Vol. 5 · pages 386–390

371 GANDHI AND HIS FAST you can be more sure that a worker drawn from the Depressed Classes will regard the work as love’s labour a thing which is so essential to the success of the League. “Secondly there are agencies which are already engaged in some sort of social service without any confines as to class or purpose and may be prepared to supplement their activity by taking up the work of the Anti-Untouchability League in consideration of a grant-inaid. I am sure this hire-purchase system of work, if I may use that expression, can produce no lasting good. What is wanted in an agency is a single-minded devotion to one task only. We want bodies and organizations which have deliberately chosen to be narrow-minded in order to be enthusiastic about their cause. The work if it is to be assigned must be assigned to those who would undertake to devote themselves exclusively to the work of the Depressed Classes. “Before closing this I wish to say just this. It was Balfour, I think, who said that what could hold the British Empire together was love and not law. I think that observation applies equally well to the Hindu society. “The touchables and the untouchables cannot be held together by law, certainly not by any electoral law substituting joint electorates for separate electorates. The only thing that can hold them together is love. “Outside the family, justice alone, in my opinion can open the possibility of love, and it should be the duty of the Anti-Untouchability League to see that the touchable does, or failing that, is made to do justice to the untouchable. Nothing else in my opinion can justify the project or the existence of the League.” This letter was not even acknowledged by the Secretary. That not a single suggestion of mine was accepted goes without saying. Even my suggestion that the workers of the Sangh should be drawn largely from the Untouchables themselves was not accepted. Indeed when the attention of Mr. Gandhi was drawn to the fact that the Harijan Sevak Sangh had become the hive of mercenary Hindus, he defended it on the ground which are clever if not honest. 1 He said to the deputation of the Untouchables; “The welfare work of the Untouchables is a penance which the Hindus have to do for the sin of Untouchability. The money that has been collected has been contributed by the Hindus. From both points of view the Hindus alone must run the Sangh. Neither ethics 1 This quotation is taken from Dr. Ambedkar’s book ‘What Congress & Gandhi have done to the Untouchables’, p. 142. ( This extract are not mentioned in the MS. —Ed.)

372 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES nor right would justify Untouchables in claiming a seat on the Board of the Sangh.” Not only were all my proposals rejected by Mr. Gandhi and his advisers but in framing the constitution of the Sangh, aims and objects were adopted which are quite opposed to those which I had suggested. 1 At the meeting held in Cowasjee Jehangir Hall in Bombay on the 30th September 1932 the aims of the organization were stated to be: “Carrying propaganda against Untouchability and taking immediate steps ‘to secure as early as practicable that all public wells, dharmashalas, roads, schools, crematoriums, burning ghats and all public temples be declared open to the Depressed Classes, provided that no compulsion or force shall be used and that only peaceful persuasion shall be adopted towards this end’.” But in the statement issued by Mr. G. D. Birla and Mr. A. V. Thakkar on the 3rd November, two months after its inauguration it was stated: “The League believes that reasonable persons among the Sanatanists are not much against the removal of Untouchability as such, as they are against inter-caste dinners and marriages. Since it is not the ambition of the League to undertake reforms beyond its own scope, it is desirable to make it clear that while the League will work by persuasion among the caste Hindus to remove every vestige of Untouchability, the main line of work will be constructive, such as the uplift of Depressed Classes educationally, economically and socially, which itself will go a great way to remove untouchability. With such a work even a staunch Sanatanist can have nothing but sympathy. And it is for such work mainly that the League has been established. Social reforms like the abolition of the caste system and inter-dinning are kept outside the scope of the League.” These aims and objects are described in one of the Annual Reports of the Sangh. It says: 2 “According to its constitution the aim and object of the Society is the abolition of untouchability by reason of birth and the acquisition of equal rights of access of public temples, wells, schools and other public institutions for Harijans as enjoyed by other Hindus. The achievement of this object has led the Society to undertake work of a two-fold kind. First, the Society has to bring about such a radical change in the sentiments and opinions of Caste Hindus that they may willingly, as a matter of course, allow the enjoyment of all civic rights to Harijans. Secondly, the society has to put forth its 1 Reprduced from ‘What Congress .......... etc.’ pp. 140-41 as the page in the MS is left blank.—Ed. 2 Report for 1932-33, p. 1.

373 GANDHI AND HIS FAST efforts and devote its funds for the educational, economic and social uplift of Harijans.” The work done and the aims formulated when put side by side raise two questions. Firstly is this record something of which the Sangh can be proud of? Secondly is its work consistent with the aims of the Sangh? The record is very poor. It is much cry and little wool. Certainly as compared with the record of work done by the Christian Missions with which the Sangh competes, it is not a record of which the Sangh can be proud of. But this is a mere matter for sorrow and nothing more. The second question is fundamental and therefore one for anxious consideration. It is well that the Sangh undertakes to labour in the interests of the Untouchables. But its labours must be so planned that out of it will come the destruction of untouchability. Examined in the light of this consideration what is one to say of the work that is being done by the Sangh? The Sangh is openly and without abashment supporting separate schools, separate hostels, separate dispensaries, and separate wells for the Untouchables. I should have thought that that was the surest way of perpetuating untouchability. It is surprizing that Mr. Gandhi who threatened to fast unto death against separate electorates on the ground that it involved segregation of the untouchables should himself sanction a line of activity which perpetuates this segregation. In undertaking to render this social service to the Untouchables, Mr. Gandhi and his Sangh should have forgotten what the Untouchables want. What the Untouchables want is not education, but the right to be admitted to common schools. The Untouchables do not want medical aid; what they want is the right to be admitted to the general dispensary on equal terms. The Untouchable does not want water. What he wants is the right to draw water from a common well. The Untouchables do not want their suffering to be relieved. They want their personality to be respected and their stigma removed. Once their stigma is removed their sufferings will go. This the Harijan Sevak Sangh does not seem to have realized. The Sangh is said to be the friend of the Untouchables and the orthodox Hindu the enemy of the Untouchables. One fails to understand what the friend has done which the enemy would not do. The orthodox Hindu insists that the Untouchables shall have separate schools, separate dispensaries and separate wells, the Sangh says— Thy will shall be done. Except the fact the orthodox Hindu believes in untouchability and Harijan Sevak Sangh does not, what is the difference in practice between the friend and the foe ? Under both, the untouchable is condemned to separate schools, separate hostels and separate wells. If this is so, it is difficult to understand why

