36 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
To sum up, the Congress could find only Rs. 43,381 out of Rs. 49½ lakhs which it spent for carrying out the Constructive otherwise known as the Bardoli Programme in which the uplift of the Untouchables was given so much prominence. Can there be a grosser instance of insincerity than this ? Where is the love for the Untouchables which the Congress professed for the Untouchables ? Where is the desire of the Congress to undertake the uplift of the Untouchables ? Would it be wrong to say that the Bardoli resolution was a fraud in so far as it related to the Untouchables ?
One is however bound to ask one question. Where was Mr. Gandhi when all this was happening to the cause of the Untouchables in the Congress Camp ? The question is very relevant because it was Mr. Gandhi who had laid stress, ever since he entered the Congress, upon the intimate relation between the winning of Swaraj and the abolition of Untouchability. In the Young India, which was Mr. Gandhi’s organ, of 3rd November
1921, Mr. Gandhi wrote :—
“Untouchability cannot be given a secondary place on the programme. Without the removal of the taint Swaraj is a meaningless term. Workers should welcome social boycott and even public execration in the prosecution of their work. I consider the removal of untouchability as a most powerful factor in the process of attainment of Swaraj.”
Accordingly, he had been exhorting the Untouchables not to join hands with the British against Swaraj but to make common cause with the Hindus and help to win Swaraj. In an article in Young India dated 20th October 1920, Mr. Gandhi addressed the Untouchables in the following terms :—
“There are three courses open to these down-trodden members of the nation. For their impatience they may call in the assistance of the slave-owning Government. They will get it, but they will fall from the frying pan into the fire. Today they are slaves of slaves. By seeking Government aid, they will be used for suppressing their kith and kin. Instead of being sinned against, they will themselves be the sinners. The Musalmans tried it and failed. They found that they were worse than before. The Sikhs did it unwittingly and failed. Today there is no more discontented community in India than the Sikhs. Government aid is, therefore, no solution.
The second is rejection of Hinduism and wholesale conversion to Islam or Christianity. And if a change of religion