Vol. 2 · pages 741–745

720 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES 8854. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: You are very anxious that they should be included ? Pandit Nanak Chand: I am not anxious ; they are anxious. I do not want anybody to be called a Depressed Class. 8855. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I want to ask a few questions of Mr. Chatterjee of Bengal. I think your main complaint is that the Bengal Hindus were not represented when this Poona Pact was evolved—is that it ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: That is one of the complaints. My main complaint is — 8856. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I will take this for the moment because I want to exhaust one at a time. I think it was admitted by your colleague that there were members of the Bengal caste-Hindus present both in Bombay and Poona ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: Yes. Mr. J. Bannerjee: At Poona one caste-Hindu was present : that is what I have said. 8857. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Were not there dozens from other Provinces ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: That may be. Marquess of Zetland: Dr. Ambedkar, could not we solve the whole of this problem if you told us the names of the Bengal caste-Hindus who were there? 8858. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I am giving the names. These names were given in the course of the discussion that took place in the Bengal Legislative Council on the 14th March 1933. Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: Will you kindly give the names ? 8859. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: There was no contradiction at all on that point ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: I was in England at the time. 8860. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I am quoting from speech of Mr. Mullick who represented the depressed classes in the Bengal Legislative Council. This is what he says ? Mr. J. Bannerjee: He is a nominated member not an elected representative : I want to make that point clear. 8861. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: He is a representative of the depressed classes ? Mr. J. Bannerjee: And he has been defeated in a constituency before— twice before. 8862. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: What difference does that make to the point I am dealing with ? I am on the point whether certain Bengal Hindus were present or not. This was a statement made in the proceedings of the Bengal Legislative Council in the course of a speech by a Bengal Depressed Class Member who advocated the Poona Pact : “We know that they were men like Swami Satyananda of the Hindu Mission. Babu Haridas Mazumdar,

721 EVIDENCE : DR. B. S. MOONJE AND OTHERS M.A., B.L. of the Amrita Samaj, Babu Pramathanath Banerjee, M.L.C., of Midnapore, Babu S. C. Das Gupta of the Khadi Pratisthan, besides men like Pandit Malaviya, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Mr. M. R. Jayakar, Mr. Rajgopalachari ?” Mr. J. Bannerjee: Excepting one, none of them was present at Poona. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: That was a statement in the Council. 8863. Mr. J. Bannerjee: Will you permit me to go on ? Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Please answer when I ask a question. Mr. J. Bannerjee: It is an incorrect statement. 8864. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I say this statement has not been contradicted by anyone in the Bengal Legislative Council ? Mr. J. Bannerjee: I was present on that day. No speech was delivered, but something was read from paper, and it is quite possible that people missed those bits. A paper was read indistinctly. 8865. Mr. M. R. Jayakar: The proceedings of your Council are published, are they not ? Mr. J. Bannerjee: Yes. 8866. Mr. M. R. Jayakar: Since the publication of those proceedings has there been any contradiction ? Mr. J. Bannerjee: Yes ; immediately after the debate was held, as soon as we heard that certain names were given out, a contradiction was made in the newspapers. 8867. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I put it to you that not only were these men present at Bombay ? Mr. J. Bannerjee: I am speaking of Poona. 8868. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I am talking first of all about Bombay. Not only were these men present at Bombay when the sub-committee was appointed, but they had conversations with me individually in my office and urged me to come to a settlement. This is a fact which I disclosed in an interview which I gave to the Bombay Times and which is published on the 17th March, soon after your legislative proceedings were announced ? Mr. J. Bannerjee: The very next day I contradicted your statement and said that did not touch the point because three of those members had not, according to your own admission, gone to Poona, and were not present at the time of the Pact. Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: I just want to say this, that it is nobody’s case and I do not think it is Dr. Ambedkar’s case—that these gentlemen were sent to Bombay, or a solitary gentleman who was present at Poona was sent there by the Bengali Hindus or anybody of Bengali Hindus ; they may have been there accidentally or may have been there because they wanted to see the Mahatma who was ill. Some actually went there for the glory of carrying his dead body in a procession. 8869. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I will put it to you that if that is the case that it was well known that, these men had left Calcutta for the

722 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES express purpose of attending the Malaviya Conference. That has been published in the “Liberty” ? Mr. J. Bannerjee : They did not go there on authorisation by any public body in Bengal. They may have gone there on their own business or for some other reason. May I make an offer to Dr. Ambedkar; may T just say this ? We, in Bengal, feel it a great slur that there should be a suggestion that there are depressed classes in Bengal. The Bengali Hindus have been going on doing social work for over a century now in order to remove caste barriers and things like that. I ask Dr. Ambedkar to agree with this. The Lothian Committee very fairly formulated two characteristics, two criteria, for determining who are depressed classes, untouchability, unapproachability within a certain distance. I suggest that the Bengal Government should make an enquiry into who are untouchables and unapproachables, and if their number is ascertained we should be willing to give these people their proportion of representation on the Bengal Legislative Council on the basis of joint electorates. 8870. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I am not discussing joint electorates ; I am discussing this important point of fact when it was well known that certain Bengal caste-Hindus were going to Bombay to attend Malaviya Conference. I am quoting to you from the “Liberty” of the 17th September, 1932: it is a paper which is published in Calcutta. I find in column 4 on page 5 of the “Liberty” of that date this report written in broad headlines : “Swami Satyananda and others leave for Bombay. Swami Satyananda, Sjs. Haridas Majumdar and Jajneshwar Mandal of the Amrita Samaj are leaving for Bombay tonight to attend the Malaviya Conference.” They were not going on any of their private business ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: As far as I am concerned I have never heard of the gentlemen ; this is the first time I have heard of them ; certainly they have been hiding their light under a brushel as far as Bengal is concerned, and these gentlemen must themselves have sent the report just to advertise that they were going. 8871. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: My point is that the public of Bengal was aware that certain members from the caste-Hindus were proceeding from Bengal to attend the Malaviya Conference, and if the public of Bengal thought that they were not representatives it was quite possible for them to send a message to Malaviya not to trust these people ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: I submit it is most unfair to the public of Bengal to hold them to a paragraph that appeared casually in some column of the “Liberty”. 8872. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I am only stating it as a fact that every body in Bengal ought to know ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: Nobody reads the paper thorough like that. Nobody searches out particular columns to find out things like that. It never came to our notice.

