Vol. 17, Part II · pages 226–230

203LETTER TO . . . . . . . OF CABINET MISSION You must be wondering why should the Congress be prepared to concede all the demands of the Scheduled Castes and object only to one namely, separate electorates. There will be no wonder if you know what game the Congress is playing. It is a very deep game. Realising that there is no escape from giving the Untouchables some safeguards, the Congress wants to find out some way by which it can make them of no effect. It is in the system of joint electorates that the Congress sees an instrument of making the safeguards of no effect. This is the way Congress is insisting upon joint electorates. For joint electorates means giving the Untouchables office without power. What the Untounchables want is office with power. This, they can only get through separate electorates and that is why they are insisting upon it. 8. I believe the case in favour of separate electorates for the Scheduled Castes is a cast-iron case. Every other party except the Congress accepts it. The arguments in favour of separate electorates have been set out by me in my letter of 3rd May 1946 addressed to Lord Wavell which he must have shown to you and it is therefore unnecessary to repeat them here. The question is what the Mission is going to do with this demand of the Scheduled Castes. Are they going to make the Untouchables free from political yoke of the Hindus? Or, are they going to throw them to the wolves by favouring the system of joint electorates in order to make friends with the Congress and the Hindu majority whom it represents? The Scheduled Castes are entitled to ask His Majesty’s Government that before the British abdicate, His Majesty’s Government shall make sure that Swaraj does not become a strangle-hold for the Untouchables. 9. Allow me to say that the British have a moral responsibility towards the Scheduled Castes. They may have moral responsibilities towards all minorities. But it can never transcend the moral responsibility which rests on them in respect of the Untouchables. It is a pity how few Britishers are aware of it and how fewer are prepared to discharge it. British Rule in India owes its very existence to the help rendered by the Untouchables. Many Britishers think that India was conquered by the Clives, Hastings, Cootes and so on. Nothing can be a greater mistake. India was

204 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES conquered by an army of Indians and the Indians who formed the army were all Untouchables. British Rule in India would have been impossible if the Untouchables had not helped the British to conquer India. Take the Battle of Plassey which laid the beginning of British Rule or the battle of Kirkee which completed the conquest of India. In both these fateful battles the soldiers who fought for the British were all Untouchables. 10. What have the British done to these Untouchables who fought for them? It is a shameful story. The first thing they did was to stop their recruitment in the army. A more unkind, more ungrateful and more cruel act can hardly be found in history. In shutting out the Untouchables from the Army the British took no note that the Untouchables had helped them to establish their rule and had defended it when it was menaced by a powerful combination of native forces in the Mutiny of 1857. Without any consideration as to its effects upon the Untouchables the British by one stroke of the pen deprived them of their source of livelihood and let them fall to their original depth of degradation. Did the British help them in any way to overcome their social disabilities? The answer again must be in the negative. The schools, wells and public places were closed to the Untouchables. It was the duty of the British to see the Untouchables, as citizens, were entitled to be admitted to all institutions maintained out of public funds. But the British did nothing of the kind and what is worst, they justified their inaction by saying that Untouchability was not their creation. It may be that Untouchability was not the creation of the British. But as Government of the day, surely the removal of Untouchability was their responsibility. No Government with any sense of the functions and duties of a Government could have avoided it. What did the British Government do? They refused to touch any question which involved any kind of reform of Hindu society. So far as social reform was concerned, the Untouchables found themselves under a Government distinguished in no vital respect from those native Government under which they had toiled and suffered, lived and died, through all their weary and forgotten history. From a political standpoint, the change was nominal. The despotism of the Hindus continued as ever before. Far from being curbed by the British High Command, it

