Vol. 1 · pages 276–280

261 EVIDENCE BEFORE THE SOUTHBOROUGH COMMITTEE These 9 elected members should form a constituency to elect one member from among themselves to represent the untouchables of this Presidency in the Imperial Legislative Council. 28. It may be objected that though 8 representatives are not in excess to the untouchable population it may be in excess to the voting strength of untouchables. That the untouchables are a poor community and that under the same franchise they yield per thousand a smaller proportion of voters than other communities is a fact. But if the grave position of the untouchables is admitted instead of restricting their number of representatives, the aim should be to increase the number of their voters, i.e., we must aim at lowering the franchise so far as the untouchables are concerned. 29. What the franchise should be is a very important question. There is a line of argument which urges that franchise should be given to those only who can be expected to make an intelligent use of it. As against this view it can be said in the words of Prof. L. T. Hobhouse that it is true that “the success of democracy depends on the response of voters to the opportunities given them. But conversely the opportunities must be given in order to call forth the response. The exercise of popular Government is itself all education ... enfranchisement itself may precisely be the stimulus needed to awaken interest. The ballot alone effectively liberates the quiet citizen from the tyranny of the shouter and the wire-puller. An impression of existing inertness alone is not a sufficient reason for with-holding responsible Government or restricting the area of sufferage.” Taking into consideration that sufferage is an education and that there are groups with unequal distribution of wealth and education among them and that these groups are not sympathetically like-minded, the authors of the reports rightly argue that the case for uniformity of franchise cannot be sustained. 30. But in the case of the untouchables there are as few reasons for curtailing the number of their representatives as the reasons for widening their electorate are many. If under a given franchise the untouchables do not muster strong as electors, it is not their fault. The very untouchability attached to their person is a bar to their moral and material progress. The principal modes of acquiring wealth are trade, industry or service. The untouchables can engage in none of these because of their untouchability. From an untouchable trader no Hindu will buy. An untouchable cannot be engaged in lucrative service. Military service had been the monopoly of the untouchables since the days of the East India Company. They had joined the Army in such large numbers that the Marquis Tweedledale in his note which he submitted to the Indian Army Commission of 1859 wrote, “It should never be forgotten that India was conquered with the help of the low-caste men.”. But after the mutiny when the British were able to secure soldiers from the ranks of the Marathas, the position of the low-caste men who had been the prop of the Bombay Army became precarious, not

262 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES because the Marathas were better soldiers but because their theological bias prevented them from serving under low-caste officers. The prejudice was so strong that even the non-caste British had to stop recruitment from the untouchable classes. In like manner, the untouchables are refused service in the Police Force. In a great many of the Government offices it is impossible for an untouchable to get a place. Even in the mills a distinction is observed. The untouchables are not admitted in Weaving Departments of the Cotton Mills though many of them are professional weavers. An instance at hand may be cited from the school system of the Bombay Municipality. This most cosmopolitan city ruled by a Corporation with a greater freedom than any other Corporation in India has two different sets of schools ... one for the children of touchables and the other for those of the untouchables., This in itself is a point worthy of note. But there is something yet more noteworthy. Following the division of schools it has divided its teaching staff into untouchables and touchables. As the untouchable teachers are short of the demand, some of the untouchable schools are manned by teachers from the touchable class. The heart-killing fun of it is that if there is a higher grade open in untouchable school service, as there is bound to be because of a few untouchable trained teachers, a touchable teacher can be thrust into the grade. But if a higher grade is open in the touchable school service, no untouchable teacher can be thrust into that grade. He must wait till a vacancy occurs in the untouchable service ! ! ! Such is the ethics of the Hindu social life. Under it if the untouchables are poor, the committee, it may be hoped, will not deny them representation because of their small electoral roll but will see its way to grant them adequate representation to enable the untouchables to remove the evil conditions that bring about their poverty. At present when all the avenues of acquiring wealth are closed, it is unwise to require from the untouchables a high property qualification. To deny them the opportunities of acquiring wealth and then to ask from them a property qualification is to add insult to injury. Just what sort of franchise and just what pitch are required to produce sufficient voting strength from the untouchables ? In absence of data, I leave it to the Committee to decide. It would be better to pitch the franchise so low as to educate into political life as many untouchables as possible. They are too degraded to be conscious of themselves. I only wish to emphasize that in deciding upon the representation of the untouchables the Committee looking to their interests at stake will not let the extent of the electorate govern the number of representatives, but will rather let the number of representatives govern the extension of the electorate. 31. In this connection it would not be improper to remind the Committee of Lord Morley who is reported to have said that “the object of Government was that the Legislative Councils should represent truly and effectively with reasonable approach to the balance of real social forces, the wishes and needs of the communities concerned. This could not be done by Algebra,

