Vol. 17, Part III · pages 61–65

32 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES India can ignore the necessity of checks and balances to ensure that in the political re-construction the smaller and the weaker communities will not go to the wall. How best to do this, as far as the Depressed Classes are concerned, is therefore the next question that I propose to deal with. There are some students of the political problem of India who admit the necessity of finding some solution of this question and also agree that the same should be embodied in the constitution of a self-governing India. These students in finding their solution have drawn largely upon the constitution of the postwar States to which I have referred in the earlier part of my speech, and it is very natural that they should draw upon that source. For these are the only States in which a close similarity to the existing Indian conditions is to be found. The scheme for the protection of minorities which obtains in these States consists in the enactment of the clauses in the constitution recognising what are called the fundamental rights of the minorities. The Nehru Committee’s report adopts this scheme as the best sort of protection for safeguarding the interests of the Depressed Classes. I must sound a note of warning against your being duped by such a scheme. The Indian politician seems to have an inordinate degree of faith in the efficiency of a constitutional law embodying what are called fundamental rights, and is as eager to offer its benefits to the minorities in India as a guarantee against the autocracy of his own class as he was eager to have it in favour of his own class against the encroachments of the bureaucracy. We must however refuse to be satisfied with such a scheme for our protection. While such declarations are not unwelcome it must be pointed out that no declaration of rights howsoever comprehensive in its scope and howsoever clear in its terms and tenor, can insure the enjoyment of those rights. The guarantee of a right consists not in its declaration but in the provision of a remedy for its enforcement in case it is violated. In the constitutions of the post-war States I have mentioned, there is at least the provision that if the minorities feel that their fundamental rights are infringed and violated by the majority in power they can appeal to the League of Nations, which has a Committee appointed for the sole purpose of receiving and passing upon their complaints. Is there any remedy provided

33PEOPLE CEMENTED............INDEPENDENT in the Nehru Committee’s Report against the infringement of the fundamental rights ? I find none, not even the appeal clause. The guarantee in the Nehru Constitution is therefore quite illusory. 9. Even if their was the appeal clause in the Nehru Constitution I would still advise you not to accept the scheme. Aright of appeal to the League of Nations or to the Viceroy or the Government would be a very desirable addition to the armoury of the Depressed Classes. But it cannot be an effective weapon. The best guarantee for the protection of your own interests, consists in having the power of control in your own hands so that you may yourselves be in a position not only to punish when the mischief to your interests is done but to keep a watch over your interests from day to day and prevent possible mischief from arising. This will never be secured by leaving the power in the hands of the third party be it the Governor, Viceroy or the League of Nations. For of what good will that power be to us if those who will hold it in trust for us refuse to exercise it when we call for their intervention ? The safest remedy for the protection of our interests seems to me lies in securing control over the future executive in self-governing India in your own hands and that you can have only by means of adequate representation in the Legislatures of the country. It is by this means and by this means alone that we can keep a day today watch upon the doings of the executive and thereby ensure our safety and our progress. If you can get other additional safeguards and guarantees, by all means have them. They will add more strings to your bow. But let nothing offered as a substitute for adequate representation be acceptable to you. And you will be perfectly within your rights if you refuse to consent to any change in the political constitution of the country, unless a guarantee in the form of adequate representation is given to you. 10. The phrase adequate representation is on the lips of every minority in India. But owing to the difficulty of defining it in quantitative terms it has, in its vague and indefinite form, become a field for acrimonious contention. But if we wish to give our

