124 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
X. 82. “If it be asked, how he must live, should he be unable to get a subsistence by either of those employments; the answer is, he may subsist as a mercantile man, applying himself to tillage and an attendance on cattle.”
Manu adds:
IX. 317. “A Brahmin, be he ignorant or learned, is a great divinity, just as the fire, whether carried forth (for the performance of a burnt oblation) or not carried forth, is a great divinity.”
IX. 319. “Thus, though the Brahmins employ themselves in all (sorts) of mean occupation, they must be honoured in every way; (for each of) them is a very great deity.”
Nietzsche’s praise of the Manu Smriti is undeserved. For when he says that according to its scheme “the noble classes, the philosophers and the warriors guard and guide the masses”, he is either making a positively untrue statement or that he has not read it correctly. Under the Manu Smriti the superman has rights against the common man but he has no duties towards the common man.
Manu’s degraded and degenerate philosophy of Superman as compared with that of Nietzsche is therefore far more odious and loathsome than the philosophy of Nietzsche. Such is the social order which the Hindus regard as a pearl without price and which Mr. Gandhi is proud to offer as a gift from the Hindus to the world.
Another special feature of the Hindu social order relates to the technique devised for its preservation. The technique is twofold.
The first technique is to place the responsibility of upholding and maintaining the social order upon the shoulders of the King. Manu does this in quite express terms.
VIII. 410. “The King should order each man of the mercantile class to practise trade or money-lending or agriculture and attendance on cattle; and each man of the servile class to act in the service of the twice-born.”
VIII. 418. “With vigilant care should the King exert himself in compelling merchants and mechanics to perform their respective duties; for, when such men swerve from their duty they throw this world into confusion.”
Manu does not stop with the mete enunciation of the duty of the King in this behalf. He wants to ensure that the King shall at all times perform his duty to maintain and preserve the established order. Manu therefore makes two further provisions. One provision is to make the failure of the King to maintain the established order an offence for which the King became liable for prosecution and punishment like