WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : 15 A STRANGE EVENT
degraded owing to that treatment and as they are behind the rest of the people in point of education, being unable to secure fair opportunities for their improvement, this public meeting of the Depressed Classes strongly feels that in the scheme of reform and reconstitution of the Legislative Councils which Government may be pleased to adopt, due regard be paid to the interests of the said classes. This meeting therefore prays the British Government to be so gracious as to protect those interests by granting to those classes the right to elect their own representatives to the said Councils in proportion to their numbers.”
“ Fourth Resolution unanimously carried at the meeting was : ‘That the Government be prayed for the adoption, with all convenient speed, of a compulsory and free system of education rendered necessary by the fact that the social elevation of any community depends upon the universal spread of education among its members and that degradation of the Depressed Classes is due to their illiteracy and ignorance.”
“ Fifth Resolution carried unanimously was as follows:— ‘That the Chairman of this public meeting be authorised to request the Indian National Congress to pass at its forthcoming session a distinct and independent resolution declaring to the people of India at large the necessity, justice, and righteousness of removing all the disabilities imposed by religion and custom upon the Depressed Classes, those disabilities being of a most vexatious and oppressive character, subjecting those classes to considerable hardship and inconvenience by prohibiting them from admission into public schools, hospitals, courts of justice and public offices, and the use of public wells, etc. These disabilities social in origin, amount in law and practice to political disabilities and as such fall legitimately within the political mission and propaganda of the Indian National Congress.”
“ Sixth Resolution prays all Hindus of the castes other than the Untouchables and Depressed, especially those of the higher castes, who claim political rights, to take steps for the purpose of removing the blot of degradation from the Depressed Classes, which has subjected those classes to the worst, of treatment in their own country.”
The second meeting was also held in November 1917 a week or so after the first meeting. The Chairman was one Bapuji Namdeo Bagade a leader of the Non-Brahmin Party. At this meeting the following resolutions [1] were unanimously adopted :—
“(1) Resolution of loyalty to the British throne.”
1 Ibid p. 75.