Vol. 17, Part II · pages 106–110

13 NOT TO STOP UNTIL THE UNTOUCHABLES RECOVER MANHOOD (Dr. Ambedkar’s Message to the Readers of Jai Bheem) “ You have asked me to send you a message on my 55th birthday for your Special Number. It is an unfortunate fact that in India the political leader is placed on the same footing as the Prophet. Outside India, people celebrate the birthday of their Prophets. It is only in India that the birthdays of both Prophets as well as the politicians are celebrated. It is a pity that it should be so. Personally, I do not like the celebration of my birthday. I am too much of a democrat to relish man-worship which I regard as perversion of democracy. Admiration, love, regard and respect for a leader, if he deserves them, are permissible and should be enough for both, the leader and the followers. But worship of the leader is certainly not permissible. It is demoralising to both. But I suppose this is all beside the point. Once a political leader is placed on the same footing as the Prophet, he must play the role of the Prophet and give a message to his followers in the same way as Prophet did. What message can I give to the Untouchables ? I cannot give them a message but I can tell them a tale from Greek Mythology and point out the moral. This tale is contained in a Homeric Hymn addressed to the Greek Goddess Demeter. This Hymn to Demeter relates how the great Goddess, in the course of her wanderings in search of her daughter, came to the court of Keleos. No one recognised the Goddess under the borrowed form of a humble wet-nurse ; and Queen Metoneira entrusted to her care her latest born child the infant Demophoon, afterwards known as Tripltolemos. Every evening, behind closed doors, while the household was asleep, Demeter took little Demophoon out of his comfortable cradle and with apparent cruelty, though moved in reality by a great love and desires of bringing him eventually to

84 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES the state of Godhood, laid the naked child on a glowing bed of embers. The child, Demophoon endures the fiery charcoal, he gathers strength from the ordeal. Something Superhuman is fostered in him, something robust, something beyond all hope glorious. But Metoneira becoming anxious, says the legend, burst suddenly one evening into the room where the experiment was being carried on and guided by her mistaken fears, thrust aside the goddess at her work of foregoing the superman, pushed away the embers and took away the child with the result that she saved the child but lost the Superman and eventual God”. What does this tale teach ? To my mind, it teaches that greatness can be achieved only by struggle and sacrifice. Neither manhood nor Godhood can be obtained without going through the ordeal of fire. Fire purifies, fire strengthens, so does struggle and suffering. No down-trodden man can achieve greatness unless he is prepared for struggle and suffering. He must be ready to sacrifice the comforts and even the necessities of the present for building up his future. To use the language of the Bible for the race of life all are called but only few. are chosen. Why ? The reason is obvious. Most down-trodden men fail to achieve greatness in this race of life because they have not the courage nor the determination to sacrifice the pleasures of the present for the needs of their future. Can there be a better and a greater message than what is contained in this legend ? I can find one. It is the best and the most appropriate message I can think of for the Untouchables. I am aware of their struggle and their sufferings. I am aware that in their struggle for liberty they have suffered more than I have. With all this, I can give them no other message. My message is struggle, and more struggle, sacrifice and more sacrifice. It is struggle and struggle alone without counting the sacrifices or sufferings that will bring their emancipation. Nothing else will. The Untouchables must develop a collective will to rise and resist and must believe in the sacredness of their task and develop a command determination to achieve their goal. Their

85NOT TO . . . . . . . . . MANHOOD task is so great and the purpose so noble that as Untouchables should join in a prayer and say : “Blessed are they who are alive to the duty of raising those among whom they are born. Blessed are they who vow to give the flower of their days, their strength is of soul and body and their mite, to further the campaign of resistance to slavery. Blessed are they who resolve-come good, come evil, come sunshine, come tempest, come honour, come dishonour - not to stop until the Untouchables have fully recovered their manhood”.1 zz 1 : Jai Bheem, Madras, Dr. Ambedkar’s Birthday Special Number, April 13, 1947.

