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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
demands of the Untouchables for as a party to the Poona Pact Mr. Gandhi must be assumed to have conceded that the Untouchables are a separate element in the national life of India. This is a complete misunderstanding. For there are grounds to believe that the Poona Pact has made no difference in Mr. Gandhi’s view and he still maintains the same attitude to the Untouchables’ claim for political safeguards as he did at the Round Table Conference and before the Poona Pact. These grounds have their foundation in the fact that when His Majesty’s Government declared in 1940 that the Untouchables are a separate element in the National life of India and that their consent to the Constitution is necessary Mr. Gandhi came out with a protest. When the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow referred to the Untouchables as a separate element and said that their consent to the Constitution was necessary, Mr. Gandhi said [1] :—
“I felt that the putting up by the Viceroy, and then the Secretary of State of want of agreement by the Congress with the Princes, the Muslim League and even the Scheduled Classes as a barrier to the British recognition of India’s right to freedom was more than unjust to the Congress and the people.”
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“The introduction of the Scheduled Classes in the controversy has made the unreality of the case of the British Government doubly unreal. They know that these are the special care of the Congress, and that the Congress is infinitely more capable of guarding their interests than the British Government. Moreover, the Scheduled Classes are divided into as many castes as the Caste Hindu Society. No single Scheduled classes member could possibly and truthfully represent the innumerable castes.”
The argument advanced by Mr. Gandhi is puerile. It may be pointed out that in the hurry he made in stating his opposition to the position assigned to the Scheduled Castes by the Viceroy, Mr. Gandhi forgot that if the Scheduled Castes are divided into many castes and no single caste could represent them all, the case of the Muslims and the Indian Christians is in no way different. The Muslims are divided into three groups: (1) Sunnis; (2) Shias and (8) Momins each of which consists of many castes who interdine but do not intermarry. Indian Christians are divided into (1) Catholics, and (2) Pro 1 Harijan, dated 13th Ootober 1940,