Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Saturday accused Mahatma Gandhi of dividing the country on caste lines and coining "an uncontitutional term" to denote Dalits.
"Both Gandhi and B R Ambedkar walked different ways. While Babasaheb (Ambedkar) strived hard to unite different sections of society and became the voice of the oppressed lot, Gandhiji divided society by calling the weaker sections 'Harijans'," the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo told reporters in Chandigarh.
Mayawati, who directed all government offices to strike out of the term 'Harijan' and replace it with 'Dalit' after coming to power in Uttar Pradesh, said the ideologies of the two leaders ran parallel to each other, but Ambedkar had never tried to "divide" the society into two sections.
"There were people who tried to bring him (Ambedkar) down, but he never gave up his mission of creating an egalitarian society, which has become the ideology of our party," she said.
She said the party also considered the term 'Harijan' (coined by Gandhi meaning God's children) was "unconstitutional".