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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
it has always been the intention of the Congress to secure, through the Constitution to be framed by Indians themselves, such protection for their rights as may prove acceptable to the minorities.
His Majesty’s Government find it impossible to accept this position. The long-standing British connexion with India has left His Majesty’s Government with obligations towards her which it is impossible for them to shed by disinteresting themselves wholly in the shaping of her future form of Government. Moreover, one outstanding result of the recent discussions in which the Governor-General has been engaged with representatives of all parties and interests in India has been to establish beyond doubt the fact that a declaration in the sense proposed, with the summary abandonment by His Majesty’s Government of their position in India, would be far from acceptable to large sections of the Indian population.”
(9)
Extract from the Speech made by H. E. Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy and Governor-General at the Orient Club, Bombay, on January 10, 1940.
“Nor must we forget the essential necessity, in the interests of Indian unity, of the inclusion of the Indian States in any Constitutional scheme.
There are the insistent claims of the minorities.
I need refer only to two of them—the great Muslim minority and the Scheduled Castes—there are the guarantees that have been given to the minorities in the past; the fact that their position must be safeguarded, and that those guarantees must be honoured.
(10)
Extract from a Speech made by the Right Hon’ble Mr. L. S. Amery, Secretary of State for India in the House of Commons on August 14, 1940.
“Congress leaders… have built up a remarkable organization, the most efficient political machine in India… if only they had succeeded, if the Congress could, in fact speak, as it professes to speak, for all the main elements in India’s national life, then however advanced their demands, our problem would have been in many respects far easier than it is to-day. It is true that they are numerically the largest single party in British India, but their claim in virtue of that fact to speak for India is utterly denied by very