WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : 3 A STRANGE EVENT
from the abyss of degradation into which the cruel and utterly unjustified customs of the country had hurled them. Whether it was the spring-time of hope, or the summer of realisation to others, to these unfortunate creatures it was always the winter of black despair. It seemed a cruel irony of fate that those who were vociferously clamouring for the attainment or preservation of human rights themselves were so little mindful of the legitimate rights of others under them. Was it just or fair that a mute section of humanity should be left to suffer the very wrongs for whose redress others were shedding their blood in the battlefield ? Why, even the ‘untouchables,’ in spite of all that cruel custom had subjected them to, were human beings and children of the soil, in whose veins coursed the self-same ‘red-blood’ as in the veins of those who arrogated superiority to themselves. The Depressed Classes were entitled to the same privileges as their betters in worldly circumstances and could not be debarred from the birthright of man. It was a standing reproach to the Indians that they had any Depressed Classes at all, and it was for the extinction of this reproach that they prayed.”
Many people would wonder why I describe the passing of the Resolution by the Congress moved and supported in such eloquent terms, as a strange event. But those who know the antecedents will admit that it is not an improper description. It was strange for many reasons.
In the first place, the President of the Session was the late Mrs. Annie Besant. She was a well-known public figure and had many things for which she will be remembered by the future historian of India. She was the founder of the Theosophical Society which has its Home at Adyar. Mrs. Annie Besant was well-known for rearing up Mr. Krishnamurti, the son of a Brahmin retired Registrar for a future Massiah. Mrs. Annie Besant was known as the founder of the Home Rule League. There may be other things for which friends of Mrs. Annie Besant may claim for her a place of honour. But I don’t know, that she was ever a friend of the Untouchables. So far as I know she felt great antipathy towards the Untouchables. Expressing her opinion on the question whether the children of the Untouchables should or should not be admitted to the common school, Mrs. Annie Besant in an article headed ‘The Uplift of the Depressed Classes’ which appeared in the Indian Review for February 1909 said :—
“In every nation we find, as the basis of the social, Pyramid,