z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-06.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 446
446 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection against such tyranny is usually to be found in the Police power of the state. But unfortunately in any struggle in which the Depressed classes are on the one side and the upper class of Hindus on the other, the Police power is always in league with the tyrant majority (item No. 11), for the simple reason that the Depressed classes have no footing whatsoever in the Police or in the Magistracy of the country.
- In view of this, it is unfair to the Depressed classes to be lulled into the belief that their interests would be safe in the hands of their countrymen, because some Councils have passed resolutions and some of the Ministers have issued circulars favouring the Depressed classes. The Sabha desires to caution the Commission against being lured into forming a better opinion of the Hindu majority from its best instances. Pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other, of superior wisdom ordering all things for the greatest good of the dependants are very gratifying to read. But such pictures would be to the purpose only if any one from the Depressed Classes denied the existence of good men in the Hindu society. Nobody among the Depressed classes doubts that there would be great and universal happiness under the government of a good Hindu. But the fact is that laws and institutions require to be adapted not to good men but to bad. From this point of view, it is safer to grant the minority the necessary protection by the inclusion of guarantee clauses than to leave it unprotected on the fanciful ground that the tyrant majority has in it a few good men sympathetic to the minority. Such guarantees may be looked down upon by persons other than the Depressed classes as being unnecessary ; but from the standpoint of the Depressed classes it is but an essential safeguard. There is such an enormous dread of the Reforms prevalent amongst the Depressed classes that they have from the very beginning opposed their introduction. So strong was their feeling against the Reforms that in one of the addresses presented to Mr. Montague the Depressed classes declared “we shall fight to the last drop of our blood, against any attempt to transfer the seat of authority in this country from the British hands to the so-called high class Hindus.” Nothing can allay such fears as the system of guarantees can do. Government is based upon faith and not upon reason. If the Depressed classes can have no faith in the new constitution it is statesmanship to buy that faith if it can be done so with the concession of guarantees herein demanded.