Vol. 9 · pages 166–170

137 WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A POLITICAL CHARITY because of this that I have deliberately excluded temples from its scope and confined it only to public rights of a civic nature, the exercise of which I feel Government is bound to protect. 2. EQUALIT Y OF OPPORTUNIT Y The second thing I would like the Anti-Untouchability League to work for, is to bring about equality of opportunity for the Depressed Classes. Much of the misery and poverty of the Depressed Classes is due to the absence of equality of opportunity which in its turn is due to untouchability. I am sure you are aware that the Depressed Classes in villages and even in towns cannot sell vegetables, milk or butter—ways of earning a living which are open to all and sundry. A caste Hindu will buy these things from a nonHindu, but he will not buy them from the Depressed Classes. In the matter of enjoyment, his condition is the worst. In Government Departments the bar-sinister operates and he is denied the place of a constable or even a messenger. In industries he fares no better. Like the Negro in America he is the last to be employed in days of prosperity and the first to be fired in days of adversity. And even when he gets a foothold, what are his prospects ? In the Cotton Mills in Bombay and Ahmedabad he is confined to the lowest paid department where he can earn only Rs. 25 per month. More paying departments like the weaving department are permanently closed to him. Even in the low paid departments he cannot rise to the highest rung of the ladder. The place of the boss is reserved for the caste Hindu while the Depressed Class worker must slave as his underdog, no matter how senior or how efficient. In departments where the earning depends on piece work, he has failed to earn as well as Caste Hindu employees because of social discrimination. Depressed Classes women working in the Winding and Reeling Departments have come to me in hundreds complaining that the Naikins instead of distributing the raw material to all employees equally or in fair proportion, give all of it to the caste Hindu women and leave them in the cold. I have given only a few of the instances of the gross inequality of opportunity from which the Depressed Classes are suffering mainly at the hands of the Hindus. I think it would be fit and proper, if the Anti-Untouchability League were to take up this question by creating public opinion in condemnation of it and establishing bureaus to deal with urgent cases of inequality. I would particularly desire the League to tackle the problem of opening the Weaving department of the

138 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Cotton mills to the Depressed Classes as it is likely to make a very large opening for prosperous employment to members of the Depressed Classes. Much can be done by private firms and companies managed by Hindus by extending their patronage to the Depressed Classes and by employing them in their offices in various grades and occupations suited to the capacities of the applicants. 3. SOCIAL INTERCOURSE Lastly, I think the League should attempt to dissolve that nausea, which the touchables feel towards the Untouchables and which is the reason why the two sections have remained so much apart as to constitute separate and distinct entities. In my opinion the best way of achieving it is to establish closer contact between the two. Only a common cycle of participation can help people to overcome the strangeness of feeling which one has, when brought into contact with the other. Nothing can do this more effectively in my opinion than the admission of the Depressed Classes to the houses of the caste Hindus as guests or servants. The live contact thus established will familiarize both to a common and associated life and will pave the way for that unity which we are all striving after. I am sorry that many caste Hindus who have shown themselves responsive are not prepared for this. During those ten days of the Mahatma’s fast that shook the Indian world, there were cases in Vile Parle and in Mahad where the caste Hindu servants had struck work because their masters had abrogated the rules of untouchability by fraternising with the Untouchables. I expected that they would end the strike and teach a lesson to the erring masses by filling the vacancies by employing Depressed Classes in their place. Instead of doing that they capitulated with the forces of orthodoxy and strengthened them. I do not know how far such fair-weather friends of the Depressed Classes would be of help to them. People in distress can have very little consolation from the fact that they have sympathisers, if those sympathisers will do nothing more than sympathise, and I may as well tell the League that the Depressed Classes will never be satisfied of the bona fides of these caste Hindu sympathisers until it is proved that they are prepared to go to the same length of fighting against their own kith and kin actual warfare if it came to that for the sake of the Depressed Classes as the Whites of the North did against their own kith and Ton, namely, the Whites of the South for the sake of the emancipation of the Negro. But this thing apart, I think it is necessary that the League should endeavour to

139 WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A POLITICAL CHARITY inculcate upon the mind of the Hindu public the necessity of establishing contact and social intercourse between the touchables and the untouchables in the way I have mentioned. 4. AGENCY TO BE EMPLOYED The League will hare to employ a very large army of workers to carry out its programme. The appointment of social workers might perhaps be looked upon as a minor question. Speaking for myself, I attach very great importance to the selection of a proper agency to be employed in this behalf. There can always be found workers to do a particular piece of work or any other for the matter of that if they are paid for it. I am sure such mercenary workers will not serve the purpose of the League. As Tolstoy said: “Only those who love can serve.” In my opinion that test is more likely to be fulfilled by workers drawn from the Depressed Classes. I should therefore like the League to bear this aspect of the question in mind in deciding upon whom to appoint and when not to appoint. I do not suggest that there are not scoundrels among the Depressed Classes who have not made social service their last refuge. But largely speaking 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 same 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 Anti-Untouchability League in consideration of a grant-in-aid. 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 singleminded devotion to one task and one task only. We want bodies and organisations which have deliberately chosen to be narrow-minded in order to be enthusiastic about their cause. The work it is to be assigned must be assigned to those who would undertake to devote themselves exclusively to the work of the Depressed Classes. I am afraid I have already trespassed the limits of a letter and I do not think I can err further in that direction without being tediously long. I had many other things to say but I now propose to reserve them for another occasion. 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 to the Hindu Society. The touchables and the untouchables cannot be held together by law—certainly not by any electoral

140 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES 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. With best wishes and kind regards. I am, Yours sincerely, (Sd.) B. R. AMBEDKAR. F.S. I am releasing this to the Press so that the general public may know my views and have an opportunity to consider them. To A. V. THAKKAR, ESQ., General Secretary, Anti-Untouchability League, Birla House, New Delhi. IV To my great surprise, I found that no attention was paid to my proposals. Indeed, my letter was not even acknowledged! I felt that there was no use in my remaining in the Sangh. I dissociated myself from it. I found that in my absence the aims and objects had undergone a complete change. 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, dharamshalas, 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 Untouch-

141 WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A POLITICAL CHARITY ability as such, as they ate 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-dining are kept outside the scope of the League.” Here there was a complete departure from the original aims of the organization. Removal of Untouchability had only a nominal place in the programme. Constructive work became the main part of the work of the Sangh. It is pertinent to ask why this change in the aims and objects was made. This change in the aims and objects could not have been brought about without, the knowledge and consent of Mr. Gandhi. The only reason one can see is that the original programme was most inconvenient to Mr. Gandhi. Removal of Untouchability as a platform was very good, but as a programme of action it was bound to have made Mr. Gandhi very unpopular with the Hindus. He was not prepared to court such unpopularity. He therefore preferred the programme of constructive work which had all advantages and no disadvantages. The Hindus did not mind it. Mr. Gandhi could pursue it without incurring the displeasure of the Hindus. The programme of constructive work had no such disadvantage. On the other hand, it had a positive advantage to recommend it. It had the possibility of destroying the independent movement which the Untouchables had built up and which had forced Mr. Gandhi in 1932 to yield to its demands by agreeing to the Poona Pact by dangling well before them the benefits of the constructive work, a consummation which all Congressmen so devoutly wish. It could make Untouchables Congressmen and most gracefully too. The programme of constructive work had the possibility of being converted into a plan to kill Untouchables by kindness. This as a matter of fact has happened. The Harijan Sevak Sangh is intolerent of any movement on the part of the