# Yeravda fast ends in the Poona Pact on depressed-class electorates

Date: 1932

## The fact

On 20 September 1932 Gandhi began a fast unto death in Yeravda jail against the British Communal Award’s separate electorates for Depressed Classes. On 24 September he and B. R. Ambedkar’s camp agreed the Poona Pact: reserved seats in a joint electorate. It is not a finding that Ambedkar was a villain.

## Context

Gandhi framed separate electorates as a split of Hindu society. Ambedkar framed them as a political safeguard for a minority created by caste. The fast put a dying national leader’s body against a Dalit constitutional demand. That is a rights-harm mechanism even if Gandhi also opposed untouchability in Harijan work stored elsewhere. Do not neutralize the coercion by citing later temple-entry.

[Mahatma Gandhi](/people/mahatma-gandhi) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official archival, ashram, or government pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Britannica — Poona Pact (https://www.britannica.com/event/Poona-Pact; Encyclopaedia Britannica).

## Significance

A fast can be non-violent and still be coercive. Do not invent Ambedkar’s consent as joy.

A fast can be non-violent and still be coercive. Do not invent Ambedkar’s consent as joy.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [protection-of-minority-rights](/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Mahatma Gandhi: https://factrail.ai/people/mahatma-gandhi

## Drivers

- Protection of Minority Rights: https://factrail.ai/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights

## Sources

- https://www.mea.gov.in/Images/attach/amb/Volume_09.pdf
- https://www.britannica.com/event/Poona-Pact

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ga-poona-pact-1932