205LETTER TO . . . . . . . OF CABINET MISSION was pampered. From a social point of view, the British accepted the arrangements as they found them and preserved them faithfully in the manner of the Chinese tailor who, when given an old coat as a pattern, produced with pride an exact replica, rents and patched and all. And what is the result? The result is that though 200 years have elapsed since the establishment of the British Rule in India, the Untouchables have remained Untouchables, their wrongs remained unredressed and their progress hampered at every stage. Indeed, if the British Rule has achieved anything in India it is to strengthen and reinvigorate Brahmanism which is the inveterate enemy of the Untouchables and which is the parent of all the ills from which the Untouchables have been suffering for ages. 11. You have come here to announce that the British are abdicating. It cannot be wrong for an Untouchable to ask “to whom are you leaving this legacy of authority and power?” To the protagonist of Brahmanism, which means to the tyrants and oppressors of the Untouchables. Such a method of liquidating the British Empire in India need not raise any qualms of conscience among members of other parties. But what about the British Labour Party? The Labour Party claims to stand for the unprivileged and the down-trodden. If it is true to its salt, I have no doubt that it will stand by the sixty millions of the Untouchables of India and do everything necessary to safeguard their position and not allow power to pass into the hands of those who by their religion and their philosophy of life are unfit to govern and are, in fact, the enemies of the Untouchables. It will be no more than bare act of atonement on the part of the British for the neglect of the Scheduled Castes whose trustees they always claimed to be. 12. What has led me to unburden myself at such length is the anxiety caused by the apparent silence of the Mission over the question of constitutional safeguards raised by the Untouchables? This anxiety has been deepened by the attitude taken by the Mission towards the pledges given to the Untouchables and to the minorities by His Majesty’s Government. The attitude of the Mission in regard to these pledges reminds one of Lord Palmerston who said, “ We have no

206 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES permanent enemies; We have no permanent friends; we have only permanent interest.” You can well imagine what a terrifying prospect it would present to the Untouchables if the impression was created that the Mission was adopting this Palmerston maxim as its guide. You came from the underprivileged classes of Great Britain and I have full faith that you will do your best to prevent a possible betrayal of the 60 millions of India’s underprivileged. That is why I have thought of placing their case before you. If you will allow me to say, the Untouchables have got a feeling that they have no greater friend in the Mission than Yourself. I am, Yours Sincerely, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. The Rt. Hon’ble Mr. A.V. Alexander, C.H.M.P., Member, Cabinet Mission, Viceroy’s House, New Delhi. zz Source ; Privately printed leaflet by Dr. Ambedkar.

8 LETTER TO LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE REGARDING STATEMENT ISSUED BY CABINET MISSION. “22, Prithviraj Road, New Delhi, Dated, 22nd May 1946. Dear Lord Pethick-Lawrence, In reading the statement issued by the Cabinet Mission I have found that on certain points there is much ambiguity. They are set out below :— (1) Whether the term “minorities” in paragraph 20 of the statement includes the Scheduled Castes ? (2) Paragraph 20 lays down that the Advisory Committee on the rights of citizens, minorities and tribal and excluded areas should contain full representation of the interests affected. Who is to see whether the Advisory Committee does in fact contain full representation of the interests affected ? (3) Whether, in order to see that there is full representation of the interests affected, H.M.G. propose to reserve to themselves the right to add to the Committee by nomination of persons from outside the Constituent Assembly representing such interests ? The necessity for nomination from outside seems to be essential, for otherwise there is no other method for securing representation of tribal and excluded areas from within the Constituent Assembly. If the necessity for nomination is admitted, will the principle of nomination of members of the Scheduled Castes from outside the Constituent Assembly be extended to secure full representation of the Scheduled Castes on the Advisory Committee ? (4) In paragraph 22 of the statement there is a provision for a treaty between the Union Constituent Assembly and the United Kingdom providing for certain matters arising out of the transfer of power. Will this proposed treaty include a provision for the protection of the minorities as was stipulated in the Cripps proposals? If Treaty is not to have such a provision, how does H.M.G. propose to make the decisions of the Advisory Committee binding on the Constituent Assembly ?