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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
power for his class. He knew that mere reservation will not do. He must prevent rivals shooting up from other non-Brahmin communities equally qualified to hold the posts and agitate and blow up the system of reservations. In addition to reserving all executive posts in the State for Brahmins a law was made whereby education was made the monopoly and privilege of Brahmins. As has already been pointed out the law made it a crime for the Shudra, i.e., the lower orders of Hindu Society to acquire learning, the infringement of which was followed by not only heavy but cruel and inhuman punishment such as cutting the tongue of the criminal and filling his ear with hot molten lead. It is true that these reservations do not exist under the British rule. But it must be admitted that though the reservations made by Manu have gone, the advantages derived from their continuance over several centuries have remained. In asking for reservations the servile classes are not asking for anything new or anything extraordinary. The demand for reservation is a demand for protection against the aggressive communalism of the governing class, which wants to dominate the servile class in all fields of life and without imposing on the governing class any such ignominious conditions as was done by the Brahmins for their own aggrandisement and for the perpetuation of their own domination on the Shudra, namely, to make it a crime for the governing class to learn or to acquire property.
This argument of naked efficiency has also to be considered from the point of view of public welfare. It was said by Campbell Bannerman in the course of a debate in the House of Commons on Ireland, that self-government is better than good government. The statement had become so popular in India that it had become more than a mere slogan. It had become a maxim. As it stands the statement is quite absurd. Campbell Bannerman was not contrasting self-government with good government. He was contrasting self-government with efficient government or rather with “resolute government” to use the phrase of his opponent Lord Salisbury. There is no denying that self-government must be good government, otherwise it is not worth having. The question is, how is good government to be had. Some people seem to be under the impression that as self-government is a sovereign government it is bound to result in good government. This is one of the greatest delusions from which most people in dependent