Vol. 5 · pages 331–335

316 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES know that today there is a body of Hindu reformers who are pledged to remove this blot of untouchability. We do not want on our register and on our census, untouchables classified as a separate class. Sikhs may remain as such in perpetuity, so may Moslems, so may Europeans. Will untouchables remain untouchables in perpetuity ? I would far rather than Hinduism died than that untouchability lived. Therefore, with all my regard for Dr. Ambedkar, and for his desire to see the untouchables uplifted, with all my regard for his ability I must say, in all humility, that here is a great wrong under which he has laboured and, perhaps, the bitter experiences he has undergone have for the moment warped his judgment. It hurts me to have to say this but I would be untrue to the cause of untouchables, which is as dear to me as life itself, if I did not say it. I will not bargain away their rights for the kingdom of the whole world. I am speaking with a due sense of responsibility, when I say it is not a proper claim which is registered by Dr. Ambedkar when he seeks to speak for the whole of untouchables in India. It will create a division in Hinduism which I cannot possibly look forward to with any satisfaction whatsoever, I do not mind the untouchables being converted into Islam or Christianity. I should tolerate that but I cannot possibly tolerate what is in store for Hinduism if there are these two divisions set forth in the villages. Those who speak of political rights of untouchables do not know India and do not know how Indian society is today constructed. Therefore, I want to say with all the emphasis that I can command that if I was the only person to resist this thing I will resist it with my life.” At a meeting at the Friends House in London Mr. Gandhi relied upon quite a different argument. He is reported to have said 1: “I have told you what is agitating my mind. You may take the Congress to be incapable of bartering away the minorities rights. The untouchables, I know, as one can claim to know. It would be equal to killing them if separate electorates were given them. They are at present in the hands of the superior classes. They can suppress them completely and wreck vengence upon the untouchables who are at their mercy and it is because I want to prevent that thing happening that I would fight the demand for separate electorates for them. Whilst I am saying this, I know, I am opening out my shame to you. But in the existing state of things how could I invite destruction for them ? I would not be guilty of that crime. 2 1 Young India—Nov. 19, 1931. 2 From this, one is likely to get the impression that Mr. Gandhi was opposed only to separate electorates and that Mr. Gandhi was prepared to give to the untouchables joint electorates AND RESERVED seats being granted to the untouchables was made clear by him at the Round Table Conference. I give below the following extract from his speech in the minorities sub-Committee : “I would like to repeat what I have said before, that while the Congress will always accept any solution that may be acceptable to the Hindus, the Musalmans and the Sikhs, the Congress will be no party to special reservation or special electorates for any other minorities.”

317 UNDER THE PROVIDENCE OF MR. GANDHI Dr. Ambedkar, as able as he is, has unhappily lost his head over this question. I repudiate his claim to represent them.” None of his arguments carried any conviction. Indeed they could not. They were all spacious and they had the ring of special pleadings. His first argument, that the Congress was pledged to look after the untouchables, to remove their untouchability—Was this argument founded in truth ? Mr. Gandhi has been telling the world that the whole body of Congress has been pledged to remove untouchability and his friends have been giving him credit for getting the Congress to do what the Congress before him was not prepared to do. I am surprised how so false a view could have been given such a wide currency. I have read and re-read the Resolution passed by the Congress in 1920 at Nagpur which is the basis of such an assertion as is made by Mr. Gandhi and his friends, and I am sure every one who reads that resolution will agree that the text of the resolution gives no warrant for such an assertion. The resolution is a very clever piece of Gandhian tactics. Mr. Gandhi has been very anxious from the very beginning to keep the untouchables a close preserve of the Hindus. He did not want Musalmans or Christians to be interested in them. He wanted that the Untouchables who were attached to the British should be detached from them and attached to the Hindus. The second object could be achieved only if the resolution in favour of the removal of untouchability was passed from the Congress platform. To achieve this it was necessary to confine this duty only to the Hindus. This is what the resolution does. It is a clever move on the part of a cunning politician. The resolution does not put the Congress as a whole behind this resolution. Secondly, in what it does there is nothing that is obligatory in it. There is no pledge, there is no vow. There is only moral exhortation. It only recommends to the Hindus that removal of untouchability is their duty. Once Mr. Gandhi tried to alter the conditions for membership of the Congress. Instead of the payment of four annas per annum being the condition of membership Mr. Gandhi wanted to lay down two conditions : (1) removal of untouchability and (2) spinning yarns. Congressmen were prepared to accept spinning of yarn as a condition of membership. But they were not prepared to accept removal of untouchability as a condition. Congressmen told Mr. Gandhi that if he insisted upon it all Congress Committees will have to be closed down. So strong was the opposition that Mr. Gandhi had to withdraw his proposal. That being the case for Mr. Gandhi to have urged before the Round Table Conference that the Congress was pledged to remove untouchability and that the untouchables could safely be left to the mercy of the Hindus shows that even Mr. Gandhi is capable of economising truth to a vanishing point.

