Vol. 9 · pages 496–500

467 WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A PLEA TO THE FOREIGNER to prefer an uneducated non-Brahmin to an educated nonBrahmin. And why ? Because from the point of view of the governing class, the uneducated non-Brahmin has two definite advantages over an educated non-Brahmin. In the first place, he is likely to be more grateful to the Congress High Command for having got him elected than an educated non-Brahmin is likely to be. In the second place, the uneducated non-Brahmin is less likely to join hands with the educated non-Brahmins in the Congress Party and overturn the ministry of the governing classes and form a non-Brahmin ministry. In the third place, the greater the number of raw non-Brahmins in the Congress the lesser is the possibility of the non-Brahmins in the Congress forming a competent and alternative Ministry to the detriment of the governing class. Given these circumstances, can there be any doubt that the Congress “Fight for Freedom” is for the freedom of nobody except that of the governing class ? Is there any doubt that the Congress is the governing class and the governing class is the Congress ? Is there any doubt that when Swaraj came in 1937 in the form of Provincial autonomy, the Congress deliberately and shamelessly put the governing class in places of power and authority ? VII The facts set out above prove beyond cavil that the “Fight for Freedom” launched by the Congress has ended in perverting the aim and object of Indian freedom and that the Congress itself is a party to such a perversion. The result is an enormity, the character of which it would not be possible for the foreigner to realize unless he has an adequate idea of the social outlook and social philosophy of the Governing Classes in India. Starting with the Brahmins who form a strong and powerful element in the governing class in India it is no exaggeration to say that they have been the most inveterate enemies of the servile classes, the Shudras (the old name for the nonBrahmins) and the Untouchables who together constitute about 80 or 90 per cent. of the total Hindu population of India. If the common man belonging to the servile classes in India is to-day so fallen, so degraded, so devoid of self-respect, hope or ambition, and so lifeless, it is entirely due to the Brahmins and

468 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES their philosophy. The cardinal principles of this philosophy of the Brahmins were six—to use a correct expression, techniques of suppression—(1) graded inequality between the different classes; (2) complete disarmament of the Shudras and the Untouchables; (3) complete ban on the education of the Shudras and the Untouchables; (4) total exclusion of the Shudras and the Untouchables from places of power and authority; (5) complete prohibition against the Shudras and the Untouchables acquiring property, and (6) complete subjugation and suppression of women. Inequality is the official doctrine of Brahmanism and the suppression of the lower classes aspiring to equality has been looked upon by them and carried out by them, without remorse as their bounden duty. There are countries where education did not spread beyond a few. But India is the only country where the intellectual class, namely, the Brahmins not only made education their monopoly but declared acquisition of education by the lower classes, a crime punishable by cutting off of the tongue or by the pouring of molten lead in the ear of the offender. The result is that for centuries the Brahmins have denied the servile classes the right to education. Even to-day the Brahmins exhibit the same hostility to their education. Mr. Baines, the Census Commissioner for 1891 in discussing the causes why education was not spreading among the masses said :— “The second influence antagonistic to a more general spread of literacy is the long continued existence of a hereditary class whose object it has been to maintain their own monopoly of all book-learning as the chief buttress of their social supremacy. Sacerdotalism knows that it can reign over none but an ignorant populace. The opposition of the Brahmin to the rise of the writer castes has been already mentioned, and the repugnance of both, in the present day, to the diffusion of learning amongst the masses can only be appreciated after long experience. It is true that the recognition by the British Government of the virtue and necessity of primary education has met with some response on the part of the literate castes, but it is chiefly in the direction of academic utterances, which cannot, in the circumstances, be well avoided. It is welcome too, in its capacity of affording the means of livelihood to many of these castes, as they have to be engaged as teachers, and are bound accordingly to work up to the State standard of efficient

