Ideas of a Nation Read online

  I have, so far, given you an idea as to what was our position in Indian politics and what forces have been working to undermine that position. Let me now give you an idea of what I think should be your political demands. It is very necessary that you should formulate them in clear terms. Our people will know what we stand for. Our opponents will have notice of our demands.

  In the first place, you must insist upon being recognized as an independent and separate element in the national life of India. The theory that they are only a sub-section of the Hindus must be fought tooth and nail. Failure to get the Untouchables recognized as a distinct element, separate from the Hindus, will keep them submerged and lead to their suppression and degradation. Next, you must ask for provision being made in the constitution for a sum of money to be set apart annually in the budget of every province for the education of the Untouchables. You must demand such a sum not only for primary education but also for higher education. From the standpoint of leadership, from the standpoint of filling in high administrative posts, higher education is to the Untouchables a great necessity. Thirdly, you should demand that a number of posts in the public services shall be reserved for the Untouchables subject, of course, to the rule of minimum qualification. This is very essential. We suffer from bad administration and not from bad laws. The administration is bad because it is in the hands of the Caste Hindus, who carry their social prejudices into administration and persistently deny to the Untouchables for one reason or another the principle of equal benefit to which they are entitled. Good laws can do you no good unless you have good administration and you can have good administration when you have persons belonging to the Untouchables holding high administrative posts from which they could watch how other Hindu civil servants are behaving towards the Untouchables and to check them, control them and prevent them from doing mischief. It is, however, not enough to ask for mere reservation. It is necessary to insist that such reservation shall be given effect to within a stated period. This is far more essential than mere reservation. For, unless you fix a period, the reservation will not come. It will be evaded on one ground or another and of course on the usual but unfathomable ground that no suitable candidate was available. We all know that to a Hindu, if he is the appointing authority, no candidate from the Untouchables would be a suitable candidate. Fourthly, you must insist upon securing representation for the Untouchables in the central and provincial executives. These are key positions. It is those who occupy these positions who have the power to give direction to the course of events. They alone can control any mischief that they may be threatened of and they alone can force new and salutary changes in social, political and economic affairs. The Untouchables must insist that their representatives are placed in these key postitions. This time it must not be left to understanding or convention. The Hindus cannot be trusted to abide by their plighted word. You must see that a provision in this behalf is made part of the constitution.

  Then, there is the last demand which the Untouchables must insist upon. I am convinced that it is the most vital demand which to my mind must override every other demand. I refer to the project of having new settlements of the Untouchables, separate and independent, of the Hindu villages. Why have the Untouchables been the slaves and serfs of the Hindus for so many thousand years? To my mind the answer lies in the peculiar organization of Hindu villages. You have spread out all over India some 7,00,000 Hindu villages. Attached to every Hindu village there exists a small settlement of Untouchables. This settlement of Untouchables is usually numerically very small as compared with the Hindu village to which it is attached. Secondly, this settlement of Untouchables is economically without any resource and without any opportunity for improvement. It is invariably a settlement of landless population. Being Untouchable it could not sell anything, for nobody would buy from an Untouchable. It is wholly a population, destitute, and dependent for its livelihood upon the Hindu village. It lives by begging food or by offering its labour for a paltry wage. In this setting you can well understand why the Untouchable has remained in a degraded condition for so many centuries. While this village system continues to exist in its present form, the Untouchables will never achieve their independence, whether social or economic, and will never get over the inferiority complex which they have developed as a result of their state of social and economic dependence. The village system must, therefore, be broken. It is the only way that is open for the Untouchables if they really wish to emancipate themselves from the stranglehold which the Hindus have acquired over them through the village system. My suggestion is that you should insist upon a provision being made in the constitution for the formation of new and independent villages exclusively of Untouchables at the public cost to be undertaken by the central government. There is a good deal of cultivable land which belongs to government and which is unoccupied. This could be reserved for the purpose of giving effect to this scheme of new villages of Untouchables. Government could buy from private individuals outlying vacant land and use it for the same purpose. It would not be difficult to induce the Untouchables to shift from their present habitats to these new villages and settle there as independent farmers. The process may take time. But, that does not matter. It is so vital that we must insist upon the scheme being made by the constitution itself a matter of obligation upon the central government.

