z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-05.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 360
360 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
question is not whether the problem is a social problem. The question is whether the use of political power can solve that problem. To that question my answer is emphatically in the affirmative. True enough that the State in India will not be able to compel touchables and untouchables to be members of one family whether they liked it or not. Nor will the State be able to make them love by an Act of the Legislature or embrace by order in Council of the Executive. But short of that the State can remove all obstacles which make untouchables remain in their degraded condition. If this view is correct, then no community has a greater need for adequate political representation than the depressed classes.
My colleagues nowhere explain why the Mohamedan minority should get 12 per cent, more than its population ratio and why the Depressed Classes should not get even the share that is due to them on the basis of their population. It is noteworthy that the Mohamedan witnesses who pleaded for the excess of their representation did not claim it on the ground, as one might have expected, that it was necessary to ensure their progress or their well-being. Their only ground was that the Mohamedans were the descendants of a ruling class and that they required this excessive representation because without it, they feared that the community would suffer in importance and influence. From this it will be seen that the Mohamedan claim for such excessive representation proceeds not on the basis of adequacy but on the basis of supremacy. I am strongly of opinion that in any democratic form of government all communities must be treated as of equal political importance and that there should be no room left for any one community to claim that it is uber alles . When anyone said that his community was important and should receive fair and adequate representation the claim was entitled to the sympathetic consideration of all. But when any one urged that his community was specially important and should therefore receive representation in excess of its fair share, the undoubted and irresistible implication was that the other communities were comparatively inferior and should receive less than their fair share. That is a position to which naturally the other communities will not assent. The earlier therefore the Mohamedan community is disabused of this extravagant notion, the better it will be for the future of the community. For there is no benefit in an advantage which not being willingly conceded by the other communities has perpetually to be fought for. On the contrary it may result in positive harm to the Mohamedan community by sowing the seeds of estrangement and perhaps of positive antipathy between it and the other communities concerned.
The Mohamedan’s is not the only case of a ruling class which has suffered a fall in its position. The French in Canada and the Dutch in South Africa are other instances where a class fell from its position of a ruling class to that of a subject class. But neither the French in Canada nor the Dutch in South Africa put forth claims to extravagant representation in order to be able to maintain their former position as rulers. Nor