263 EVIDENCE BEFORE THE SOUTHBOROUGH COMMITTEE Arithmetic, Geometry or Logic, but by a wide outlook. He saw no harm as to a compromise that while numbers should be the main factor in determining the extent of representation modifying causes might influence the number of representatives.” It is therefore proposed that the untouchables of the Bombay Presidency should be allowed to elect 9 members through the constituencies made up as above. These 9 members will further form a constituency to elect one member from among themselves to represent the untouchables in the Imperial Legislative Council leaving 8 members to represent the untouchables in the Bombay Legislative Council. 32. Besides communal electorates there are other schemes in the field for the representation of the untouchables. It would not be proper to close this statement without a word of comment on those Schemes. 33. The Congress has denied communal representation except in the case of Mohammedans and it also denies the extensive use of nomination ; the only way then left, open to the untouchables is to fight in a general electorate. Now this is as it should be if all were equally free to fight. To educate the untouchables by Shahtras into pro-touchables and the touchables into antiuntouchables and then to propose that the two should fight out at an open poll is to betray signs of mental aberration or a mentality fed on cunning. But it must never be forgotten that the Congress is largely composed of men who are by design political Radicals and social Tories. Their chant is that the social and the political are two distinct things having no bearing on each other. To them the social and the political are two suits and can be worn one at a time as the season demands. Such a psychology has to be laughed at because it is too interested to be seriously taken into consideration either for acceptance or for rejection. As it pays to believe in it, it will die a hard death. Starting from this unnatural premise the Congress activities have been quite natural. Those who attend the Congress do not care to attend the National Social Conference held in the same pandal. In fact those who attend the Congress had once started a campaign to refuse the use of the pandal to the Conference which was once refused the pandal in the city of Poona, the roosting place of the intelligentia of our Presidency, As the Congress is a non-national or anti-national body, its views on communal electorates are worthy of no serious consideration. 34. The moderates in their separate meeting have been more kindly than just. They proposed the reservation of seats for backward communities in plural constituencies. They have not specified the number of seats for the untouchables. But the general sense of many enlightened moderates and others kindly inclined is that one or two representatives of the untouchables in the Legislative Council would suffice. It is impossible to agree with these gentlemen though they are entitled to gratitude for this much sympathy. One or two representatives of the untouchables are as good as having none.

