z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-06.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 463
EVIDENCE BEFORE SIMON COMMISSION 463
Presidency the Census of 1921 gives a figure of 1½ millions, but it would appear that those are the depressed classes in the narrower sense I have mentioned, the untouchables from the point of view of religion, but that, as Dr. Ambedkar has pointed out, the official figures really show, if you take a rather wider but perfectly legitimate view, that the true figure may be between 2 and 3 millions. Is not that fair ?
Rao Bahadur Rajah: Yes, that is right.
Chairman : Does anybody want to add anything about that ?
- Colonel Lane Fox : On which figure are the two memoranda which we have received based ? In each memorandum you ask for special representation for the depressed classes. You ask for adult suffrage in one memorandum, and you ask for special recruitment for the army and navy and so on. It is obvious it is a bigger thing if you ask for it for the aborigines and criminal tribes and so on. Are these privileges asked for the bigger figure or for the smaller ?
Dr. Ambedkar : I ask for them for the depressed classes.
- For the aborigines and criminal classes also ?
Dr. Ambedkar : No. I do not think it would be possible to allow them the privilege of adult suffrage.
- But you quote the bigger figure ?
Dr. Ambedkar : I am not accepting altogether the fact that the figure which I have given in my memorandum covers the aborigines and the hill tribes. I still hold to the view that on a fair computation the figure I have given is largely the figure for the depressed classes I admit only the possibility of the other view.
Chairman : There is only one thing I might add. Sir Arthur Froom may be able to confirm it. I notice the Muddiman Committee (Reforms Enquiry Committee, 1925) in the table subjoined to para. 64 of their Report, give the figure at 2,800,000.
- Sir Hari Singh Gour : Dr. Ambedkar, would you regard “depressed classes” and “untouchables” as synonymous terms ?
Dr. Ambedkar : Yes.
- In asking for special representation for the depressed classes you confine yourselves to the untouchables ?
Dr. Ambedkar : Yes.
- You say that some aborigines are not untouchables’?
Dr. Ambedkar : In some parts they may be. I do not propose to speak on their behalf.
- They are not untouchables. The criminal tribes are not untouchables ?
Dr. Ambedkar : Some of them are.
- Some, but as a tribe they are not ?
Dr. Ambedkar : The criminal tribes have so little social intercourse with the rest of the Hindus that there is no basis for any definite opinion on that point, but if they did have such intercourse I think they would be regarded as untouchables.