56
DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
principle though others regarded it as a pure prejudice but in other cases would not mind making the worst compromises on issues which appeared to others as matters of fundamental principle on which no compromise should be made.
Mr. Gandhi’s attitude to the demands of the Untouchables at the second session of the Round Table Conference furnishes the best illustration of this rather queer trait in his character. When the delegates assembled for the second session of the Round Table Conference the Federal Structure Committee met first. In the very first speech which he made in the Federal Structure Committee on 15th September 1931, Mr. Gandhi referred to the question of the Untouchables. Mr. Gandhi said :—
“The Congress has, from its very commencement, taken up the cause of the so-called ‘Untouchables.’ There was a time when the Congress had at every annual session as its adjunct the Social Conference, to which the late Ranade dedicated his energies, among his many other activities. Headed by him you will find, in the programme of the Social Conference, reform in connection with the ‘Untouchables’ taking a prominent place. But, in 1920, the Congress took a large step and brought in the question of the removal of untouchability as a plank on the political platform, making it an important item of the political programme. Just as the Congress considered the Hindu-Muslim unity—thereby meaning unity amongst all the classes—to be indispensable for the attainment of Swaraj, so also did the Congress consider the removal of the curse of untouchability as an indispensable condition for the attainment of full freedom. The position the Congress took up in 1920 remains the same today; and so you will see the Congress has attempted from its very beginning to be what it described itself to be, namely, national in every sense of the term.”
Anyone, who has perused how the Congress failed to carry out the 1922 programme for the uplift of the Untouchables which was included in the Bardoli programme and how it left it to the Hindu Maha Sabha, could have no hesitation in saying that what Mr. Gandhi said was untrue. The speech however gave no indication as to what line Mr. Gandhi was going to take on the demands presented by the Untouchables, although I could see the drift of it. [1] But he did not leave people long in
1 Before going to the First Session of the Round Table Conference I had an interview with Mr. Gandhi in Bombay in which he had told me that he was not in favour of regarding the Untouchables as a separate entity for political purposes.