

It was in 1918 that Vithalbhai Patel – the elder brother of the more famous Vallabhbhai Patel, Rai and Gandhi’s colleague in the Indian National Congress – introduced a bill in the Imperial Legislative Council taking on endogamy, a principle sacrosanct to the age-old caste system. The Hindu Marriages Validity Bill polarised Hindus on whether inter-caste marriage was desirable and whether the time was ripe for such a reform. The two most prominent Congress leaders in the council, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Surendranath Banerjea, spoke out against the bill despite the strong case made by Patel.