z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-08.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 614
614 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Dr. Ambedkar: I should like to be enlightened.
Pandit M. M. Malaviya: I am not saying that the Depressed Classes should wait. In a criticism of the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals which I had the honour to publish when the proposed Reforms were first announced in 1918, I urged that, so far as the Depressed Classes were concerned, it is particularly a question of education, and I pleaded—and I still plead and the Congress has pleaded—for universal primary education. It has pleaded all the years of its existence ; and if the Government of India, which commanded all the resources of the country, had spent sufficient money on promoting primary education among the people, I am sure the words “Depressed Classes” would have been a matter of history by this time—long before this time. We have desired that they should receive elementary, primary education, that they should receive secondary education, that they should receive higher education. I have the honour to be the Vice-Chancellor of a University, the Benares Hindu University, and there a student of the Depressed Classes gets a seat exactly as a student of any other class does ; there is absolutely no distinction. And those who have received education give an excellent account of themselves, even, if I may say so, as my esteemed friend Dr. Ambedkar has given.
Dr. Ambedkar: I am still an “Untouchable” in society, although I am educated. Education has not raised me out of that.
Pandit M. M. Malaviya: I beg your pardon ; you are not an Untouchable ; you are a dear friend and colleague—a brother with whom your most orthodox friends have the pleasure to meet and work, and you know that they work together with you. Today there are more Brahmins working in the cause of the Depressed Classes than the representatives of any other class. I think that is a fact which my friend, Dr. Ambedkar, will admit.
Pandit M. M. Malaviya: ........will admit.
Now, the second point. My Lord, which I should like to touch upon is the question of direct and indirect election. I fear that the remarks which Mahatma Gandhi made yesterday in this connection were somewhat misunderstood........ When yesterday he spoke approvingly of Lord Peel’s suggestion, the object, as I understood it, was to show that, it was felt that there were practical difficulties in the way of extending the franchise to all the adults in the country.......... It was most certainly to introduce the principle of adult suffrage that Mr. Gandhi suggested that plan. He has not approved the idea that an indirect method of election should be adopted whereby the people should feel that they were kept out of the right to vote.
Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru: I listened with great attention and interest to Mahatma Gandhi’s exposition of the principle of adult suffrage, but I am very much of the view that it is much lower than that recommended in the Nehru report. If I am wrong, will you please correct me ?
Sir Samuel Hoare: Pandit Malaviya, it would still be direct election. You are now making an argument in favour of adult suffrage. That was not the subject to which the Committee was addressing itself yesterday, so