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722 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
express purpose of attending the Malaviya Conference. That has been published in the “Liberty” ?
Mr. J. Bannerjee : They did not go there on authorisation by any public body in Bengal. They may have gone there on their own business or for some other reason. May I make an offer to Dr. Ambedkar; may T just say this ? We, in Bengal, feel it a great slur that there should be a suggestion that there are depressed classes in Bengal. The Bengali Hindus have been going on doing social work for over a century now in order to remove caste barriers and things like that. I ask Dr. Ambedkar to agree with this. The Lothian Committee very fairly formulated two characteristics, two criteria, for determining who are depressed classes, untouchability, unapproachability within a certain distance. I suggest that the Bengal Government should make an enquiry into who are untouchables and unapproachables, and if their number is ascertained we should be willing to give these people their proportion of representation on the Bengal Legislative Council on the basis of joint electorates.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I am not discussing joint electorates ; I am discussing this important point of fact when it was well known that certain Bengal caste-Hindus were going to Bombay to attend Malaviya Conference. I am quoting to you from the “Liberty” of the 17th September, 1932: it is a paper which is published in Calcutta. I find in column 4 on page 5 of the “Liberty” of that date this report written in broad headlines : “Swami Satyananda and others leave for Bombay. Swami Satyananda, Sjs. Haridas Majumdar and Jajneshwar Mandal of the Amrita Samaj are leaving for Bombay tonight to attend the Malaviya Conference.” They were not going on any of their private business ?
Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: As far as I am concerned I have never heard of the gentlemen ; this is the first time I have heard of them ; certainly they have been hiding their light under a brushel as far as Bengal is concerned, and these gentlemen must themselves have sent the report just to advertise that they were going.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: My point is that the public of Bengal was aware that certain members from the caste-Hindus were proceeding from Bengal to attend the Malaviya Conference, and if the public of Bengal thought that they were not representatives it was quite possible for them to send a message to Malaviya not to trust these people ?
Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: I submit it is most unfair to the public of Bengal to hold them to a paragraph that appeared casually in some column of the “Liberty”.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I am only stating it as a fact that every body in Bengal ought to know ?
Mr. B. C. Chatterjee: Nobody reads the paper thorough like that. Nobody searches out particular columns to find out things like that. It never came to our notice.