Vol. 12 · pages 771–775

750 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES of North Carolina. The father of the founder of the greatest military academy of the State attended his school and boarded in his home.... Slave labour was used for all kinds of work and the more intelligent of the Negro slaves were trained as artisans to be used and leased. Slave artisans would bring twice as much as an ordinary field hand in the market. Master craftsmen owned their staff. Some masters, as the system became more involved, hired slaves to their slave artisans. Many slave artisans purchased their freedom by the savings allowed them above the normal labour expected.” “The advertisements for runaways and sales are an index to this skill. They received the same or better wages than the poor white labourer and with the influence of the master got the best jobs. The Contractors for masons’ and carpenters’ work in Athens, Georgia in 1838 were petitioned to stop showing preference to Negro labourers. “The white man is the only real, legal, moral, and civil proprietor of this country and state. The right of his proprietorship reached from the date of the studies of those whitemen. Copernicus and Galileo, who indicated the sphericity of the earth; which sphericity hinted to another white man, Columbus, the possibility by a westerly course of sailing, of finding land. Hence by whitemen alone was this continent discovered, the whitemen alone, aye, those to whom you decline to give money for bread or clothes for their famishing families, in the logical manner of withholding work from them defending Negroes too in the bargain.” In Atlanta in 1858, a petition signed by 2 white mechanics and labourers sought protection against the black slave artisans of masters who resided in other sections. The very next year sundry white citizens were aggrieved that the City Council tolerated a Negro dentist to remain and operate in their midst. ‘Injustice to ourselves and the community it ought to be abated. We, the residents of Atlanta, appeal to you for justice’. A Census of free Negroes in Richmond County, Georgia, in 1819 showed carpenters, barbers, boatcorkers, saddlers, spinners, millwrights, holsters, weavers, harness makers, sawmill attendants and steamboat

751MISCELLANEOUS NOTES pilots. A Negro shoe-maker made by hand the boots in which President Munrow was inaugurated. Harriet Martineau marvelled at the slave workmanship in the delicately tiled floors of Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello. There still stands in the big house of the old plantation, heavy marks of the hands of these Negro craftsmen, strong mansions built of timber hewn from the original oak and pinned together by wooden pins. Negro women skilled in spinning and weaving worked in the mills. Buckingham in 1839 found them in Athens. Georgia, working alongside with white girls without apparent repugnance of objection. Negro craftsmen in the South, slave and free fared better than their brothers in the North. In 1856 in Philadelphia, of 1637 Negro craftsmen recorded, less than two-thirds could use their trades; ‘because of hostile prejudice’. The Irish who were pouring into America from the very beginning of the nineteenth century were being used in the North on approximately the same motives of preference which governed Negro slavery. ‘An Irish Catholic’, it was argued in their favour, ‘seldom attempts to rise to a higher condition than that in which he is placed, while the Negro often makes the attempt with success. Had not the old Puritan Oliver Cromwell, while the traffic in black slaves was on, sold all the Irish not killed in the Drogheda Massacre into Barbados ?’ Free and fugitive Negroes in New York and Pennsylvania were in constant conflict with this group and the bitter hostility showed itself most violently in the draft riots of the New York. These Hibernians controlled the load carrying and the common labour jobs, opposing every approach of the Negro as a menace to their slight hold upon America and upon a means of livelihood.” Such was the de facto condition of the Roman slave and the American Negro slave. Is there anything in the condition of the Untouchables of India which is comparable with the condition of the Roman slave and the American Negro slave ? It would not be unfair to take the same period of time for comparing the condition of the Untouchables with that of the slaves under the Roman Empire. But I am prepared to allow the comparison of the condition of the slaves in the Roman Empire to be made with the

