264 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
A Legislative Council is not an old curiosity shop. It will be a Council with powers to make or mar the fortunes of society. How can one or two untouchables carry a legislative measure to improve their condition or prevent a legislative measure worsening their state ? To be frank, the untouchables cannot expect much good from the political power to be given over to the high caste Hindus. Though the power may not be used against the untouchables and one cannot be altogether sure of this, it may not be used for their betterment. A Legislative Council may be sovereign to do anything it likes, but what it will like to do depends upon its own character. The English Parliament, we may be certain, though it is sovereign to do anything, will not make the preservation of blue-eyed babies illegal. The Sultan will not, though he can, change the religion of Mohammed just as the Pope will not, though he can, overthrow the religion of Christ. In the same way legislature, mainly composed of high caste men, will not pass a law removing untouchability, sanctioning inter-marriages, removing the ban on the use of public streets, public temples, public schools ; in short, cleansing the person of the untouchables. This is not because they cannot, but chiefly because they will not. A legislature is the product of a certain social condition and its power is determined by whatever determines society. This is too obvious to be denied. What may happen in future can be guessed from what has happened in the past. The high caste men in the Council do not like any social question being brought before the legislature, as may be seen from the fact of the Resolution introduced by the Honourable Mr. Dadabhoy in 1916 in the Imperial Legislative Council. That it was adversely criticized by many who claimed to evince some interest in the untouchables is too well known to need repetition. But what is not well known is that though the resolution was lost the mover was not pardoned ; for the very moving of such a nasty resolution was regarded as a sin. At a subsequent election the mover had to make room for the Honourable Mr. Khaparde, who once wrote in an article : “ Those who work for the elevation of the untouchables are themselves degraded.”
Isn’t this sympathy of the higher castes for the untouchables, sympathy with a vengeance ?
- Those who tell that one or two members would suffice for the untouchables fail to grasp the true import of political right. The chief import of a political right though technically summed up in the power to vote does lie either in voting upon for laws or for those who make laws ; neither does it consist in the right to speak for or against a certain measure nor in being able to say “yea or nay” upon roll-call; to be able to put into a ballot-box a piece of paper with a number of names written thereon is an act which, like those mentioned above, of itself possesses no value which stamps it as inherently superior to many of the most ordinary transactions of daily life. They are educative but as much as any transaction