264 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES A Legislative Council is not an old curiosity shop. It will be a Council with powers to make or mar the fortunes of society. How can one or two untouchables carry a legislative measure to improve their condition or prevent a legislative measure worsening their state ? To be frank, the untouchables cannot expect much good from the political power to be given over to the high caste Hindus. Though the power may not be used against the untouchables and one cannot be altogether sure of this, it may not be used for their betterment. A Legislative Council may be sovereign to do anything it likes, but what it will like to do depends upon its own character. The English Parliament, we may be certain, though it is sovereign to do anything, will not make the preservation of blue-eyed babies illegal. The Sultan will not, though he can, change the religion of Mohammed just as the Pope will not, though he can, overthrow the religion of Christ. In the same way legislature, mainly composed of high caste men, will not pass a law removing untouchability, sanctioning inter-marriages, removing the ban on the use of public streets, public temples, public schools ; in short, cleansing the person of the untouchables. This is not because they cannot, but chiefly because they will not. A legislature is the product of a certain social condition and its power is determined by whatever determines society. This is too obvious to be denied. What may happen in future can be guessed from what has happened in the past. The high caste men in the Council do not like any social question being brought before the legislature, as may be seen from the fact of the Resolution introduced by the Honourable Mr. Dadabhoy in 1916 in the Imperial Legislative Council. That it was adversely criticized by many who claimed to evince some interest in the untouchables is too well known to need repetition. But what is not well known is that though the resolution was lost the mover was not pardoned ; for the very moving of such a nasty resolution was regarded as a sin. At a subsequent election the mover had to make room for the Honourable Mr. Khaparde, who once wrote in an article : “ Those who work for the elevation of the untouchables are themselves degraded.” Isn’t this sympathy of the higher castes for the untouchables, sympathy with a vengeance ? 35. Those who tell that one or two members would suffice for the untouchables fail to grasp the true import of political right. The chief import of a political right though technically summed up in the power to vote does lie either in voting upon for laws or for those who make laws ; neither does it consist in the right to speak for or against a certain measure nor in being able to say “yea or nay” upon roll-call; to be able to put into a ballot-box a piece of paper with a number of names written thereon is an act which, like those mentioned above, of itself possesses no value which stamps it as inherently superior to many of the most ordinary transactions of daily life. They are educative but as much as any transaction

265 EVIDENCE BEFORE THE SOUTHBOROUGH COMMITTEE is. The chief significance of sufferage or a political right consists in a chance for active and direct participation in the regulation of the terms upon which associated life shall be sustained. Now the terms upon which the associated life between the touchables and untouchables is carried on today are the most ignominious to the former and highly detrimental to the latter. To make effective the capacities of a people there must be the power to fix the social conditions of their exercise. If the conditions are too obdurate, it is in the interest of the untouchables as well as of the touchables that the conditions should be revised. The untouchables must be in a position to influence the revision. Looking to the gravity of their interests, they should get their representation as proposed in proportion to their population. One or two is only kind but neither just nor sufficient. As Lord Morley says in an earlier quotation, needs not numbers should govern the extent of representations.’ 36. Recently there is brought into the forefront a rival scheme for the representation of the untouchables by the Depressed Class Mission. The scheme is known as co-option. The scheme proposes that the representatives of the untouchables should be nominated by the co-option of the elected members of the Council. Whether one should laugh or cry at the solicitude of the Mission for the untouchables it is rather difficult to decide. To cry is to believe that such a silly scheme would ever be adopted. The best way is to laugh it out. From the scheme can be easily seen that what is some times called benevolent interest in others may be an unwilling mask for an attempt to dictate to them what their good shall be, instead of an endeavour to agree with them so that they may seek and find the good of their own choice. The Mission, it must be said, was started with the intention of improving the condition of the Depressed Classes by emancipating them from the social tyranny of their high caste masters. But the Mission has fallen on such bad times that it is forced to advocate a scheme by which its wards or their representatives will be bounden slaves of their past masters. The masters and the mission have thus met and evolved a scheme which will keep the Depressed classes eternally depressed without any hope of deliverance. Such tactics do not deceive the untouchables ignorant as they are ; much less will they deceive the Franchise Committee. From another point of view the scheme of the Mission is unacceptable. It is aggravating to see the Mission proposing a scheme for the representation of the untouchables while persistently refusing to admit an untouchable in its governing council. Interested and officious as it is, its scheme must be rejected. 37. Nomination even though by Government in itself to be preferred to the former kind of nomination, is to be objected to from the stand-point of the untouchables. Apart from restricting the freedom of the representatives it fails to give political education which is the urgent need of all communities, much more of the untouchables.