  I have told you what I have thought and felt regarding the problem of the Untouchables and I hope you will give it your best consideration.

  Perhaps, in closing I may refer to our attitude to the war. From the beginning we have given our support to war efforts without making the satisfaction of our demands being a condition precedent. It is not that we value the satisfaction of our demands as of lesser importance than the successful conclusion of the war. We do not lay down any conditions for our support to the war because we feel that the successful issue of the war will help us better in the realization of our political demands than the loss of the war. This is a war between democracy and dictatorship—not an enlightened dictatorship but a dictatorship of the most barbarous character based not on any moral ideal but on racial arrogance. If any dictatorship needs to be destroyed, it is this vile Nazi dictatorship. Amidst all the political dissensions that one witnesses in this country, amidst all uncertainties of the future which some feel, we are likely to forget what a menace to our future this Nazism, if it wins, is going to be. What is more important is that its racial basis is a positive danger to Indians. If this is a correct view of the situation, it seems to me that there lies on us a very heavy duty to see that democracy does not vanish from the earth as a governing principle of human relationship. If we believe in it, then, we must both be true and loyal to it. We must not only be staunch in our faith in democracy but we must resolve to see that in whatever we do, we do not help the enemies of democracy to uproot the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. On that point I hope we are all agreed and if you agree with me, then it follows that we must strive along with other democratic countries to maintain the basis of democratic civilization. If democracy lives, we are sure to reap the fruits of it. If democracy dies, it will be our doom. On that there can be no doubt.

  There is nothing more that I have to say to you on this occasion. I am happy to be in the midst of you. I shall be happy to serve you in future as I have done in the past. If we all work together and strive together, we will not fail, for our cause is the cause of justice and the cause of humanity.

  THE COMMUNAL QUESTION AND THE FRAMING OF THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION

  EXCERPTS FROM THE ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE ALL-INDIA SCHEDULED CASTES FEDERATION

  6 MAY 1945

  Mr President,

  I AM INDEED VERY GRATEFUL FOR YOUR KIND INVITATION TO ADDRESS THE ANNUAL SESSION OF THE ALL-INDIA SCHEDULED CASTES FEDERATION. That the Scheduled Castes all over India have rallied round the Federation and are determined to make the Federation their only representative organization is beyond question. The growth of the Federation within so short a
time will not be fully appreciated unless the tremendous difficulties in the way of our organization have been fully appreciated. There are agents of other political organizations which decoy our people by false blandishments, by false promises and by false propaganda. There is the ignorance of our own people, who do not know the critical nature of the times we are living in and who do not know the value of organization for achieving our political objects. There is a lamentable lack of resources at our command. We have no money. We have no press. The crudest of tyrannies and oppressions, to which our people are subjected, day in and day out all over India, are never reported by the Press. Even our views on social and political questions are systematically suppressed by an organized conspiracy on the part of the Press. We have no funds to maintain a machinery, to render help to our people and to educate, agitate and organize them.

  These are the odds we have to contend against. That the Federation, notwithstanding these difficulties, should have grown to this dimension is entirely due to our men who have been ceaselessly and unselfishly devoting themselves to the building up of this organization.

  Communal deadlock and a way to solve it

  Ordinarily, at a gathering such as this I would have spoken—and our people would expect me to speak—on any one of the social and political problems of the Scheduled Castes. But I do not propose to engage myself in a discourse on so sectarian a subject. Instead, I propose to speak on a topic, which is general and has a wider appeal, namely the shape and form of the future constitution of India.

