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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
were so persecuted by caste Hindus for sending their children to Local Board School that ultimately 42 Harijan families left that place...and went to the Taluka town of Sanand.”
On 27th August 1943, Mr. M. M. Nandgaonkar, a leader of the Untouchables residing in Thana in the Bombay Presidency and ex-Vice President of Thana Municipality was refused tea in a Hindu hotel. The Bombay Chronicle commenting upon this incident in its issue dated 28th August 1943 said :
“When Gandhiji fasted in 1932, some feverish attempts were made to have some temples and hotels opened to Harijans. Now the actual position is nearly what it used to be before with regard to temple entry and access to hotels. The cleanest Harijan is not admitted to temples and hotels. Yet many anti-Untouchability workers take a complacent view of these disabilities and patronisingly talk of ‘uplift first’ for Harijans, saying that when Harijans learn to be clean, their civic disabilities will fall off automatically. This is rank nonsense.”
Writing on the proceedings of the All-India Scheduled Castes Federation held in Cawnpore in January 1944 the Bombay Chronicle in its issue of 4th February 1944 said :
“But such is the passivity of Hindu society that both caste and Untouchability still thrive. Nay, several Hindu leaders... misguided by the interested propaganda by certain Britishers, still plead that there is some mysterious virtue in caste because Hindu culture has remained today. Else, they argue, caste would not have survived the shocks of centuries... It is most tragic to find that, in spite of all that Gandhiji and other reformers...have done, Untouchability still persists to no small extent. It is most rampant in villages... Even in a city like Bombay, a person known to be a sweeper, let alone a scavenger, however clean dressed he may be, is not allowed to enter a caste Hindu restaurant, nay, even an Irani’s restaurant for tea.”
The Untouchables have always said that Mr. Gandhi’s antiUntouchability campaign has failed. After 25 years of labour, hotels have remained closed, wells have remained closed, temples have remained closed and in very many parts of India— particularly in Gujarat—even schools have remained closed. The extracts produced from the papers form therefore a very welcome testimony especially because the papers are Congress papers. As they fully corroborate what the Untouchables have been saying on the point, nothing further need be said on the subject except to ask one question.