WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A POLITICAL CHARITY 143
the Depressed Classes Mission Society which like the Harijan Sevak Sangh was also engaged in doing welfare work among the Untouchables. Hindus and Untouchables both worked together in perfect harmony towards furthering the work of the Mission. The writer is not quite correct when he says that this was due to the Depressed Classes Mission having always taken care to have on its Managing Committee a certain number of Untouchables. This is quite true. But the reason why there was no hostility between the Mission and the Untouchables and why there is between the Untouchables and the Sangh is quite different. It lies in the fact that the Mission had ho political objective behind its work but the Sangh has.
It is true that the original intention was to keep the Sangh scrupulously aloof from politics. It was stated in the statement issued on 3rd November 1932 that:—
“The League may be able to carry on its work on a nonparty basis, it has decided not to associate itself with politics or religious propaganda of any kind. The heads of Provincial as well as Central Executive will, therefore, have to be very careful in the selection of their active workers. With this object in view it is necessary that all whole-time paid workers of the League should not take part in politics or in any sectional or religious propaganda.”
But this pronouncement was respected more in its breach than in the observance thereof. It may be that it was impossible to resist the temptation of using the Harijan Sevak Sangh for bringing the Untouchables into the Congress fold, make them accept Congress politics and impress upon them Congress ideologies, especially when the sense of gratitude for service rendered, no matter how petty, would make them receptive for such processes. It may be that it was necessary to make the Harijan Sevak Sangh a political manufactory in addition to its being a service station for the Untouchables. To have equipped the Untouchables for their struggle in life and to have left them free to choose their politics would be charity pure and simple. But how long would the Hindus have supported such a charity ? Not very long. There being no sense of sin behind the treatment of Untouchables by the Hindus and no cause for repentance or expiation, the charity on which the Sangh lives would have dried out. To prevent this the Sangh may have felt that to get continued charity it