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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
saying that ‘Nation’ though one word means many classes. Philosophically it may be possible to consider a nation as a unit but sociologically it cannot but be regarded as consisting of many classes and the freedom of the nation if it is to be a reality must vouchsafe the freedom of the different classes comprised in it, particularly those who are treated as the servile classes. Consequently, it is foolish to take solace in the fact that because the Congress is fighting for the freedom of India, it is, therefore, fighting for the freedom of the people of India and of the lowest of the low.
The question whether the Congress is fighting for freedom has very little importance as compared to the question for whose freedom is the Congress fighting. This is a pertinent and necessary inquiry and it would be wrong for any lover of freedom to support the Congress without pursuing the matter and finding out what the truth is. But the foreigner who takes the side of the Congress does not care even to raise such a question. Why is the foreigner so indifferent to so important a question ? So far as I am able to judge, the reason for such indifference is to be found in the wrong notions of selfgovernment and democracy which are prevalent in the West and which form the stock-in-trade of the foreigner who takes interest in Indian Politics.
It is propounded by Western writers on Politics that all that is necessary for the realization of self-government is the existence among a people of what Grote called constitutional morality. By constitutional morality is meant [1] habits of “paramount reverence for the form of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities acting under and within those forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts— combined, too, with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, admits the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of constitution will be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own.” If in a populace these habits are present, then according to Western writers on Politics, self-government can be a reality and nothing further need be considered. Similarly, Western writers on democracy believe that what is necessary for the realization of the ideal of demo 1 Grote History of Greece, Vol. III, p. 347.