318 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES The next argument of Mr. Gandhi that the removal of untouchability was made by the Congress a condition precedent to Swaraj urged to prove the sincerity of the Congress could not be taken at its face value by the obvious insincerity of the Congress and Mr. Gandhi. Untouchability was as it had been, yet the Congress and Mr. Gandhi had come forth to demand independence. This was enough to show that Mr. Gandhi did not believe in what he said on this point. No one in India, at any rate no one from among the Untouchables believed in this declaration of Mr. Gandhi and his Congress that for them removal of untouchability was a condition precedent to Swaraj. Long before the Round Table Conference Mr. Gandhi was questioned to test his sincerity on two occasions and the answers he gave on both left no doubt that even he did not believe this declaration. In 1920 a correspondent asked Mr. Gandhi the following question 1: “Should not we the Hindus wash our bloodstained hands before we ask the English to wash theirs ?” To this Mr. Gandhi gave the following reply : “A correspondent indignantly asks me in a pathetic letter reproduced elsewhere what I am doing for the (untouchables). I have given the letter with the correspondent’s own heading. ‘Should not we the Hindus wash our bloodstained hands before we ask the English to wash theirs ?’ This is a proper question reasonably put. And if a member of a slave nation could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would so do today. But it is an impossible task ………” Does this show that Mr. Gandhi and the Congress were sincere when they said that removal of untouchability was a condition precedent to Swaraj ? That this is not the argument of a sincere man is shown by the fact that at a later time Mr. Gandhi himself has ridiculed a correspondent who urged upon Mr. Gandhi the desirability of keeping aside the question of the Untouchables until the Hindus had won Swaraj. The second occasion on which Mr. Gandhi was questioned was when he went to Dandi in March in 1930 to make Salt Satyagraha contrary to law. Some Untouchables went to Dandi and questioned him. They asked him what happened to his declaration that removal of untouchability was condition precedent to Swaraj. Mr. Gandhi’s reply as reported to me was this : “The Untouchables are a part of a whole. I am working for the whole and I therefore believe that I am therefore working for the Untouchables who are a part of the whole.” 1 Young India, 27th Oct. 1920.

319 UNDER THE PROVIDENCE OF MR. GANDHI There is nothing to prove this except what was reported to me by those who had been to see Mr. Gandhi at Dandi. But I have no doubt that Mr. Gandhi must have said something to that effect. For what he is reported to have said tallies with what he has said in his reply in Young India referred to above in reply to the same correspondent. This is what Mr. Gandhi then said : “...... though the Panchama Problem is as dear to me as life itself, I rest satisfied with the exclusive attention to non-cooperation. I feel sure that the greater includes the less.” Are these the answers of a sincere man ? Can a sincere man believe that the untouchables are a part of a whole. As to his argument that special representation to the untouchables would perpetuate the existing separation between the touchables and the untouchables was an argument which was absolutely hollow. The way to remove untouchability is to introduce intermarriage and interdining. The way to remove the disabilities of the untouchables is to admit them to the use of the common well and common school. It is difficult to understand that special representation can come in the way of intermarriage, interdinning and the use of a common well and a common school. On the other hand the introduction of these would be only way of disproving the necessity of special representation. Had Mr. Gandhi and the Congress done anything in this direction ? The explanatory note added to the Bardoli resolution shows how far Gandhi and the Congress were prepared to go in this direction. The note says : “Whilst therefore where the prejudice against the untouchables is still strong in places, separate schools and separate wells must be maintained out of Congress funds, every effort should be made to draw such children to national schools and to persuade the people to allow the untouchables to use the common wells.” Can it lie in the mouth of persons who want to maintain separate wells, separate schools to say that they object to separate representation because it will cause separation ? It is only persons who are bent on breaking down barriers who can speak against separate representation and ask to be believed in the sincerity of their argument. Mr. Gandhi’s last argument was a fantastic argument. If the superior classes can suppress the untouchables and wreck vengence upon them then there is all the greater reason why they should be given special representation so that they may protest themselves against the tyranny of the superior classes. Mr. Gandhi had become desparate and had lost his equanimity and balance to such an extent that he did not know where his arguments would lead him. In using this argument he

320 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES evidently forgot that he was arguing for the perpetual enslavement of the Untouchables by the Hindus. Mr. Gandhi’s argument in short was “don’t ask for freedom, because it will enrage your master and he will illtreat you”. If such an argument had been advanced by any one else he would have been told that he was purile and insincere. Having failed to demolish the justice of the claim of the Untouchables Mr. Gandhi decided to isolate the representatives of the Depressed Classes, to see that they got no support from any other quarter, Gandhi planned to break a possible compact between the Depressed Classes and the Muslims. A part of the plan was to win over the Musalmans to his side and for that purpose he offered to enter into a pact with them. A copy of this pact which was circulated among the Muslim delegates came into my hands and I reproduce the same here. (This text is reproduced below from Dr. Ambedkar’s “What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables”, pp. 72-73 which is not typed in the MS.— Ed.) “DRAFT OF GANDHI-MUSLIM PACT 1 Muslim Delegation to the Round Table Conference 2 Tel. : VICTORIA 2360 QUEEN’S HOUSE, Telegrams “COURTLIKE” LONDON 57, S T. JAMES’ COURT, BUCKINGHAM GATE, LONDON, S. w. l 6th October 1931. The following proposals were discussed by Mr. Gandhi and the Muslim Delegation at 10 p.m. last night. They are divided into two parts—The proposals made by the Muslims for safeguarding their rights and the proposals made by Mr. Gandhi regarding the Congress policy. They are given herewith as approved by Mr. Gandhi, and placed for submission to the Muslim Delegation for their opinion. MUSLIM PROPOSALS MR. GANDHI’S PROPOSALS 1. In the Punjab and Bengal bare majority of one per cent. of Musalmans but the question of whether it should be by means of joint electorates and reservation of 51 per cent. of the whole house should be referred to the Musalman voters before the new constitution comes into force and their verdict should be accepted. 1. That the Franchise should be on the basis of adult suffrage. 2. No special reservations to any other community save Sikhs and Hindu Minorities. (Italics are not in the original). 1 This document was printed by me in my Thoughts on Pakistan as Appendix in 1939. It was the first time it saw the light of the day. Its genuineness has never been questioned. I was able to get a copy from a Hindu Delegate to the Round Table Conference who was privileged by the Muslim League to share the secret. 2 ‘This shows that the document was typed on the stationery of the Muslim League Delegation.’