14 PREFACE TO ‘ THE ESSENCE OF BUDDHISM ’— THIRD EDITION The author of this book was Prof. P. Lakshmi Narasu. While I have great pleasure in introducing this book to the public I confess that I had not met the author and known very little about his personal life. I have tried to obtain whatever details that could be gathered about his personal life and literary work. For this purpose, I have found Dr, Pattabhi Sitaramayya to be the source. He knew Prof. Narasu personally and was a friend of his. I give below the main facts in the life of Prof. Narasu as given to me by Dr. Pattabhi. Prof. P. Lakshmi Narasu, B.A., was a prodigy of the last century. He was a graduate in Physics from the Madras Christian College. From being a tutor and demonstrator, he rose to the position of an Assistant Professor by 1897 and was given full charge of Physics and Chemistry for the B. A. classes in 1898-99, during the absence of Prof. Moffatt, the permanent Professor of Physics on leave. Prof. Moffatt was a raw youth who was appointed to the professorship over the head of Prof. Narasu who had already won his distinction in Physics in the sphere of wireless telegraphy – which in the nineties of the last century as yet in its infant stage of progress. During the years 1898 and 1899 Prof. Narasu, as he used to be called in those days, was already an Examiner in Physics and Chemistry — both for B. A. and M. A. Examinations. Prof. Narasu was particularly strong in Dynamics. Once when an alteration arose over the correctness of a question in Dynamics, Prof. Wilson, a hot-headed Englishman who was Professor of Chemistry in the Presidency College, Madras and Chairman of the Board of Examiners in Physics and Chemistry, questioned the correctness of the view expressed by Prof. Narasu regarding some problem in Dynamics. Prof. Narasu took up the challenge at once. ‘ Do you want to teach me, Mr. Narasu’ asked the arrogant Wilson to which in reply Prof. Narasu retorted -after working out the problem — ‘ I am glad I am teaching Prof. Wilson something in Dynamics.’ The incident is of interest to us fifty years after its occurrence, because it shows

87PREFACE . . . . . . . . . THIRD EDITION that Prof. Narasu was an Iconoclast. Prof. Narasu was a Social Reformer. He fought caste to the best of his ability and raised the standard of Revolt against its tyranny in Hinduism, so early as in the nineties of the 18th century. He was a great admirer of Buddhism and gave courses of lectures on the subject week in and week out. He was highly popular with his students over whom he exercised a magical personal influence so as to broaden their outlook and widen their visions. His sense of self-respect, both personal and national was of a high order and he did not stand the arrogance and sense of selfsuperiority of his European colleagues to whom he was always ready to give their due in the domain of scholarship but at whose hands he would not take insults lying down. Prof. Narasu’s eminence as an Educationist did not take long to obtain general and widespread recognition and era long he was promoted to the Principalship of the Pachiappa’s College. Prof. Narasu was a highly public-spirited citizen and took active part in the organization of a body known as the ‘ National Fund and Industrial Association’ under whose auspices, petty donations were being collected with which aid was rendered to students who desired to go abroad for advanced technical education. Japan was the country which attracted the young man of the day and it was their ambition to learn the technique of various small industries and manufactures - notably - soap making, enamelling and paints manufacture and so on. But the Professor’s one sin was social reform and in Buddhism he found his solace. He was one of the earliest to discern the evils of the caste system, early marriages and prohibition of widow marriage and it was then considered in Reform Circles a matter for gratification that one of his brothers was a practical Social Reformer, having married a widow. That was the era when Christian Missionaries were not only countenancing the social reform movement but viewed it with high favour as marking a half-way house between orthodox Hinduism and conversion to Christianity. It did not take long for them to change their views and look upon such progressive movements as constituting a real hindrance to proselytization. Prof. Narasu was the stalwart of the 19th century who had fought European arrogance with patriotic fervour, orthodox Hinduism with iconoclastic zeal, heterodox Brahmins with nationalistic vision and aggressive