z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-03.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 111
ON VILLAGE PANCHAYATS BILL 111
classes, that so far as we are concerned we can never consent to judicial affairs being administered by a panchayat. Ours is a very peculiar and, if I may say so, a very pitiable position. We are a small body of people, occupying a corner of a village. We are never looked upon as part and parcel of the village community. Although living in the village, we are all the same an alien body, whose progress is looked upon with great jealousy by the rest of the community. My honourable friend Mr. Kamat shakes his head, and therefore I think I must read to him from the report of the State Committee, which I did not want to do. In paragraph 102 of that Committee’s report, the condition of the depressed classes in the village is described at great length. This is what the Committee say :
“Although we have recommended various remedies to secure to the Depressed Classes their rights to all public utilities, we fear that there will be difficulties in the way of their exercising them for a long time to come. The first difficulty is the fear of open violence against them by the orthodox classes. It must be noted that the Depressed Classes form a small minority in every village, opposed to which is a great majority of the orthodox who are bent on protecting their interests and dignity from any supposed invasion by the Depressed Classes at any cost. The danger of prosecution by the Police has put a limitation upon the use of violence by the orthodox classes and consequently such cases are rare.
“The second difficulty arises from the economic position in which the Depressed Classes are found today. The Depressed Classes have no economic independence in most parts of the Presidency. Some cultivate the lands of the orthodox classes as their tenants at will. Others live on their earnings as farm labourers employed by the orthodox classes and the rest subsist on the food or grain given to them by the orthodox classes in lieu of service rendered to them as village servants. We have heard of numerous instances where the orthodox classes have used their economic power as a weapon against those Depressed Classes in their villages, when the latter have dared to exercise their rights, and have evicted them from their land, and stopped their employment and discontinued their remuneration as village servants. This boycott is often planned on such an extensive scale as to include the prevention of the Depressed Classes from using the commonly used paths and the stoppage of sale of the necessaries of life by the village Bania. According to the evidence sometimes small causes suffice for the proclamation of a social boycott against the Depressed Classes. Frequently it follows on the exercise by the Depressed Classes of their right to the use of the common well, but cases have been by no means rare where a stringent boycott has been proclaimed simply because a Depressed Class man has put on the sacred thread, has bought a piece of land, has put on good clothes or ornaments, or has carried a marriage procession with a bridegroom on the horse through the public street.”
That Sir, is our position. We are a besieged people, so to say, and I cannot