Vol. 17, Part III · pages 286–290

257IF DEMOCRACY....................OUR DOOM administration and you can have good administration when you have persons belonging to the Untouchables holding high administrative posts from which they could watch how other Hindu Civil Servants are behaving towards the Untouchables and to check them, control them and prevent them from doing mischief. It is, however, not enough to ask for mere reservation. It is necessary to insist that such reservation shall be given effect to within a stated period. This is far more essential than mere reservation. For, unless you fix a period, the reservation will not come. It will be evaded on one ground or another and of course on the usual but unfathomable ground that no suitable candidate was available. We all know that to a Hindu, if he is the appointing authority, no candidate from the Untouchables would be a suitable candidate. Fourthly, you must insist upon securing representation for the Untouchables in the Central and Provincial Executives. These are key positions. It is those who occupy these positions who have the power to give direction to the course of events. They alone can control any mischief that they may be threatened of and they alone can force new and salutary changes in social, political, and economic affairs. The Untouchables must insist that their representatives are placed in these key postitions. This time it must not be left to understanding or convention. The Hindus cannot be trusted to abide by their plighted word. You must see that a provision in this behalf is made part of the constitution. Then, there is the last demand which the Untouchables must insist upon. It is the last, but it is by no means the least in importance. Indeed, I am convinced that it is the most vital demand which to my mind must override every other demand. I refer to the project of having new settlements of the Untouchables, separate and independent, of the Hindu villages. Why have the Untouchables been the slaves and serfs of the Hindus for so many thousand years ? To my mind the answer lies in the peculiar organization of Hindu villages. You have spread out all over India some 7,00,000 Hindu villages, Attached to every Hindu village there exists a small settlement of

258 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Untouchables. This settlement of Untouchables is usually numerically very small as compared with the Hindu village to which it is attached. Secondly, this settlement of Untouchables is economically without any resource and without any opportunity for improvement. It is invariably a settlement of landless population. Being Untouchable it could not sell anything, for nobody would buy from an Untouchable. It is wholly a population, destitute, and dependent for its livelihood upon the Hindu village. It lives by begging food or by offering its labour for a paltry wage. In this setting you can well understand why the Untouchable has remained in a degraded condition for so many centuries. As against the Hindu village, the Untouchables simply cannot offer any resistance. They are numerically small and they are economically poor. While this village system continues to exist in its present form, the Untouchables will never achieve their independence, whether social, or economic, and will never get over the inferiority complex which they have developed as a result of their state of social and economic dependence. The village system must, therefore, be broken. It is the only way that is open for the Untouchables if they really wish to emancipate themselves from the stranglehold which the Hindus have acquired over them through the village system. My suggestion is that you should insist upon a provision being made in the Constitution for the formation of new and independent villages exclusively of Untouchables at the public cost to be undertaken by the Central Government. There is a good deal of cultivable land which belongs to Government and which is unoccupied. This could be reserved for the puipose of giving effect to this scheme of new villages of Untouchables. Government could buy from private individuals out-lying vacant land and use it for the same purpose. It would not be difficult to induce the Untouchables to shift from their present habitats to these new villages and settle there as independent farmers. The process may take time. But, that does not matter. It is so vital that we must insist upon the scheme being made by the constitution itself a matter of obligation upon the Central Govenment. There is one other point about which I must speak to you a few words. That is about the necessity of forming one central

