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430 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
I. Protection through adequate Representation
Preliminary.— The Sabha feels relieved of great anxiety by the decision of Parliament not to appoint an Indian on the Statutory Commission. The agitation for the appointment of an Indian would have been proper if the Commission had to consider a common Indian demand for self-government But the fact is that the Commission shall have to consider not one demand, but a variety of demands made by the different interests prevailing in the country. That being the case the agitation should have been for a representation of all such interests on the Commission. The Sabha desires to point out that nothing could have satisfied the Depressed Classes better than the appointment of Indians representing various interests in the country, including their own, on the Statutory Commission. The demand for representation on the Statutory Commission was not, however, of such a nature and the Sabha, therefore, could not feel at one with those who urged it. The Sabha, it is true, did not agitate as it should have done, in conformity with its own views, for the representation of the Depressed Classes on the Commission. But that was because the Sabha felt that it was too much to hope for in a country where those in charge of the affairs from the Viceroy downwards have cultivated the habit of recognising the noisy few and forgetting the dumb millions. To use the language of Burke, because half a dozen politicians, like grasshoppers under a fera, make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst the masses, like thousands of great cattle, are reposing beneath the shadow of the oak, chew the cud and are silent, the Government of India imagines that the politicians who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field—that, of course, they are many in number—or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour. But there was also another reason why the Sabha did not press for its views. In the opinion of the Sabha this exclusion of Indians from the Statutory Commission was no small mercy to the Depressed Classes. For, by their non-appointment the Depressed Classes are, at any rate, saved the prejudice that would have otherwise been caused to their case, which the Sabha has hereby undertaken to place before the Commission.
Injustice done to the Depressed Classes in 1919. —The Montagu Chemsford Report recognised fully (para. 151) that the existence of the social differences and divisions formed “a feature of Indian Society which is out of harmony with the ideas on which elsewhere in the world representative institutions rest” and the authors of the Report (para. 153) held that they “have to be taken into account and they must lead us to adjust the forms of popular Government familiar elsewhere to the special conditions of Indian life.” In accordance with this, the authors of the Report, in order to pacify the Depressed Classes who had stoutly opposed the introduction of the Reforms, undertook to safeguard their interests as will be seen from the following statement in paragraph 155 of their Report in which they say : “ We have shown that the political education of the Ryot cannot be very rapid and may be a very difficult process. Till it is complete he must be exposed to the risk of oppression by people who are stronger and cleverer than he is ; and until it is clear that his interests can safely be left in his