Vol. 12 · pages 96–100

THE UNTOUCHABLES AND THE PAX BRITANNICA [ The Manuscript consisting of 123 typed pages is a presentation of the case of neglect of the Depressed Classes by the British Government which did not admit them as members of the Armed Forces. The manuscript, of which the first page is missing, was prepared by Dr. Ambedkar during his stay for the Round Table Conferences in London according to his Marathi biographer Mr. C. B. Khairmode. The MS. is printed herein as it was found—ed. ]

77THE UNTOUCHABLES AND THE PAX BRITANNICA *of the American Continent the objective of his voyage was reach India. Even this voyage of Columbus was not a sudden venture. It was a part of a plan of exploration of a sea route to India which he had received its first impetus from Prince Henry of Portugal, who was greatly interested in it and who in his reign of 42 years (1418—1460) helped it in every possible way. What was the necessity for this quest for a direct sea route from Europe to India which impelled the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the English to come out of their seclusion. The coming of the English to India was not an adventure of a singular race. It was a concerted effort and there was so much eagerness on the part of each European nation that within this concert there was a competition for reaching India first. Because the Portuguese came first it does not follow that the rest were idle or indifferent. The English and the Dutch were under the belief that there was a shorter route to India than that of the Cape of Good Hope and their delay in their coming to India was due to the fact that they were busy in finding out its possibilities. The French, though last to arrive, were second only to the Portuguese, their first voyage being to Sumatra in 1529. What was the origin of this eagerness to reach the Indies ? Why did the Portuguese, Spaniards, English, French and Dutch vie with one another in centuries of strenuous effort to find a sea route to India. The object was to obtain luxuries and particularly spices—chillies, cloves, nutings etc., which could be had only from India and the East. This seems rather strange—that all this run should be for spices. But the fact is that spices did play a very important part in this expansion of Europe. How much spices were used and appreciated by the European peoples in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can be seen, from the following data collected by Prof. Cheyney 1 : “One of the chief luxuries of the Middle Ages was the edible spices. Wines and ale were constantly used spiced with various condiments. In Sir Thopa’s forest grew “notemuge to putte in ale”. * First page containing the earlier portions of this MS is missing. The title of this essay also is nowhere found. The present title is given from the typed outline in the custody of People’s Education Society, Bombay—ed. European Background of American History, p. 10-11.

78 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES “Froissart has the king’s guests led to the “palace, where wine and spices were set before them”. The dowry of a Marseilles girl, in 1224, makes mention of “mace, ginger, cardamom and galangale.” “When John Ball wished to draw a contrast between the lot of the lords and the peasants, he said, “ They have wines, spices and fine bread, when we have only rye and the refuse of the straw,”. When old Latiner was being bound to the stake he handed nutmegs to his friends as keepsakes. “Pepper, the most common and at the same time the most valued of these spices, was frequently treated as a gift of payment instead of money. “Matilda de Chaucer is in the gift of the king, and her land is worth £8, 2d., and 1 pound of pepper and 1 pound of cinnamon and 1 ounce of silk”, reads a chance record in an old English survey. The amount of these spices demanded and consumed was astonishing. Venetian galleys Genoese varracks, and other vessels of the Mediterranean brought many a cargo of them westward, and they were sold in fairs and markets every where. “Pepper-sack” was a derisive and yet not unappreciative epithy applied by German robber-barons to the merchants, who they plundered as they passed down the Rhine. For years the Venetians had a contract to buy from the Sultan of Egypt annually 420,000 pounds of pepper. One of the first vessels to make its way to India brought home 210,000 pounds. A fine of 200,000 pounds of pepper was imposed upon one petty prince of India by the Portuguese in 1520. In romances and chronicles, in cook-books, trades-lists, and customs-tarriffs spices are mentioned with a frequency and consideration known in modern times.” Why were spices so necessary to the European peoples of those days ? One answer is taste. “The monotonous diet, the coarse food, the unskilful cookery of mediaeval Europe had all their deficiencies covered by a charitable mantle of Oriental seasoning.”1 While it was a matter of taste for all it was a matter of necessity for the poor. The poor needed spices. In ancient times when food was scarce and the productivity of man in the absence of machinery was very low, man could not afford to waste or throw away food as being stale. Whatever was left over or was not necessary for immediate consumption had to be preserved. Spices are the best preservatives. It was because of this as also for reasons of taste that spices were in mediaeval Europe in such universal demand. 1 Cheyney. Ibid, p. 10.

79THE UNTOUCHABLES AND THE PAX BRITANNICA Another question is why was a direct sea route necessary for these European nations to reach India and to obtain spices. Before the European nations discovered the sea route to India via the Cape of Good Hope there were in existence three well established land routes by which these luxuries and spices used to reach Europe and known as the Northern, the Middle and the Southern routes. The Northern route lay between the Far-East and the West, extending from the inland provinces of China westward across the great desert of Gobi, south of the Celestial mountains to Lake Lop then passing through a series of ancient cities, Khotan, Yarkand, Kashgar, Samaro and Bokhara, till it finally reached the region of the Caspian Sea. This main northern route was joined by others which crossed the passes of the Himalayas and the Hindookush, and brought into a United Stream, the products of India and China. A journey of eighty to a hundred days over desert, mountain, and steppes lay by this route between the Chinese wall and the Caspian. From still farther north in China a parallel road to this passed to the north of the desert and the mountains and by way of Lake Balkash, to the same ancient and populous land lying to the east of the Caspian Sea. Here the caravan routes again divided. Some led to the south-westward, where they united with the more central routes described above and eventually reached the Black Sea and the Mediterranean through Asia Minor and Syria. Others passed by land around the northern coast of the Caspian, or crossed it, reaching a further stage at Astrakhan. From Astrakhan the way led on by the Volga and on rivers, till its terminus was at last reached on the Black Sea at Tana near the mouth of the Don, or at Kaffa in the Crimea. The Middle route lay through Mesopotamia and Syria to the Levant. Ships from India crept along the Asiatic shore to the Persian Gulf, and sold their costly freights in the marts of Chaldea or the lower Euphrates. A line of trading cities extending along its shores from Ormuz near the mouth of the gulf to Bassorah at its head served as ports of call for the vessels which carried this