WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A PLEA TO THE FOREIGNERS 209
Mrs. Vijaya Laxmi Pandit. Nor is Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel free from the feeling that he belongs to the governing class. Mr. Tilak is held out as the father of the Swaraj movement. Pandit Nehru and Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel are the leading members of the Congress High Command. Not only are they conscious of the fact that they belong to the governing class but some of them hold that the servile classes are a contemptible people, who must remain servile and who must never aspire to rule. Indeed, they have felt no shame and no remorse in giving public expression to such views. In 1918, when the NonBrahmins and the Backward Classes had started an agitation for separate representation in the Legislature, Mr. Tilak in a public meeting held in Sholapur said he did not understand why the oil pressers, tobacco shopkeepers, washermen, etc.— that was his description of the Non-Brahmins and the Backward Classes—should want to go into the Legislature. In his opinion, their business was to obey the laws and not to aspire for power to make laws. In 1942, Lord Linlithgow invited 52 important Indians representing different sections of the people to discuss what steps could be taken to make the Central Government more popular with a view to enlist the sympathy and co-operation of all Indians in war effort. Among those that were invited were members belonging to the Scheduled Castes. Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel could not bear the idea that the Viceroy should have invited such a crowd of mean men. Soon after the event, Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel made a speech in Ahmedabad and said [3 ] :—
“The Viceroy sent for the leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha, he sent for the leaders of the Muslim League, and he sent for Ghanchis (oil pressers), Mochis (cobblers) and the rest.”
Although Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel in his malicious and stinging words referred only to Ghanchis and Mochis, his speech is indicative of the general contempt in which the governing class and the members of the Congress High Command hold
Sitaramaya ought to know what he is saying. Not only is Pandit Nehru conscious of the fact that he is a Brahmin but his sister Mrs. Vijaya Laxmi Pandit, also seems to be conscious that she is a Brahmin. It is said that at the All-India Women’s Conference held in Delhi in December 1940, the question of not declaring one’s caste in the Census Return was discussed. Mrs. Pandit disapproved of the idea and said she did not see any reason why she should not be proud of her Brahmin blood and declare herself as a Brahmin at the Census—See Sense and Nonsense in Politics ” Serial No. XII by Mr. J.E. Sanjana in the Rast Rahabar (a Bombay Gujarathi Weekly), 14th January ‘45.
3 Quoted by Mr. Sanjana in Sense and Nonsense in Politics.