374 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Mr. Gandhi and the Harijan Sevak Sangh should pick up a quarrel with the orthodox Hindu if he and his Sangh are not prepared to force the issue. Whether the Hindu Shastras recognize untouchability or not is only an academic quarrel between Mr. Gandhi and the orthodox Hindu. It can do no practical good. On the contrary I am prepared to say that it had done positive harm to the Untouchables. In the first place it has created enmity between the Untouchables and the orthodox Hindus. Before Gandhi picked up this needless quarrel the relations between the Untouchables and the Hindus were non-social. The quarrel has made them anti-social. Secondly if there was no such quarrel, if instead of untouchability being made the issue—which Mr. Gandhi does not intend to fight it out—an appeal was made to the orthodox Hindu to remove the suffering of the Untouchables, many an orthodox Hindu I know would have come forward to help to remove the suffering. Mr. Gandhi has reaped the glory for having established the Sangh. But the Sangh has neither sought to remove untouchability nor has it helped to alleviate the sufferings of the Untouchables. Why has the Sangh failed ? My answer is quite definite. I say the Sangh has failed because of its wrong politics. It has often been said that the Harijan Sevak Sangh is a political organization. Mr. Gandhi has always resented such an allegation and repudiated it as being false. The General Secretary of the Sangh has also protested against it. To use his own words “the Sangh, though a sequel of a Political Pact, has no politics”. I do not see any reason for the resentment of Mr. Gandhi nor for the protests of his Secretary. I wish very much that the Sangh was a political organization. The untouchables have obtained a share of political power. But power which is not conscious of itself is no power. Again power which is not organized is no power. The Harijan Sevak Sangh would have been of great use if it had helped the Untouchables to organize independent political parties to fight the elections and make their political power effective. Nor can I accept the statement of Mr. Gandhi and his Secretary that the Sangh has no politics. On the contrary I insist that not only the Sangh has a definite line of politics and that that line of politics is wrong because it is prejudicial to the cause of the Untouchables. Since Mr. Gandhi does not admit that the Sangh has politics, one must go to circumstances for proof. Circumstantial proof is always better than oral testimony because as is well said man may lie but circumstances cannot. In this connection I want to rely upon a clause in the constitution of the Sangh as a piece of evidence in support of my contention. The clause relates to the means to be adopted by the Sangh

375 GANDHI AND HIS FAST for removing untouchability and for securing equal rights to the Untouchables along with the Caste Hindus. The clause reads as follows: “That no compulsion is to be used for securing rights, but that peaceful persuation is to be adopted as the only means.” This is a basic principle of the Sangh. It has struck me as strange and I am sure it will strike all others as strange. I want to ask the question—Why has the Sangh limited itself to peaceful persuation of the caste Hindus as the one and the only means of removing Untouchability ? Most social reformers, whether religious or rational, seem to imagine that men of power will immediately check their pretentions and their exactions as soon as they have been told that their actions and attitudes are anti-social. But as Prof. Neibhur points out 1 what these reformers overlook is an understanding of the brutal character of the behaviour of all human groups and the power of self interest and collective egoism which dominate all group relations. They also forget the fact that races, nations and classes are less moral than individuals which compose them and that justice between groups can therefore not be achieved purely by educational means. If conscience and reason can be insinuated into the resulting struggle they can only qualify, never abolish, the injustice. If injustice is to be abolished it must be resisted and when injustice proceeds from collective power, whether in the form of imperialism or class domination, it must be challenged by power. A class entrenched behind its established power can never be dislodged unless power is raised against it. That is the only way of stopping the exploitation of the weak by strong. Why has Mr. Gandhi and the Harijan Sevak Sangh limited their means of resistance to the Caste Hindu domination to peaceful persuation? Why do they not resist the injustice of the Caste Hindus by direct action? I can understand that in organizing resistance to injustice, the problem is to find forms of resistence which will not destroy the meagre resources for rational and moral action which groups do possess. But there can be no difficulty on that account. Satyagraha or passive resistance has been found by Mr. Gandhi as a form of resistence which is morally beyond cavil. Why does not Mr. Gandhi ask the Sangh to launch Satyagraha by the Untouchables against the Caste Hindus for the abolition of the injustice against the Untouchables. He asked the people of India to offer Satyagraha against British Imperialism. Why does he not want to use the same means against the caste Hindus in the interests of the Untouchables ? 1 Moral Man and Immoral Society/passim.