723 EVIDENCE : DR. B. S. MOONJE AND OTHERS Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I will not press you further on that. 8873. Sir Austen Chamberlain: Does Mr. Chatterjee mean he was unaware that such a meeting was being held in Bombay ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: We were aware that a meeting was being held, but we were completely unaware that anybody was taking it upon himself to go from Bengal to that meeting. 8874. Sir Austen Chamberlain: If you had these strong feelings on the subject and you were, in your opinion, the most representative body who could speak on behalf of those who held your views, why did not you send representatives when you became aware of the meeting ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee : We did not know what was happening there. We in Calcutta, honestly did not know what was happening there excepting that we heard the news of Mr. Gandhi’s going to fast. Mr. J. Bannerjee: We did not attach any great importance to it. The Malaviya Conference was not to dispose of the fate of the caste-Hindus of Bengal; therefore, nobody went there in any capacity whatever. The Poona Meeting was really important. 8875. Sir Austen Chamberlain: You were aware of the meeting, but you did not think it worth attending. That is the position ? Mr. J. Bannerjee: I am afraid you are confusing the two meetings at Bombay and Poona. The Pact was signed at Poona and that was the important meeting to which the caste-Hindus were not invited. The meeting at Bombay was a sort of preliminary canter. We were justified in not attaching much importance to it. 8876. Mr. Zafrulla Khan: May I put this to you : I do not want to offend you in any way, Mr. Chatterjee, but it appears that, perhaps, the attitude of Bengal caste-Hindus was : “ We are not concerned with this : perhaps it will come to nothing; if it helps to save the Mahatma’s life well and good ; if it affects us in any way we can repudiate it afterwards” ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: With great respect that was not so. I had the honour to be on the Provincial Franchise Committee and had the honour to cooperate with the Lothian Committee. We went into careful investigation as to who were the Untouchables. That is the whole point for investigation. 8877. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: You are going away from my point. The reports of what was happening in Bombay and Poona were published regularly fully in the “Liberty” every day. Are you prepared to contradict that ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee : I am sorry to say I never read the “Liberty”. 8878. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I brought the “Liberty”. I purposely did not bring the “ Statesman “ because you would say it is an Anglo-Indian paper ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: Why should I ? I cannot imagine myself saying that. 8879. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I brought it deliberately because I know it is a Hindu paper ?

724 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: It is. It comes to my house. I read it occasionally. 8880. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I put it to you that the proceedings of the Malaviya Conference held on the 20th are given on full front page in “Liberty” ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: I hear that from you. 8881. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: You can see it for yourself. I will pass it to you ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: I accept your word for it. 8882. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Similarly, what happened on the 21st is published on the front page fully in the issue of the 22nd ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: I dare say. 8883. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: So that anybody in Bengal would really know what was happening in Bombay and Poona. I will put to you one more point ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: We thought before any decision of this weightly character could ever become applicable to public bodies in Bengal they would be invited to send their representatives to take part in the deliberations. 8884. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: When the Sub-Committee was propounded there was no protest made against its composition ? Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: They would have no right to. 8885. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: If you refer to the “Liberty” of the 22nd September 1932, it contains the Report of the proposals I made to this SubCommittee on the basis of which I was prepared to negotiate. Mr. Jayakar will corroborate me that I did propose certain things on the basis of which I was prepared to negotiate. In my proposals I had demanded 50 seats for the Bengal. Mr. J. Bannerjee: Depressed Classes you mean ? 8886. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I mean Depressed Classes, and yet there was not a single statement of protest from the Bengal caste-Hindus either to Pandit Malaviya, who was supposed to negotiate the Pact on this basis, nor did you send anybody to Poona although you know I had made this demand which was published, as I say, in a most prominent place in the issue of the 22nd September ? Mr. J. Bannerjee : I am sorry, but I am afraid we did not attach as much importance to Dr. Ambedkar’s proposals as we ought to have done. 8887. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I am sorry, you are to suffer for it. I just want to ask you one or two questions about this. The announcement of His Majesty accepting the Poona Pact was made on the 26th September, 1932, in the Central Legislature in both Houses. That announcement by His Majesty’s Government was acclaimed by everybody in the Central Legislature ; there was no protest made then by any member either in the Council of State or in the Legislature against the acceptance of this Pact. Is not that so ? Mr. J. Bannerjee. : That may be so.