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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
‘best’ by the Jews ? There can hardly be any doubt as to the correct answer to these questions. Class qualifications can never be ignored. Man is not a mere machine. He is a human being with feelings of sympathy for some and antipathy for others. This is even true of the ‘best’ man. He too is charged with the feelings of class sympathies and class antipathies. Having regard to these considerations the ‘best’ man from the governing class may well turn out to be the worst from the point of view of the servile classes. The difference between the governing classes and the servile classes in the matter of their attitudes towards each other is the same as the attitude a person of one nation has for that of another nation. Persons of the governing class in parodying the demands of the servile classes seem to forget that the difference between the governing class and the servile class in India is of the same nature as the difference between French and Germans, Turks and Greeks or Poles and Jews and the reasons why one will not tolerate the government of the other although it may be of the ‘best’ men are the same in both cases.
The governing class in their attempt to ridicule the demand also forget by what means it has built up their power. Let them refer to their own Manu Smriti and they will find that the ways they got their power were very much the same as the imaginary resolutions suggested by Dr. Paranjpe. A reference to Manu Smriti will show that the view that Brahmins, the chief and the leading element in the governing class, acquired their political power not by force of intellect—intellect is nobody’s monopoly—but by sheer communalism. According to the Laws Manu Smriti the post of the Purohit, King’s Chaplain and Lord Chancellor, the posts of the Chief Justice and Judges of the High Court and the posts of Ministers to the Crown were all reserved for the Brahmins. Even for the post of the Commander-in-Chief the Brahmin was recommended as a fit and a proper person though it was not in terms reserved for him. All the strategic posts having been reserved for the Brahmins it goes without saying that all ministerial posts came to be reserved for the Brahmins. This is not all. The Brahmin was not content with reserving places of profit and power for his class. He knew that mere reservation will not do. He must prevent rivals shooting up from other nonBrahmin communities equally qualified to hold the posts