z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-06.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 445
SAFEGUARDS FOR DEPRESSED CLASSES 445
in this Presidency [ i.e. Madras] some ten millions of people. For convenience they may be referred to as the Panchama or Pariah community. These people are regarded, not merely as belonging to a lower class, but as conveying by their very presence an actual pollution which requires purificatory religious ceremonies.
“13. The difficulty of introducing democratic institutions into a society such as this, illiterate, divided into hard and fast castes, with Brahman at the top, with the various Non-Brahman Hindu castes in the middle and the low castes liable to be oppressed impartially by both, at the bottom must be very great. Nor does this difficulty seem to have been sufficiently realized by the writers of the Joint Report. Surely the first essential of any scheme of reform is that adequate safeguard should he provided for the good government of the inarticulate masses of the population ……. ”
- If this is a correct description of the existing state of affairs then the Minorities of Europe cannot be said to have a better case for obtaining guarantees of their rights than the Depressed classes. Many people in the world have fallen low by force of circumstances. But having fallen they are free to rise. The Depressed classes on the other hand form a solitary case of a people who have remained fallen because their rise is opposed to the religious notions of the majority of their countrymen. Much was made before the Muddiman Committee by certain persons of the resolutions passed by the various Legislative Councils, throwing open wells, dispensaries and dharamshalas to members of Depressed classes and of the circulars issued by Ministers of Education requiring children of the Depressed classes to be admitted to schools in common with the rest. But what a mockery such resolutions and circulars are will be apparent to the Commission from the perusal of Annexure A to this statement. It will illustrate the attitude of the majority towards the Depressed classes as evidenced by incidents reported from time to time in the various newspapers in the country (item Nos. 1 and 10). From a perusal of these news items it will be realized that the Depressed classes cannot be employed in the army, navy and the police, because such employment is opposed to the religious notions of the majority (item No. 8). They cannot be admitted in schools, because their entry is opposed to the religious notions of the majority (item No. 12). They cannot avail themselves of Government dispensaries, because Doctors will not let them cause pollution to their persons or to their dispensaries (item Nos. 2 and 5) . They cannot live a cleaner and higher life, because to live above their prescribed station is opposed to the religious notions of the majority (item Nos. 1 and 6). So rigorous is the enforcement of the Social Code against the Depressed classes that any attempt on the part of the Depressed classes to exercise their elementary rights of citizenship only ends in provoking the majority, to practice the worst form of social tyranny known to history (item Nos. 4, 7 and 11). It will be admitted that when society is itself a tyrant, its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its functionaries and it leaves fewer means of escape,