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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Under the British Government and by reason of its equalitarian jurisprudence these rights, immunities and privileges of the Brahmins have ceased to exist. Nonetheless the advantages they gave still remain and the Brahmin is still pre-eminent and sacred in the eyes of the servile classes and is still addressed by them as “Swami” which means ‘Lord.’
The second test gives an equally positive result. To take only the Madras Presidency by way of illustration. Consider Table 18 (see page 213). It shows the distribution of gazetted posts between the Brahmins and the other communities in the year 1943. Similar data from the other provinces could also be adduced to support this conclusion. But it is unnecessary to labour the point. Whether the Brahmins accept or deny the status the facts that they control the State and that their supremacy is accepted by the servile classes, are enough to prove that they form the governing class.
It is of course impossible for the Brahmins to maintain their supremacy as a governing class without an ally to help them on account of their being numerically very small. Consequently, as history shows, the Brahmins have always had other classes as their allies to whom they were ready to accord the status of a governing class provided they were prepared to work with them in subordinate co-operation. In ancient and mediaeval times they made such an alliance with the Kshatriyas or the warrior class and the two not merely ruled the masses, but ground them down to atoms, pulverized them so to say—the Brahmin with his pen and the Kshatriya with his sword. At present, Brahmins have made an alliance with the Vaishya class called Banias. The shifting of this alliance from the Kshatriya to the Bania is in the changed circumstances quite inevitable. In these days of commerce money is more important than sword. That is one reason for this change in party alignment. The second reason is the need for money to run the political machine. Money can come only from and is in fact coming from the Bania. If the Bania is financing the Congress it is because he has realized—and Mr. Gandhi has taught him—that money invested in politics gives large dividends. Those who have any doubt in the matter might do well to read what Mr. Gandhi told Mr. Louis Fischer on June 6,
- In his book A Week with Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Fischer