Congress Abandons Its Plan - Page 64

WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : 35 A SHABBY SHOW

30 lakhs which was spent in subsequent years. It is enough to say that never was there such an organized loot of public money. The point of immediate interest however is that the scrutiny of this list of grants does not show the amelioration of the Untouchables, which has been one of the purposes for which money has been advanced from the Swaraj Fund. One would have expected the Congress to make the amelioration of the Untouchables as the first charge on the Swaraj Fund. It should have at least made it a charge if not the first charge especially when thousands of rupees were spent on feeding briefless lawyers who were alleged to have given up practice in the cause of the nation without even an inquiry whether they had any, when thousands of rupees were spent to feed toddy drawers who had given up their profession for living on alms from public fund and many other wild cat schemes carrying the marks of dishonesty on their faces. But it did nothing of the kind. Instead, the Congress proposed that a separate fund should be started for the amelioration of the Untouchables. And what was to be the dimension of this separate Untouchable Fund ? The All-India Congress Committee fixed it at five lakhs. The Working Committee felt it was too big an amount for so unimportant and so unprofitable a work as the amelioration of the Untouchables and reduced its total to Rs. two lakhs. Two lakhs for sixty millions Untouchables!!

This was the grand sum that was fixed by the Congress for the salvage of the Untouchables. How much of this was actually appropriated ? Here are the figures :—