Vol. 12 · pages 776–780

755MISCELLANEOUS NOTES allow slaves to touch them, to enter their houses, travel with them in cars, etc. would it have been possible for the master to train his slave, to raise him from semi-barbarism to a cultured state ? Obviously not. It is because the slave was not held to be an untouchable that the master could train him and raise him. We again come back therefore, to the same conclusion-namely, that what has saved the slave is that his personality was recognised by society and what has ruined the untouchable is that Hindu society did not recognize his personality, treated him as unfit for human association and common dealing. That the slave in Rome was no less of a man because he was a slave, that he was fit for human intercourse although he was in bondage is proved by the attitude that the Roman Religion had towards the slave. As has been observed— “……….Roman religion was never hostile to the slave. It did not close the temple doors against him ; it did not banish him from its festivals. If slaves were excluded from certain ceremonies, the same may be said of free men and women-being excluded from the rites of Bono Dea, Vesta and Ceres, women from those of Hercules at the Ara Maxima. In the days when the old Roman divinities counted for some-thing, the slave came to be informally included in the family, and could consider himself under the protection of the gods of the household .......Augustus ordered that freed women should be eligible as priestesses of Vesta. The law insisted that a slave’s grave should be regarded as sacred and for his soul Roman mythology provided no special heaven and no particular hell. Even Juvenal agrees that the slave, soul and body is made of the same stuff as his master...” SLAVE IN LAW There was no stigma attached to his person. There was no gulf social or religious which separated the slave at any rate in Rome from the rest of the society. In outward appearance he did not differ from the free man ; neither colour nor clothing revealed his conditions ; he witnessed the same games as the freemen, he shared in the life of the Municipal towns, and employed in state service, enaged himself in trade and commerce as all free men

756 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES did. Often apparent equality in outward things counts far more to the individual than actual identify of rights before the Jaw. Between the slave and the free, there seems often to have been little social barrier. Marriage between slave and freed slave was very common. The slave status carried no stigma on the man in the society. He was touchable and even respectable. Enough has been said to show that untouchability is worse than slavery. The only thing that is comparable to it is the case of the Jews in the middle ages. The servility of the Jews does resemble to some extent the condition of the untouchables. But there is this to be said about it. Firstly the discrimination made against the Jews was made upon a basis which is perfectly understandable though not justifiable. It was based upon the Jews obstinacy in the matter of religion. He refused to accept the religion of the gentiles and it is his obstinacy which brought about those penalties. The moment he gave up his obstinacy he was free from his disabilities. This is not the case with the untouchable. His disabilities are not due to the fact that he is a protestant or nonconformist. The second thing to be said about these disabilities of the Jews is that the Jews preferred them to being completely assimilated and lost in the Gentiles. This may appear strange but there are facts to prove it. In this, connection reference may be made to two instances recorded in history which typify the attitude of the Jews. The first instance relates to the Napoleonic regime. After the National Assembly of France had agreed to the declaration of the Rights of Man to the Jews, the Jewish question was again reopened by the guild merchants and religious reactionaries of Alsace. Napoleon resolved to submit the question to the consideration of the Jews themselves. “He convened an Assembly of Jewish Notables of France, Germany and Italy in order to ascertain whether the principles of Judaism were compatible with the requirements of citizenship as he wished to fuse the Jewish element with the dominant population. The Assembly, consisting of 111 deputies, met in the Town Hall of Paris on 25th July, 1806, and was required to frame replies to twelve questions relating mainly to the possiblity of Jewish patriotism, the permissiblity of intermarriage between

757MISCELLANEOUS NOTES Jew and non-Jew, and the legality of usury. So pleased was Napoleon with the pronouncements of the Assembly that he summoned a Sanhedrin after the model of the ancient council of Jerusalem to convert them into the decrees of a legislative body. The Sanhedrin, comprising 71 deputies from France, Germany, Holland and Italy, met under the presidency of Rabbi Sinzheim of Strassburg on 9th February 1807, and adopted a sort of charter which exhorted the Jews to look upon France as their father land, to regard its citizens as their brethren, and to speak its language, and which also pressed toleration of marriages between Jews and Christians while declaring that they could not be sanctioned by the synagogue”. It will be noted the Jews refused to sanction intermarriages between Jews and non-Jews. They only agreed to tolerate them. The second instance related to what happend when the Batavian Republic was established in 1795. The more energetic members of the Jewish community pressed for the removal of many disabilities under which they laboured. “But the demand for the full rights of citizenship made by the progressive Jews was at first, strangely enough, opposed by the leaders of the Amsterdam community, who feared that civil equality would militate against the conservation of Judaism and declared that their co-religionists renounced their rights of citizenship in obedience to the dictates of their faith. This shows that the Jews preferred to live as strangers rather than as members of the community. It is as an ‘eternal people’ that they were singled out and punished. But that is not the case with the untouchables. They too are in a different sense art “eternal people” who are separate from the rest. But this separateness is not the result of their wish. They are punished not because they do not want to mix. They are punished because they want to. Untouchability is worse than slavery because slave has personality in the Society while the untouchable has no personality has been made abundantly clear. But this is not the only ground why untouchability is worse than slavery. There are others which are not obvious but which are real none-the-less.

758 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Of these the least obvious may be mentioned as the first. Slavery, if it took away the freedom of the slave, it imposed upon the master the duty to maintain the slave in life and body. The slave was relieved of all responsibility in respect of his food, his clothes and his shelter. All this the master was bound to provide. This was of course no burden because the slave earned more than his keep. But a security for board and lodging is not always possible forevery freeman as all wage earners now know to their cost. Work is not always available even to those who are ready to toil but a workman cannot escape the rule according to which he gets no bread if he finds no work. This rule, no work no bread, the ebbs and tides of business, the booms and depression are vissicitudes through which all free wage earners have to go. But they do not affect the slave who is free from them. He gets his bread-perhaps the same bread, but bread-whether it is boom or whether it is depression. Untouchability is worse than slavery because it carries no such security as to livelihood as the latter does. No one is responsible for the feeding, housing and clothing of the untouchable. From this point of view untouchability is not only worse than slavery but is positively cruel as compared to slavery. In slavery the master has the obligation to find work for the slave. In a system of free labour workers have to compete with workers for obtaining work. In this scramble for work what chances has the untouchable for a fair deal ? To put it shortly in this competition with the scales always weighing against him by reason of his social stigma he is the last to be employed and the first to be fired. Untouchability is cruelty as compared to slavery because it throws upon the untouchables the responssibility for maintaining without any way of earning his living. From another aspect also untouchability is worse than slavery. The slave was property, and that gave the slave an advantage over a free man. Being valuable, the master out of sheer self interest, took great care of the health and well being of the slave. In Rome the slaves were never employed on marshy and malarial land. On such a land only freemen were employed. Cato advises Roman farmers never to employ slaves on marshy and malarial land. This seems stranger. But a little examination will show that this was quite natural. Slave was valuable property and as such a prudent man

759MISCELLANEOUS NOTES who knows his interest must not expose him to the ravages of malaria. The same care need not be taken in the case of free man because he is not valuable property. This consideration resulted to the great benefit of the slave. He was cared for as no one was. This consideration is completely absent in the case of the untouchable. He is neglected and left to starve and die. The second or rather the third difference between untouchability and slavery is that slavery was never obligatory. But untouchability is obliged. A person is “permitted” to hold another as his slave. There is no compulsion on him if he does not want to. A Hindu on the other hand is “enjoined” to hold another as untouchable. There is compulsion on the Hindu which he cannot escape whatever his personal wishes in the matter may be. zzz