Arundhati Roy’s The Doctor and The Saint

By

Siva Wright

‘The Doctor and The Saint’ is actually written by Arundhati Roy as a preface to ‘Annihilation of Caste’ – a searing attack on the Varna or the Caste system of the Hindu religion. Though it was written as a preface, it runs to about 140 pages – which can quite be considered as a separate book.  The subject matter also justifies this consideration.

This ‘book’ was written to give context to the verbal war of ideologies between ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi – the ‘saint’ and B.R.Ambedkar – the ‘doctor’ that followed the publication of the undelivered speech by Dr.Ambedkar. But, to give the required context, Roy compares the logical reasoning of Ambedkar and the spiritual reasoning of Gandhi. In the process, she busts the ‘myth’ of Gandhi that we have been fed early from our childhood.

She takes a few of those ‘legends’ – like the story of how Gandhi was thrown out of train in South Africa and how that instigated him to fight for the rights of the indigenous people of the region – and reveals what really happened by quoting from the autobiographies and journals of Gandhi himself. In this case, Gandhi actually fought for the equal treatment of the ‘passenger Indians’ – those who had the money and influence to travel in trains – basically the Vaishyas (Merchant Class) and not for the indigenous people. He in fact was deeply disgusted by them.

Many other instances are discussed to show how Gandhi fought desperately to preserve the caste system and thereby the hegemony of the upper caste Hindus while Ambedkar staunchly defended its destruction.

When she’s done there’s not much of a ‘saint’ while the ‘doctor’ stands tall with his impeccable reasoning and insightful ideas. ‘The Doctor and The Saint’ is as much important a work as the ‘Annihilation of Caste’ for it shows the people behind the ideologies they defended.