z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-06.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 461
EVIDENCE BEFORE SIMON COMMISSION 461
might you not ?
Dr. Ambedkar : Yes.
- In another sense you might include in the “Depressed Classes” not only those people whom I have described, but also the criminal tribes, the hill tribes and other people who no doubt are very low in the scale, but who are not, perhaps, in the narrower sense untouchables from the point of view of the Hindus hierarchy ?
Dr. Ambedkar: Quite.
- Is not that a possible view ?
Dr. Ambedkar : That is a possible view.
- Is not that the real explanation of why in some connections you get a certain figure for the depressed classes, meaning untouchables, persons who are refused admission to the Hindu temples, whereas on the other hand you sometimes get a bigger figure which would include these criminal and hill tribes ?
Dr. Ambedkar : I do not think that is so in this case, because the figures I have given seem to have reference to the depressed classes as distinct from the hill tribes and the criminal tribes.
- Let me point this out to you. I have before me these three figures. I have got a figure of 1,478,000 odd for untouchables taken from the Census of 1921, and made up of these Mahars, Dheds and other people. Then I have a long list of criminal tribes and so on, which adds up to 589,000—just over half a million. Then I have a third list of aboriginals and hill tribes—Bhils, and people of that sort—and they add up to another million. If you were to add the aboriginal and criminal tribes in with the first figure, you would get a total approximately like the larger figure you give of 2,800,000 ?
Dr. Ambedkar : The quotation I reproduce on page 39 of my memorandum from the remarks of the Directors of the Census gives me the impression that his figures are strictly for the depressed classes. My feeling is that the figures computed by the Director of the Census and referred to by him in the paragraph which I quote on page 39 of my memorandum are figures which apply only to the depressed classes.
- ………. I see that the Director of the Census of India for 1921 says this : “It has been usual in recent years to speak of a certain section of the community as the ‘Depressed Classes’—so far as I am aware the term has no final definition, nor is it certain exactly whom it covers.” Then he refers to some educational criticisms. That is the passage you mean ?
Dr. Ambedkar : Yes, and “The total population classed according to these lists as depressed amounted to 31 million persons or 19 per cent. of the Hindu and tribal population of British India.” That remark would appear to exclude the tribal people from the depressed classes.
- I do not know. Anyhow, that is one possible explanation, and I think you agree a possible explanation is that the smaller figure is the figure of untouchables in the sense I have tried to define. I think you agree