259IF DEMOCRACY....................OUR DOOM all-India political organisation to act as the mouth-piece of the Untouchables of India. We have been carrying on our political activities through our provincial organizations. I find that even in provinces there is a multiplicity of political organizations. Any ambitious person who wants to parade himself as a President or a Secretary founds an association with himself as President or the Secretary. He needs do nothing more than get a printed letter paper having the name of the association and his name as President or Secretary. This is a state of anarchy which you must put a stop to at once. There is only one way by which this can be done. And that is by establishing an all-India organization with provincial branches and to abolish all existing organizations. This will give you the strength you need and enable you to work in a manner that will help you to build a united front. I hope you will take up this matter in right earnest. I have told you what I have thought and felt regarding the problem of the Untouchables and I hope you will give it your best consideration. Perhaps, in closing I may refer to our attitude to the war. From the beginning we have supported the war efforts. I am sure we shall continue to lend it our support. We have our political demands which, we insist, shall be satisfied. But we have given our support to the war efforts without making the satisfaction of our demands being a condition precedent. It is not that we value the satisfaction of our demands as of lesser importance than the successful conclusion of the war. We do not lay down any conditions for our support to the war because we feel that the successful issue of the war will help us better in the realization of our political demands than the loss of the war. This is a war between democracy and dictatorship - not an enlightened dictatorship but a dictatorship of the most barbarous character based not on any moral ideal but on racial arrogance. If any dictatorship needs to be destroyed, it is this vile Nazi Dictatorship. Amidst all the political dissensions that one witnesses in this country, amidst all uncertainties of the future which some feel, we are

260 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES likely to forget what a menace to our future this Nazism, if it wins, is going to be. What is more important is that its racial basis is a positive danger to Indians. If this is a correct view of the situation, it seems to me that there lies on us a very heavy duty to see that democracy does not vanish from the earth as a governing principle of human relationship. If we believe in it, then, we must both be true and loyal to it. We must not only be staunch in our faith in democracy but we must resolve to see that in whatever we do, we do not help the enemies of democracy to uproot the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. On that point I hope we are all agreed and if you agree with me, then if follows that we must strive along with other democratic countries to maintain the basis of democratic civilization. If democracy lives, we are sure to reap the fruits of it. If democracy dies, it will be our doom. On that there can be no doubt. There is nothing more that I have to say to you on this occasion. I am happy to be in the midst of you. I shall be happy to serve you in future as I have done in the past. If we all work together and strive together, we will not fail, for our cause is the cause of justice. and the cause of humanity. Rao Bahadur N. Shivraj, President, declared the session adjourned till 10 A. M. tomorrow and that as already announced the Subject Committee will meet at 9 p.m. tonight in the hall of the Mohan Park Hotel. Subjects Committee’s Sittings July 18, 1942 The Subjects Committee of the Third All-India Depressed Classes Conference, consisting of all the delegates, met at 9 p.m. in the hall of the Mohan Park Hotel, with the President, Rao Bahadur N. Shivraj in the Chair and discussed the draft resolutions. After a session lasting for four hours, the Subjects Committee unanimously agreed upon the resolutions to be placed before the open session of the Conference.

261IF DEMOCRACY....................OUR DOOM Open Session Second Day July 19, 1942 The Third Session of the All-India Depressed Classes Conference re-assembled at 10 a.m. with Rao Bhadur N. Shivraj in the Chair. The proceedings commenced with the singing of songs specially composed and sung by several members of the Conference. Rao Bahadur N. Shivraj said, Ladies and gentlemen, I want to announce that the Subjects Committee has agreed to place in this Conference five resolutions. Resolutions I to IV will be moved first as one proposition and Resolution V will be moved next. I now call upon Mr. B. K. Gaikwad, M.L.A. Nasik ( Bombay ) to move the first four resolutions. While moving Resolutions Mr. B. K. Gaikwad said, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, the resoultions I am asked to move which read as follows : Resolution No I : Cripps Proposals Unacceptable This Conference declares that the proposals of His Majesty’s Government relating to constitutional changes sent out with Sir Strafford Cripps are utterly unacceptable to the Scheduled Castes. In the opinion of this Conference these proposals were nothing but a betrayal of the interests of the Scheduled Castes and a breach of the assurance given by His Excellency the Viceroy in his declaration of 8th August 1940 on behalf of His Majesty’s Government that a constitution which had not the consent of the Scheduled Castes would not be imposed upon them. Protest Against Cripps Proposals This Conference places on record its most emphatic protest against His Majesty’s Government agreeing to the demand made by the Congress that the new Constitution be framed by a Constituent Assembly and also against the proposal of safeguarding the interests of the Scheduled Castes by a