114 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
IV. 244. “He, who seeks to preserve an exalted rank, must constantly form connections with the highest and best families, but avoid the worst and the meanest.
IV. 245. Since a priest, who connects himself with the best and the highest of men, avoiding the lowest and worst, attains eminence; but sinks by an opposite conduct, to the class of the servile.
IV. 79. Not let him tarry even under the shade of the same tree with outcaste for the great crimes, nor with Chandalas, nor with Puccasas, nor with idiots, nor with man proud of wealth, nor with washermen and other vile persons, nor with Antyevasins.”
The Hindu social order is opposed to fraternity. It does not admit the principle of equality. Far from recognising equality it makes inequality its official doctrine. What about liberty? So far as choice of occupation goes, there is none. Everyone has his occupation determined for him. Only thing left to do is to carry it on. As to freedom of speech it exists. But it exists only for those who are in favour of the social order. The freedom is not the freedom of liberalism which was expressed by Voltaire when he said “I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it. “This is clear from what Manu has to say about Logic and dialectics.
“IV. 29-30. No guest must stay in his house without being honoured according to his ability, with a seat, food, a couch, water, or roots and fruits.
Let him not honour even by a greeting heretics, men who follow forbidden occupations, men who live like cats, rogues, logicians (arguing against the Veda) and those who live like herons.
II. 10. But by Sruti (Revelation) is meant the Vedas and by Smriti (tradition) the Institutes of the sacred law; those two must not be called into question in any matter, since from those two the sacred law shone forth.
II. 11. Every twice-born man, who, relying on the Institutes of dialectics, treats with contempt those two sources (of the law), must be cast out by the virtuous as an atheist and a scorner of the Veda. II. 12. The Veda, the sacred tradition, the customs of virtuous men, and one’s own pleasure, they declare to be visibly the fourfold means of defining the sacred law.” The reasons for this are made manifest by Manu who says:
II. 6. “The whole Veda is the (first) source of the sacred law, next the tradition and the virtuous conduct of those who know the (Veda further) also the customs of holy men, and (finally) self-satisfaction :