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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The Working Committee added :—
“The Congress had proposed that minority rights should be amply protected by agreement with the elected representatives of the minorities concerned.”
This shows that even the Congress did not demand that the decision of minority rights should be included in the purview of the Constituent Assembly. His Majesty’s Government has, however, given them the additional right to decide this minority rights issue by a bare majority vote. With regard to the question of Pakistan, the same attitude is noticeable. The Muslim League did not demand that Pakistan must be conceded immediately. All that the Muslim League had asked for was that at the next revision of the Constitution, the Mussalmans should not be prevented from raising the question of Pakistan. The present proposals have gone a step beyond and distinctly give to the Muslim League the right to create Pakistan. These are constitutional proposals. They are intended to lead India to wage a total war in which Hindus, Mussalmans, Depressed Classes and Sikhs are called upon wholeheartedly to participate. Yet Sir Stafford Cripps, either with the consent or without the consent of His Majesty’s Government, has been making discrimination between major parties and minor parties. The major parties are those whose consent is necessary. Minor parties are those with whom consultation is believed to be enough. This is new distinction. Certainly it was never made in the prior pronouncements either of His Majesty’s Government or of the Viceroy. The pronouncement spoke of the “consent of the principal elements in the national life of India.”
So far as the Depressed Classes are concerned, I am not aware of any pronouncement in which the Depressed Classes were placed on a lower plane than the one given to the Mussalmans. I quote the following from the speech of the Viceroy made in Bombay on January 10, 1941, from which it will be seen that the Depressed Classes were bracketed with the Mussalmans :
“There are insistent claims of the minorities. I need refer only to two of them ; the great Muslim minority and the Scheduled Classes—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.”
This invidious distinction now sought to be made is a breach of faith with those minorities whose position has been lowered by this discrimination. From a constitutional point of view of total war, it is bound to cause more disaffection and disloyalty in the country. It is for the British to consider whether in this attempt to win the friendship of those who have probably already decided to choose