Vol. 5 · pages 281–285

266 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES The same thing applies to the Mahomedan in a village. In the eyes of the Hindus he is a stranger. But the Hindus dare not molest him because they know that any injury to him will be avenged by Muslims in a blood feud with the Hindus. The communal riots between the Hindus and Mahomedans are really blood feuds and they are caused by some injury done to a Mahomedan or to some Mahomedan interests. It is this fear of a blood feud which makes the life of a Muslim in a Hindu village safe. There is nobody to avenge an injury done to an Untouchable. There is no fear of a blood feud. The Hindus therefore can commit any wrong against the Untouchables with impunity. This is because the Mahomedans are a solid mass, held together with a deep consciousness of kind, ready to act as one man to vindicate any wrong to the community or to a member thereof. The Untouchables, on the other hand, are a disunited body, they are infested with the caste system in which they believe as much as does the caste Hindu. This caste system among the Untouchables has given rise to mutual rivalry and jealousy and it has made common action impossible. The Mahomedans have also a caste system among themselves. Like the Untouchables they are also scattered all over the country. But their religion is a strong unifying force which gives them the feeling that, if they are parts, they are parts of one Muslim Community. There is nothing to instil such a feeling among the Untouchables. In the absence of any unifying force, the Untouchables are just fragments with no cement to bind them and their numbers are therefore of no advantage to them. A large majority of the Untouchables in the villages are either village servants or landless labourers. As village servants, they depend upon the Hindus for their maintenance, and go from door to door every day and collect bread or cooked food from the Hindus in return for certain customary services rendered by them to the Hindus. This is a part of their remuneration. A part also of their remuneration consists in quantities of grain given to them by the Hindus at the harvest time. Whenever there is a disagreement between the Hindus and the Untouchables, the first thing the Hindus do is to stop giving bread, stop the payment of the harvest share and stop employing the Untouchables on any job. The result is that the struggling hoards of the Untouchables are face to face with starvation. The Untouchables have no way of earning a living open to them in a village. He cannot do any business such as selling milk or vegetables. Because he is an Untouchable no one will buy these things from him. He cannot take to any trade because, all trades being hereditary, no one will accept his service. His economic dependence upon the Hindu

267 HELD AT BAY is complete and the Hindu takes a complete advantage of it whenever the Untouchables prove arrogant, or naughty in the eyes of the Touchables. Not only is the Untouchable dependent upon the Touchable for earning his livelihood but the Untouchable is also dependent upon the Touchables for the purchase of his necessaries of life. In a village all shops belong to the Touchables. Trade is, and must necessarily be, in the hands of the Touchables. An Untouchable has to depend upon the Touchable shopkeepers for their shopping. If the Touchable shopkeeper is willing to sell, the Untouchables can obtain the necessaries of life. If the shopkeeper refuses to sell, the Untouchable must starve although they might have money to live on. Now whenever any dispute arises between the Touchables and the Untouchables the one thing the Touchables never fail to do is to command the shopkeepers not to sell anything to the Untouchables. The Touchables constitute an organized conspiracy to bring about a cessation of all economic relationship with Untouchables. A war is proclaimed against the Untouchables. The means used for reducing the “enemy” is to send a “punitive expedition” consisting of rascals into the Untouchable quarters who ruthlessly carry on arson of destruction of property and shamelessly commit acts of violence against all including women and children. The more common and the more effective weapons is the declaration of complete boycott against the offending Untouchables. The horrors of the boycott, which is merely another name for Gandhi’s “non-cooperation”, can hardly be adequately described. The Committee appointed by the Government of Bombay to inquire into the grievances of the Backward Classes speaks of the social boycott in the following terms: “Although we have recommended various remedies to secure to the Untouchables their rights to all public utilities we fear that there will be difficulties in the way of their exercising them for a long time to come. The first difficulty is the fear of open violence against them by the orthodox classes. It must be noted that the Untouchables are a small minority in every village, opposed to which is a great majority of the orthodox who are bent on protecting their interests and dignity from any supposed invasion by the Untouchables at any cost. The danger of prosecution by the police has put a limitation upon the use of violence by the orthodox classes and consequently such cases are rare. The second difficulty arises from the economic position in which the Untouchables are found today. The Untouchables have no

268 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES economic independence in most parts of the Presidency. Some cultivate lands of the orthodox classes as their tenants at will. Others live on their earnings as farm labourers employed by the orthodox classes, and the rest subsist on the food or grain given to them by the orthodox classes in lieu of service rendered to them as village servants. We have heard of numerous instances where the orthodox classes have used their economic power as a weapon against those Depressed classes in their villages, when the latter have dared to exercise their rights and have evicted them from their land, and stopped their employment and discontinued their remuneration as village servants. The boycott is often planned on such an extensive scale as to include the prevention of the Untouchables from using the commonly used paths and the stoppage of the sale of the necessaries of life by the village bania or shopkeeper. According to the evidence small causes suffice for the proclamation of a social boycott against the Untouchables. Frequently it follows on the exercise by the Untouchables of their right to the use of the common well, but cases have been by no means rare where stringent boycott has been proclaimed simply because an Untouchable man has put on a sacred thread, has bought a piece of land, has put on good clothes or ornaments, or has led a marriage procession with the bride-groom on the horse through the public street. We do not know of any weapon more effective than this social boycott which could have been invented for the suppression of the Untouchables. The method of open violence pales away before it, for it has the most far reaching and deadening effects. It is the more dangerous because it passes as a lawful method consistent with the theory of freedom of contract. We agree that this tyranny of the majority must be put down with a firm hand if we are to guarantee to the Untouchables the freedom of speech and action necessary for their uplift.” IV The third circumstance which adds to the helplessness of the Untouchables is the impossibility for the Untouchables to obtain any protection from the police or justice from the courts. The police are drawn from the ranks of the caste Hindus. The Magistracy is drawn from the ranks of the Caste Hindus. The police and the magistracy are the kith and kin of the caste Hindus. They share the sentiments and the prejudices of the caste Hindus against the Untouchables. If an Untouchable goes to a police officer with a complaint against the caste

