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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
relation to the servile classes (2) The relation of the governing class to the Congress and (3) The raison d’etre of the political demands of the servile classes for constitutional safeguards.
Regarding the first enough has been said to enable the foreigner to form his own opinion. The thesis I have endeavoured to present and to support with facts and arguments may be simply stated. It maintains that the only way to ensure that a sovereign and independent India will be a different India in which there will be no servile class doing duty to the governing class, is to frame a constitution which will by proper safeguards, circumscribe the power of the governing class to capture government and to put a limit upon its predatory powers. This is what the Untouchables are urging and this is what the Congress is opposing. The whole controversy between the Congress and the Untouchables centres round the question of constitutional safeguards. The issue is : Is the constitution of India to be with safeguards or without safeguards for the Scheduled Castes? The foreigner does not realize this to be the issue nor does he realize that the alleged representative character of the Congress is absolutely irrelevant to the issue. The Congress may be a representative body but that has nothing to do with the decision of the issue, whether the constitution of India should or should not contain any safeguards for the Scheduled Castes. For the decision of this issue, the representative character of the Congress is beside the point. The decision can rest only on the basis of needs and the question that will be relevant is: Do the Scheduled Castes need the safeguards they have been asking for? The foreigner is not justified in supporting the Congress as against the Scheduled Castes on the ground that the Congress is a representative body. The foreigner is, of course, justified in asking the Scheduled Castes to prove their case for safeguards. He is even justified in saying that the existence of a governing class is not enough and that they must further prove something that the governing class in India is so vile, so wicked, so entrenched that it will not yield to the forces of adult suffrage. Such a stand it is proper to take and the Scheduled Classes are prepared to face it. For, beyond doubt, the governing class in India does occupy a different position in India than it does in other countries of the world. In other countries, there is, at the most, a hyphen between the governing class and the rest. In India, there is a