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EVIDENCE : DR. B. S. MOONJE AND OTHERS 727
Mr. B. C. Chatterjee : Yes.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Will you tell what was the composition of the Bengal Executive in September, 1932 ? Who were its members, and what was communal composition ?
Mr. J. Bannerjee: There were three Bengali Members—no, two Bengali Hindu Members in the Bengal Government.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Is it your suggestion that the Bengal Government which had two Bengal caste-Hindu members on it did not approve of the Poona Pact ?
Mr. J. Bannerjee: I have nothing to suggest about the Government but I am quite sure that both the Hindu members of the Government had disapproved of it, and had emphatically protested against it.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: With respect to the Central Executive you have said one Bengal Hindu was there, Sir B. L. Mitter. Is that so ?
Mr. J. Bannerjee: Yes ; I cannot say anything about Sir B. L. Mitter, but I would ask you to refer to the present member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: It has been suggested by Sir Nripendra Sircar in the course of his examination that the whole thing was accepted by His Majesty in a sort of emergency created by the fast of Mahatma Gandhi. What I want to put to you is this : Is it not a fact that the first letter written by Mahatma Gandhi to the Government was not dated the 18th August, but was dated the 11th March, 1932 (that letter is addressed to Sir Samuel Hoare); it is practically five months before the letter referred to by Sir Nripendra Sircar, and that is what he says. That is before the Communal Decision was given, that is my point. This is his statement : “Dear Sir Samuel, you will perhaps recollect that at the end of my speech at the Round Table Conference when the Minorities’ claim was presented I had said that I should resist with my life the grant of separate electorates to the Depressed Classes. This was not said in the heat of the moment nor by way of any rhetoric. It was meant to be a serious statement”, and so on. Then he says “I have therefore respectfully to inform His Majesty’s Government that in the event of their decision creating separate electorate for the Depressed Classes I must fast unto death.” The threat to fast was not given in the letter of the 18th August, after the Communal Decision was given, but was given in the letter of the 11th March, 1932 ?
Mr. J. Bannerjee : Quite true.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: And His Majesty’s Government gave separate electorate to the Depressed Classes notwithstanding this threat in the letter of the 11th March ?
Mr. J. Bannerjee: Our complaint against the Pact is that it perpetuates every evil of separate electorates.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: That is another matter. You had better say that to Mahatma Gandhi; I cannot discuss it ?