WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : WHAT DO THE UNTOUCHABLES SAY ? 261
did not like to play the part of a champion and was averse to be even an ally of the Untouchables, the next thing he could have done, consistent with his proclaimed and much advertised sympathies for the Untouchables, was to be their friend. Again as a friend he could have taken up the attitude of benevolent neutrality—declining to fight but ready to render all help for getting the demand for safeguards accepted. Failing benevolent neutrality he could have taken the attitude of strict neutrality and could have told the Untouchables to get the safeguards if the Round Table Conference was prepared to give them and that he would neither help nor hinder. Abandoning all these sober considerations Mr. Gandhi came out as an open enemy of the Untouchables. How can the Untouchables regard such a man as their friend and ally ?
IV
That Mr. Gandhi’s anti-untouchability campaign has failed is beyond cavil. Even the Congress papers admit it. I give below a few quotations from some of them :
On 17th August 1939 Mr. B. K. Gaikwad, a member of the Scheduled Castes in the Bombay Legislative Assembly, asked a question as to how many temples in the Bombay Presidency were thrown open to the Untouchables since 1932 when Mr. Gandhi started his Temple-entry movement. According to the figures given by the Congress Minister the total number of temples thrown open was 142. Of these 121 were ownerless temples standing on the wayside, which were under the care of nobody in particular and which nobody used as places of worship. Another fact revealed was that not a single temple was thrown open to the Untouchables in Gujarat, the district which is the home of Mr. Gandhi.
Writing on 10th March 1940 the Harijan Bandu, Mr. Gandhi’s Gujarathi paper, said :
“The Untouchability of the ‘Harijans’ in the matter of entry into schools persists nowhere so much still as in Gujarat.” [1]
The Bombay Chronicle in its issue of 27th August 1940 re-produced an extract from a monthly letter of the Harijan Sevak Sangh. It
“States that Harijans of Godhavi in Ahmedabad District
1 Quoted from Sanjana’s Sense and Nonsense in Politics.