469 WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A PLEA TO THE FOREIGNER tuition. The real interest of the castes in question is centred on secondary education, of which they almost exclusively are in a position to reap the advantage.” The Congress politicians complain that the British are ruling India by a wholesale disarmament of the people of India. But they forget that disarmament of the Shudras and the Untouchables was the rule of law promulgated by the Brahmins. Indeed, so strongly did the Brahmins believe in the disarmament of the Shudras and the Untouchables that when they revised the law to enable the Brahmins to arm themselves for the protection of their own privileges, they maintained the ban on the Shudras and the Untouchables as it was without lessening its rigour. If the large majority of people of India appear to-day to be thoroughly emasculated, spiritless, with no manliness, it is the result of the Brahmanic policy of wholesale disarmament to which they have been subjected for the untold ages. There is no social evil and no social wrong to which the Brahmin has not given his support. Man’s inhumanity to man, such as the feeling of caste, untouchability, unapproach-ability and unseeability is a religion to him. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that only the wrongs of man are a religion to him. The Brahmin has given his support to some of the worst wrongs that women have suffered from in any part of the world. In India widows were burnt alive as suttees and the Brahmin gave his fullest support to the practice. Widows were not allowed to remarry. The Brahmins upheld the doctrine. Girls were required to be married before 8 and the husbands were permitted to claim the right to consummate the marriage at any time thereafter whether she had reached puberty or not. The Brahmin defended the system. The record of the Brahmins as law givers for the Shudras, for the Untouchables and for women is the blackest as compared with the record of the intellectual classes in other parts of the world, For no intellectual class has prostituted its intelligence for the sole purpose of inventing a philosophy to keep his uneducated countrymen in a perpetual state of servility, ignorance and poverty as the Brahmins have done in India. Every Brahmin to-day believes in this philosophy of Brahmanism propounded by his forefathers. He is an alien element in the Hindu Society. The Brahmin ‘ vis-a-vis the Shudras and the Untouchables is as foreign as the German is to the French, as the

470 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Jew is to the Gentile or as the White is to the Negro. There is a real gulf between him and the lower classes of Shudras and Untouchables. He is not only alien to them but he is also hostile to them. In relationship with them, there is in him no room for conscience and no call for justice. The Bania is the worst parasitic class known to history. In him the vice of money-making is unredeemed by culture or conscience. He is like an undertaker who prospers when there is an epidemic. The only difference between the undertaker and the Bania is that the undertaker does not create an epidemic while the Bania does. He does not use his money for productive purposes. He uses it to create poverty and more poverty by lending money for unproductive purposes. He lives on interest and as he is told by his religion that money-lending is the occupation prescribed to him by the divine Manu, he looks upon money-lending as both right and righteous. With the help and assistance of the Brahmin judge who is ready to decree his suits, the Bania is able to carry on his trade with the greatest ease. Interest, interest on interest, he adds on and on, and thereby draws millions of families perpetually into his net. Pay him as much as he may, the debtor is always in debt. With no conscience to check him there is no fraud, and there is no chicanery which he will not commit. His grip over the nation is complete. The whole of poor, starving, illiterate India is irredeemably mortgaged to the Bania. In every country there is a governing class. No country is free from it. But is there anywhere in the world a governing class with such selfish, diseased and dangerous and perverse mentality, with such a hideous and infamous philosophy of life which advocates the trampling down of the servile classes to sustain the power and glory of the governing class ? I know of none. It is true that the governing classes in other countries do not readily admit into their society those who do not belong to their class. But they do not refuse admission to those who have risen to their level. Nor do they prevent any person from rising to their level. In India the governing class is a close corporation unwilling to admit anyone who does not belong to it by birth and ready to use every means to prevent the servile classes from rising to their level.

471 WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A PLEA TO THE FOREIGNER VIII There was a governing class in France before the French Revolution. There was a governing class in Japan before the seventies of the nineteenth century when Japan decided to modernize its constitution. In both countries the governing classes realizing that it was an hour of national crisis decided to shed their ancient rights and privileges in order to make the transition from oligarchy to democracy smooth and easy. In France, when the Revolution broke out and demanded equality the governing class in France voluntarily came forward to give up its powers and its privileges and to merge itself in the mass of the nation. This is clear from what happened when the States-General was called. The Commons got 600 representatives, while the clergy and the Nobles got 300 each. The question arose how were the 1,200 members to sit, debate and vote. The Commons insisted upon the union of all the estates in one Chamber and ‘vote by head.’ It was impossible to expect the clergy and the Nobles to accept this position. For it meant the surrender of their most ancient and valuable privileges. Yet a good part of them agreed to the demand of the Commons and gave France a constitution based upon liberty, equality and fraternity. The attitude of the governing classes in Japan during the period between 1855 to 1870—a period in which the Japanese people were transformed from a feudal society into a modern nation—was even more self-sacrificing than the attitude of the governing classes in France. As students of Japanese history know, there were four classes in Japanese Society: (1) The Damiyos, (2) The Samurai, (3) The Hemin or the Common folk and (4) The Eta or the outcasts, standing one above the other in an order of graded inequality. At the bottom were the Eta numbering a good many thousands. Above the Eta were the Hemin numbering about 25/30 millions. Over them were the Samurai who numbered about 2 millions and who had the power of life and death over the Hemin. At the apex were the Damiyos or the Feudal Barons who exercised sway over the rest of the three classes and who numbered only 300. The Damiyos and the Samurai realized that it was impossible to transform this feudal society with its class composition and class rights into a modern nation with equality of citizenship. Accordingly the Damiyos charged with the spirit of nationalism