454
DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
records very revealing answers to some of his most interesting and pertinent questions. Mr. Fischer writes [1] :
“I said I had several questions to ask him (Mr. Gandhi) about the Congress Party. Very highly placed Britishers, I recalled, had told me that Congress was in the hands of big business and that Mr. Gandhi was supported by the Bombay Millowners who gave him as much money as he wanted. ‘What truth is there in these assertions,’ I asked, ‘Unfortunately, they are true,’ he declared simply. ‘Congress hasn’t enough money to conduct its work. We thought in the beginning to collect four annas (about eight cents) from each member per year and operate on that. But it hasn’t worked.’ ‘What proportion of the Congress budget,’ I asked, ‘is covered by rich Indians ?’ ‘Practically all of it,’ he stated ‘In this ashram, for instance, we could live much more poorly than we do and spend less money. But we do not and the money comes from our rich friends.’ ”
Being dependent on his money, it is impossible for the Brahmin to exclude the Bania from the position of a governing class. In fact, the Brahmin has established not merely a working but a cordial alliance with the Bania. The result is that the governing class in India to-day is a Brahmin-Bania instead of a Brahmin-Kshatriya combine as it used to be.
Enough has been said to show who constitute the governing class in India. The next inquiry must be directed to find out how the governing class fared in the elections to the Provincial Legislatures that took place in 1937.
The elections that took place in 1937 were based on a franchise which though it was neither universal nor adult was wide enough to include classes other than the governing class, certainly wider than any existing prior to 1937. The elections based on such a franchise may well be taken as a test to find out how the governing class fared as against the servile classes in this electoral contest.
Unfortunately, no Indian publicist has as yet undertaken to compile an Indian counterpart of Dodd’s Parliamentary Manual. Consequently, it is difficult to have precise particulars regarding the caste, occupation, education and social status of members of the legislature elected on the Congress ticket. The matter is so important that I thought of collecting the
- A Week With Gandhi (1943), p. 41.