  It may be as well for me to explain the reasons for my decision. The Scheduled Castes are often charged as being selfish, interested only in themselves; that they have no constructive suggestions to make for the solution of the country’s political problem. The charge is entirely untrue, and if it is true, the Untouchables will not be the only ones who will be found guilty of it. Most people in India do not make constructive suggestions. The reason is not that there are not people capable of constructive thought. The reason why all constructive thought remains bottled up is because a long and continuous propaganda has inculcated upon the minds of the generality of the people that nothing should be respected and nothing should be accepted unless it emanates from the Congress. It is this which has killed all constructive thought in this country. At the same time, I believe this charge against the Scheduled Castes should be repelled in a positive way by showing that the Scheduled Castes are capable of putting forth constructive proposals for the general political advancement of the country which the country, if it cares to, may consider. This is the second reason why I have on this occasion chosen this subject of general interest.

  Responsibility for framing the constitution

  Before I set out in concrete terms the constitutional proposals I have in mind, I wish to raise two preliminary issues. First is: Who should frame a constitution for India? It is necessary to raise this question because there are quite a lot of people in India who are hoping, if not asking, the British government to resolve the deadlock and to frame a constitution for India. I think there is a gross fallacy in such a view which needs to be exposed. A constitution, framed by the British government and imposed upon India, sufficed in the past. But if the nature of the future constitution [that] Indians are clamouring for is borne in mind it will be clear that an imposed constitution will not do.

  The difference between the past constitutions and the future constitution of India is fundamental, and those who still rely on the British for framing a constitution for India do not seem to have realized this difference. The difference lies in this that the past constitutions contained a breakdown clause. But the future constitution of India cannot contain such a breakdown clause. People in India decry the breakdown clause—by now the notorious Section 93 of the Government of India Act, 1935. That is because they do not know the why and the how of its place in the Act. Its importance will become apparent if two important considerations governing the political life of a community are borne in mind. First of these considerations is that Law and Order is the medicine of the body politic, and when the body politic goes sick this medicine must be administered. Indeed, so important is this consideration that failure to administer it must be deemed to be a crime against society and civilization. The second consideration is that though it is true that no government has a vested right to govern, it is equally true that there must always be a government to govern—which I mean maintain Law and Order—until it is displaced by a better government. The breakdown clause serves these two purposes. As such, it is of the highest value for the peace and tranquillity of the people. It is the one and only means which can save the country from anarchy. For, when constitutional government fails, the breakdown clause has at least the merit of maintaining government.

  In the past this distinction between constitutional government and government with the provision for stepping in when constitutional government failed, was a feasible proposition. It was feasible because while the British government gave Indians the right to a constitutional government, it kept to itself the right to govern, should constitutional government fail. In the future constitution of India, it would not be possible to maintain this distinction. It would not be possible for the British government to give the Indians the right to constitutional government and also to keep to itself the right to govern in case there was a breakdown in the constitutional government. The reason is quite obvious. The past constitutions of India did not treat India as a Dominion. The future constitution will proceed on the assumption that India will be a Dominion. The breakdown clause or the possibility of government stepping in when constitutional government has failed, can be reconciled in the case of a country which has no Dominion Status. But the two are irreconcilable in the case of a Dominion. In the case of a Dominion or for the matter of that in the case of any free country, there is either a constitutional government or a rebellion.

  What does this mean? It means that it is impossible to frame a constitution for an Indian Dominion with a possibility of a breakdown. To put the same thing in a different language the constitution must be so made that it will not only command the obedience but also the respect of all; and all or if not all, at any rate, all important elements in the national life of India shall be prepared to uphold it and to give it their support. This can happen only if the constitution is framed by Indians for Indians and with the voluntary consent of Indians. If the constitution is imposed by the British government and is not accepted by one section and is opposed by another, there will arise in the country an element hostile to the constitution, and which will devote its energies not to working the constitution but to breaking it. The anti-constitution party may look upon destroying the constitution as its only duty and may engage itself in ‘pronouncing’ against a party working the constitution in the real Latin American fashion.

  It is useless for the British to frame a constitution for India which they will not remain to enforce. The same result will ensue if the constitution is imposed by one powerful section or a combination of such sections on other sections. I am, therefore, firmly of opinion that if Indians want Dominion Status, they cannot escape the responsibility of framing their own constitution. The position is thus inescapable.