269 HELD AT BAY Hindus instead of receiving any protection he will receive plenty of abuse. Either he will be driven away without his complaint being recorded or, if it is recorded, it would be recorded quite falsely to provide a way of escape to the Touchable aggressors. If he prosecutes his offenders before a Magistrate the fate of his proceedings could be foretold. He will never get Touchable witnesses because of the conspiracy of the villagers. If he brings witnesses from the Untouchables the Magistrate will not accept their testimony because they are interested and not independent witnesses or, if they are independent witnesses, the Magistrate has an easy way of acquitting the accused by simply saying that the complainant Untouchable did not strike him as a truthful witness. He can do this fearlessly because he knows full well that the higher tribunal will not reverse his finding because of the well-established rule which says that an appellate court should’ not disturb the finding of a Magistrate based upon the testimony of witness whose demeanour he had observed. This fact has now been admitted even by Congress workers among the Untouchables. The Annual Report of the Tamil Nad Harijan Sevak Sangh for the year ending September 30, 1937, says: “The political consciousness of the Harijan having been roused by the rights, in the remotest villages where it is only the policeman that reigns, it is not always possible for the Harijan to do this, for the assertion of his rights means a clash between him and the castemen, in which it is always the latter that have the upper hand. The natural consequence of this scuffle is a complaint either to the police or the magistrate. The latter course is beyond the means of a Harijan, while the former resort is worse than useless. The complaints are in many cases not inquired into at all, while in others a verdict favourable to the castemen is entered. Our complaints to the police also meet with similar fate. The trouble seems to us to be this: there is no change in the mentality of the lower policemen. Either he is unaware of the rights of the Harijans of which he is supposed to be the guardian, or he is influenced by castemen. Or it may also be that he is absolutely indifferent. In other cases corruption is responsible for this taking the side of the richer castemen”. (Hindu, March 7, 1938). This means that the official is anti-Untouchable and pro-Hindu. Whenever he has any authority or discretion it is always exercised to the prejudice of the Untouchable. The police and the magistrate are sometimes corrupt. If they were only corrupt, things would not perhaps be so bad because an officer who is corrupt is open to purchase by either party. But the additional

270 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES misfortune is that the police and magistrates are often more partial than corrupt. It is this partiality to the Hindus and his antipathy to the Untouchables which results in the denial of protection and justice to the Untouchables. There is no cure to this partiality to the one and antipathy to the other. It is founded in the social and religious repugnance which is inborn in every Hindu. The police and the Magistrate by reason of their motives, interest and their breeding do not sympathize with the living forces operating among the Untouchables. They are not charged with the wants, the pains, the cravings and the desires which actuate the Untouchables. Consequently they are openly hostile and inimical to their aspirations, do not help them to advance, disfavour their cause and snap at everything that smacks of pride and self respect. On the other hand they share the feelings of the Hindus, sympathize with them in the attempt to maintain their power, authority, prestige and their dignity over the Untouchables. In any conflict between the two they act as the agents of the Hindus in suppressing this revolt of the Untouchables and participate quite openly and without shame in the nefarious attempt of all Hindus to do everything possible by all means, fair or foul, to “teach the Untouchables a lesson”, and hold them down in their own place. The worst of it is that all this injustice and persecution can be perpetrated within the limits of the law. A Hindu may well say that he will not employ an Untouchable, that he will not sell him anything, that he will evict him from his land, that he will not allow him to take his cattle across his field, without offending the law in the slightest degree. In doing this he is only exercising his right. The law does not care with what motive he does it. The law does not see what injury it causes to the Untouchable. The police may misuse his power and his authority. He may deliberately falsify the record by taking down something which has not been stated or by taking down something which is quite different from what has been stated. He may disclose evidence to the side in which he is interested. He may refuse to arrest. He may do a hundred and one things to spoil the case. All this he can do without the slightest fear of being brought to book. The loopholes of law are many, and he knows them well. The magistrate has vested in him an enormous amount of discretion. He is free to use it. The decision of a case depends upon the witnesses who can give evidence. But the decision of the case depends upon whether the witnesses are reliable or not. It is open to the magistrate to believe one side and disbelieve the other side. He may be quite arbitrary in believing one side, but it is his discretion, and no one can interfere with it. There are