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696 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
land, planters, and such people.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : But, as I say, in order to effect your purpose, if it were necessary, you say that distinction shall not be based upon caste, creed, race or religion ?
Sir Edward Benthall : Yes ; it is a matter of legal draftsmanship.
(9)
Lady Layton, Mrs. O. Stracey and Sir Philip Hartog, on behallf of the British Committee for Indian Women’s Franchise
*C67. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I would like to ask one question. I do not know whether you agree with me, but I suppose when you press for votes for women, I think you also desire that the franchise should be so devised that the women who will be brought upon the register will be drawn from all strata of Indian society, and not necessarily drawn, either from the upper strata or the middle strata or the lower strata exclusively ; that there ought to be some proportion of the women on the electoral roll to the communities from which they are drawn ?
Lady Layton : As far as is practically possible, certainly.
C68. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I mean, it is not your case that you want this mathematical ratio of 1 to 4 or 1 to 5, but apart from that ratio, you would also desire that all women from all sections should be on the register ?
Lady Layton : Certainly, as far as possible, we do want to feel that the urban and rural voters and the different sections will be adequately represented.
C69. Dr B. R. Ambedkar : You will also agree, I suppose, that if the education qualification or the property qualification were fixed higher, the result of that would be that you would be getting on to the electoral roll women drawn from one section of Indian society alone ?
Lady Layton : That is so. I would supplement that by saying that if it were administratively possible, we should welcome, and we have pressed in our Memorandum, that the wives of the lower property qualification should be enfranchised, and not only the wives of the higher property qualification.
C70. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : What I am anxious to get at is this—whether you attach importance to the point which I am putting to you, namely, a well-proportioned distribution of the women’s voting strength throughout the population, or whether you merely attach importance to the proportion of the man voter as against the woman voter ?
Lady Layton : Attach importance to both those factors but we think that the women’s interests for the moment are sufficiently safeguarded on this particular question. If you have a sufficient number of women enfranchised in all the districts for them to represent the other women, the women who are not enfranchised, we would like to see it as low as possible and if
*Minutes of Evidence, Vol. II-C, 26th July 1933. p. 2276.