294 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
untouchability ? The Congress before it came into the hands of Mr. Gandhi had refused to allow any social problem to be placed before it for consideration. A clear cut distinction was made between political and social question, and scrupulous attempt was made to confine the deliberations and activities of the Congress to purely political questions. The old Congress refused to take notice of the Untouchables. It was with great difficulty that the Congress in 1917* for the first time allowed the question of the Untouchables to be placed before it and condescended to pass the following resolution:
“The Congress urges upon the people of India the necessity, justice and righteousness of removing all disabilities imposed by custom upon the Depressed Classes, the disabilities being of a most vexatious and oppresssive character, subjecting those classes to considerable hardship and inconvenience.” [1]
The Congress fell onto the hands of Mr. Gandhi in 1920 and the Congress at its ordinary session held at Nagpur passed the following resolution :
INTERCOMMUNAL UNITY
“Finally, in order that the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs may be redressed and Swarajya established within one year, this Congress urges upon all public bodies, whether affiliated to the Congress or otherwise, to devote their exclusive attention to the promotion of non-violence and non-cooperation with the Government and, inasmuch as the movement of non-cooperation can only succeed by complete co-operation amongst the people themselves, this Congress calls upon public associations to advance HinduMuslim unity and the Hindu delegates of this Congress call upon the leading Hindus to settle all disputes between Brahmins and Non-Brahmins, wherever they may be existing, and to make a special effort to rid Hinduism of the reproach of untouchability, and respectfully urges the religious heads to help the growing desire to reform Hinduism in the matter of its treatment of the suppressed classes.”
Again did not Mr. Gandhi make the removal of untouchability a condition precedent for achieving Swaraj ? In the Young India of December 29, 1920, Mr. Gandhi wrote:
“Non-cooperation against the Government means cooperation among the governed, and if Hindus do not remove the sin of
- Year not mentioned in the Ms.—Ed.
1 This quotation has been reproduced from page I of ‘ What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables’ by the author. This was not typed in the MS of this essay.—Ed.