752 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES condition of the Untouchables of the present day. It is a comparison between the worst of one side and the best of the other, for the present times are supposed to be the golden age for the Untouchables. How does the de facto condition of the Untouchables compare with the de facto condition of the slaves ? How many Untouchables are engaged as the slaves in Rome were, in professions such as those of Librarians, Amanuenses, Shorthand writers ? How many Untouchables are engaged, as the slaves in Rome were, in such intellectual occupations as those of rhetoricians, grammarians, philosophers, tutors, doctors and artists ? How many untouchables are engaged in trade, commerce or industry as were the slaves in Rome ? Even comparing his position with that of the Negro while he was a slave it cannot be said that the condition of the Untouchable has been better. Is their any instance of untouchables having been artisans ? Is there any instance of untouchable having maintained a school where Brahmin children have come to sit at his feet in search of learning ? Why such a thing is unthinkable ? But it has happened in the United States of America. In comparing the de facto condition of the Roman slave and the American Negro I have purposely taken the recent condition of the Untouchables as a basis of comparison for the simple reason that the present times are supposed to be the golden age for the untouchables. But comparing even the condition of the untouchables in modern times they are certainly a sunken community as compared with the condition of slaves in time which historians call barbarous. There can therefore, be no doubt that untouclables have been worse off than slaves. This of course means that untouchability is more harmful to the growth of man than slavery ever was. On this there is a paradox. Slaves who were worse off in law than the untouchables were in fact better off than untouchables and untouchables who were better off in law than slaves were worse off in fact than slaves. What is the explanation of this paradox ? The question of all questions is this ; what is it which helped the slave to overcome the rigorous denial of freedom by law and enabled them to prosper and grow ? What is it that destroyed the effect of the freedom which the law gave to the untouchables and sapped his life of all vitality and stunted his growth.

753MISCELLANEOUS NOTES The explanation of this paradox is quite simple. It will be easily understood if one bears in mind the relation between law and public opinion, Law and public opinion are two forces which govern the conduct of men. They act and react upon each other. At times law goes ahead of public opinion and checks it and redirects in channels which it thinks proper. At times public opinion is ahead of the law. It rectifies the rigour of the law and moderates it. There are also cases where law and public opinion are opposed to each other and public opinion being the stronger of the two forces, disregards or sets at naught what the law-prescribes. Whether through compulsion arising out of convenience of commerce and industry or out of the selfish desire to make the best and the most profitable use of the slaves or out of considerations of humanity, public opinion and law were not in accord with regard to the position of the slave either in Rome or in the United States. In both places the slave was not a legal person in the eye of the law. But in both places he remained a person in the sense of a human being in the eye of the society. To put it differently the personality which the law withheld from the slave was bestowed upon him by society. There lies a profound difference between slavery and untouchability. In the case of the untouchable just the opposite has happened; The personality which the law bestowed upon the untouchables is withheld by society. In the case of the slave the law by refusing to recognize him as a person could do him no harm because society recognized him more amply than it was called upon to do. In the case of the untouchables the law by recognising him as a person failed to do him any good because Hindu society is determined to set that recognition at naught. A slave had a personality which counted notwithstanding the command of the law. An untouchable has no personality in spite of the command of the law. This distinction is fundamental. It alone can explain the paradox—the social elevation of the slave loaded though he was with the burden of legal bondage and the social degradation of the untouchable aided as he has been with the advantages of legal freedom. Those who have condemned slavery have no doubt forgotten to take into consideration the fact that in a sense slavery was

754 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES an apprenticeship in a business, craft or art, albeit compulsory. Unmitigated slavery with nothing to compensate the loss of freedom is of course to be condemned. But to enslave a person and to train him is certainly better than a state of barbarity accompanied by freedom. Slavery did mean an exchange of semi-barbarism for civilization, a vague enough gift but none the less real. The full opportunities for civilized life could only be fully used in freedom, no doubt, but slavery was an apprenticeship, or in the words of Prof. Myres “an initiation into a higher culture”. This view of slavery is eminently a correct view. This training, this initiation of culture was undoubtedly a great benefit to the slave. Equally it involved considerable cost to the master to train his slave, to initiate him into culture. “There can have been little supply of slaves, educated or trained, before enslavement. The alternative was to train them when young slaves in domestic work or in skilled craft, as was indeed done to some extent before the Empire, by Cato, the Elder, for example. The training was done by his owner and his existing staff indeed the household of the rich contained special pedagogy for this purpose. Such training took many forms : industry, trade, arts and letter”. The question is why was the slave initiated into the high culture and why did it not fall to the lot of the untouchable to be so initiated ? The question is very pertinent and I have raised it because the answer to the question will further reinforce the conclusion that has been reached namely that untouchability is worse than slavery and that is because the slave had a personality and the untouchable has not. The reason why the master took so much trouble to train the slave and to initiate him in the higher forms of labour and culture was undoubtedly the motive of gain. A skilled slave as an item was more valuable than an unskilled slave. If sold he would fetch better price, if hired out he would bring in more wages. It was therefore an Investment to the owner to train his slave. But this is not enough to account for the elevation of the slave and the degradation of the untouchable. Suppose Roman society had an objection to buy vegetables, milk, butter, water or wine from the hands of the slave ? Suppose Roman society had an objection to