z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-02.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 84
84 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
to serve or not to serve. But under the existing law this freedom is denied to them. They are forced to serve whether they wish it or not. This is due to the fact that the baluta is a joint remuneration and there is no way of finding out how much of the remuneration in the form of baluta is due for Government services and how much of it is due for private services. In these days of rivalry in social advancement the tension between the ryots and the Mahar has become great and will continue to grow in intensity unless freedom to employ and freedom to serve is provided for. To achieve this purpose it is necessary to define the quota of baluta due from the ryot on account of private services to the ryots and that due for the services rendered to Government. What happens under the present circumstances is this, that if a Mahar does not render service to the ryot, all the same, there being no partition of the baluta, the ryot is obliged to pay the whole and the Mahar gets an advantage over the ryot.
On the other hand it happens that if the Mahar did not render service to the ryot but rendered services only to Government, he loses the whole of the baluta, for the reason that the ryot has no idea how much of the baluta is due from him for Government services. Not knowing this he withholds the whole and thereby causes a wrongful loss to the Mahars. It is therefore very essential, I think, in the interest of better administration and in the interests of peace in the villages that this partition of the baluta should take place. I submit it is absolutely contrary to the principle of law that the services of one class of people should be forced upon other classes of people. It would be atrocious to uphold a system under which a particular barber should alone shave us to the exclusion of any other barber. But the watan system is such an atrocious and barbarous system. I am sure the lawyer members of this House are aware that we had in the High Court a case in which one of the barbars had brought a suit that the Yajmans (the ryots) in a particular village were not entitled to employ the services of an outside barber, that whether or not that particular barber was efficient or not, whether he knew how to crop the hair or to pare the beard, he was entitled to render service to the ryots all the same. The same thing happens in the case of Mahars. What my bill aims at is freedom of contract; if the ryots do not want to employ the Mahars, they ought to have perfect liberty not to employ them, and if the Mahars do not want to serve, the Mahars should have perfect liberty not to serve. But under the present system, under the system of joint remuneration, this liberty of contract is negatived and is not obtainable. My scheme provides for that freedom of contract, and I think at least in this century when every society has advanced from status to contract we ought not for instance to block the progress of Indian society by refusing the Mahars and the ryots the liberty of contract.
One thing I would like to say is that the system which I have outlined here in this bill is not altogether my own. It is a system which I have copied from the Berars. In the Central Provinces and the Berars, similar feuds and troubles were going on between ryots and the Mahars. A great agitation