WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : APPENDIX I 301
constructive programme is amended in proper form, the work which I consider to be the most important plank in the Congress programme, will suffer.
Kindly place the following proposal before the President and if he allows it to be placed before the next meeting, of the All-India Congress Committee, I shall move it there—“Instead of the Note under item (4) of the Bardoli resolution substitute the following note:—
“The following demands of the Depressed Classes ought to be complied with at once, namely that ( a ) they are allowed to sit on the same carpet with citizens of other classes ; ( b ) they get the right to draw water from common wells and ( c ) their children get admission into National schools and Colleges and are allowed to mix freely with students drawn from the so-called higher castes.”
I want to impress upon the members of the All-India Congress Committee the great importance of this term. I know of cases where the Depressed Classes are in open revolt against tyranny of the socalled upper castes and unless the above demands are conceded to them, they will succumb to the machine of the bureaucracy.
After my first proposals were passed in the All-India Congress Committee Meeting on June 7th at Lucknow, I asked Mr. Patel to put my proposed amendment of Note to item (4) of Bardoli resolution before the meeting. He told me that the Working Committee would refer it to the Sub-Committee and asked me not to press it there. I agreed. But I have not received copy of my resolution of the Working Committee, referring my proposal to the Untouchability Sub-Committee.
The Untouchability question is very acute in and near Delhi and I have to grapple with it at once. But the Sub-Committee cannot begin work off-hand because the Working Committee has to take several other political situations in the country into consideration before deciding upon any scheme of practical measures to be adopted for uprooting Untouchability on behalf of the Congress. Under these circumstances, I cannot be of any use to the Sub-Committee and beg to resign from membership.
Yours sincerely, Delhi, Jan. 30. S HRADHANAND S A N YASI .
(2) S ECRETARY ’ S R EPLY
D EAR S WAMIJI,
Your letter, dated June 1922 received in my office on the 30th of that month, has by a resolution of the Working Committee passed in Bombay on the 18th instant been referred to me with instructions to explain facts and request you to be good enough to reconsider your resignation from the Depressed Classes Sub-Committee.