34 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES demand some specific consent, some quantitative definition of that phrase must be framed. There is prevalent in the Congress-circles a theory according to which adequate representation is tantamount to representation according to population. In my opinion this arithmetical theory of the representation of minorities is a crude and absurd doctrine and forms the best reflex of the prevailing ungenerous attitude of the majority towards the minorities in India. A Minority holds such power as it can derive from its members and its social standing. And it is because that it feels that this much power is insufficient for its protection that it claims an augmentation of it. Without such, an increase in its representation it does not feel strong enough to withstand the force of the majority armed with political power. On this view, the protection of the minority consists in. an increment of representation above its population quota. Now if this is true, one may well ask where is the protection of the minority if its representation is confined to its population? To speak of protection to minorities and confine their representation to their numbers seems to me a contradiction in terms. To prescribe that the minorities shall be represented in the legislatures according to their numbers is to make the legislatures do nothing more than be society in miniature and thus reflect the strength of the majority and the minority in the proportion in which they exist in society outside. Such a scheme keeps the balance of power in tact. It keeps the status quo as it is. From the stand point of the protection of the minority interest, any reform in order to be a real reform, must involve a change in the balance of power in favour of the minorities and this can be secured only by allowing over and above its population ratio some weightage in the allotment of its representation. 11. While all minorities are agreed upon the necessity of weightage in the matter of their representation, there does not seem to be any agreement in the application of it. This is due, it seems to me, to a want of clear understanding regarding the function that weightage is expected to perform. From what I have said above, it will be obvious to you that weightage is a scheme improvised for lengthening the arm of a minority,

35PEOPLE CEMENTED............INDEPENDENT which otherwise would be too short for its protection. The length to be added must therefore depend upon the shortness of the arm. If the arm is short the length to be added must increase. If the arm is long, the length to be added will have to be curtailed. To put it differently this weightage cannot be uniform for all the minorities and that it must vary with their social standing; to be high, if the standing of the minority is low and to be low, if the standing of the minority is high. Unfortunately there is a tendency in certain minorities not only to place themselves on a padestal higher than the common level of the ordinary citizen, but also to monopolize a larger share of representation, not on the ground that their social standing is low; but because their social standing is high. As I have said the idea underlying weightage to a minority is the same as tampering the wind to the shorn lamb and we must therefore guard against such a perversion thereof as I have referred to which cannot but result in injuring the interests of the country and of the other minorities as well. 12. So far I have only given an indication of the right line of approach for the proper application of the principle of weightage to minority representation. The question of determining the exact quantum of weightage still remains. That must vary with circumstances and I cannot do more than suggest a general principle for its computation. It is this. First of all, by a mutual agreement between the majority and minority communities a figure should be arrived at for a maximum increase in the population ratio of representation to be called the weightage factor. In its application to a particular minority for determining its quota of adequate representation the weightage-factor should be made to vary inversely with the social standing of the minority defined as it must be by (1) its social status, (2) its economic strength and (3) its educational position. If this is done, it seems to me, we will have a settlement between the minority communities themselves and between the majority on the one hand and the minorities on the other which will be just and equitable and will leave no cause for complaint to any of the parties concerned.

36 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES 13. The question that arise next in order for our consideration, pertain to the electorates and the franchise. Gentlemen, what shall be our demand in respect to them? Regarding the formation of the electorates there are two altenatives open to us. One is the scheme of separate electorates and the other is that of joint electorates with reserved seats. I know that the opinion of the depressed classes is divided on this question. There is a large body of the people in favour of separate electorates. They fear that in joint electorates the majority community having a right to vote in the election of our representatives will favour only such men from amongst us as will be subservient to them. I don’t say that such fears are altogether without any foundations. But if this is true, then the remedy lies not in enclosing lies in a separate compartment, but in increasing our voting strength to the fullest possible extent by demanding adult suffrage, so that we may thereby be in a position to minimise such influence, as the majority community may happen to cast in the election of our representations. In my opinion, if we can get adult suffrage and here I must say that we must insist upon it as one of our most essential demands, we ought to have no objection to the scheme of joint electorates with reserved seats being applied to the Depressed Classes. 14. In this connection there is one observation which I feel I must make. To say that this is a country which is divided by castes and creeds and that it cannot be one united self-governing community unless adequate safe-guards for the protection of the minorities are made a part of the constitution is a position to which there can be no objection. But the minorities must bear in mind that although we are today “riven by sects and atomised by castes,” our ideal is a united India. This is an ideal which no minority which claims to be heard can fail to place in its forefront. That being so, it follows that every minority in formulating the safe-guards it needs, must take care that they will not be incompatible with the realisation of that ideal. By all means insist on your self-guards because the handicap you suffer from is real, but let not your safeguards be such that they will peipetuate the differences which it must be the desire of us all to see bridged. There is undoubtedly an obligation