134 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
be drawn without any cost. At every ceremony at the house of a Hindu, the Untouchables must come and do menial work An Untouchable must not own and cultivate land and lead an independent life. For his livelihood he must depend upon stale remnants of food left over by the Hindu households and upon meat of cattle that die in the village. These remnants of food he must collect from door to door. For he must goon his begging round every evening. Similarly an Untouchable must carry the dead animals out of the village. Indeed he alone must carry them because no Hindu will agree to do scavenging. An Untouchable should not take to such services as would give him authority and power over caste Hindus. He must be humble and must not ask for more than his lot under this code. It is true that some of the Untouchables have risen above the low status prescribed by this customary code of conduct and have acquired high place, but the majority of them are still socially in the most servile position and ~ economically in abject poverty.
Such is the condition of the 79½ millions of people. The problem of these deadened, if not dead, souls is no small problem. The total population of these three classes comes to over 60% of the population of the United States but exceeds the population of the whites in the British Empire by 9½ millions. It also exceeds the population of Japan by 9½ millions. It exceeds the population of Italy by 37 millions. It exceeds the population of Germany by 13½ millions and of France by 37½ millions. It is ten times the population of Belgium and twenty times the population of Denmark. What a colossal total of sunken humanity?
III
The saddening and if, one may say, annoying part of the story is that the state of these unfortunate human beings should be what it is although they are surrounded and fed by a high civilization. But it must strike any impartial observer that there must be something very radically wrong with a civilization which has failed to elevate to their manhood 79½ millions of human beings.
Civilization as comprising and accumulated store of knowledge of man and nature, of arts and crafts, an ethical code regulating the conduct of man towards his fellows, a social code laying down the forms and conventions to be observed by individuals, a civil code prescribing the rights and duties of the rulers and the ruled and a religious creed relating the natural to the supernatural—is a rare prize. It has not been the good fortune of all races to develop it in all its fullness. Many have stood where they were at the start. Many took one or two steps and have been at a halt. Others have only revolved round and round. The primitive races of Australia and Polenasia, when they