280 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
can be taken as typical of the Untouchables throughout India it will be accepted that there was a stage in the history of India when Broken Men belonging to other tribes came to the Settled tribes and made a bargain whereby the Broken men were allowed to settle on the border of the village, were required to do certain duties and in return were given certain rights. The Mahars have a tradition that the 52 rights claimed by them against the villagers were given to them by the Muslim kings of Bedar. This can only mean that these rights were very ancient and that the kings of Bedar only confirmed them.
These facts although meagre do furnish some evidence in support of the theory that the Untouchables lived outside the village from the very beginning. They were not deported and made to live outside the village because they were declared Untouchables. They lived outside the village from the beginning because they were Broken Men who belonged to a tribe different from the one to which the Settled tribe belonged.
The difficulty in accepting this explanation arises largely from the notion that the Untouchables were always Untouchables. This difficulty will vanish if it is borne in mind that there was a time when the ancestors of the present day Untouchables were not Untouchables vis-a-vis the villagers but were merely Broken Men, no more and no less, and the only difference between them and the villagers was that they belonged to different tribes.
��