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DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
consent to this proposition. It seems to me that there are only two alternatives—either that this Minorities Committee should go on tackling the problem and trying to arrive at some satisfactory solution, if that is possible, and then, if that is not possible, the British Government should undertake the solution of that problem. We cannot consent to leave this to the arbitration of third parties whose sense of responsibility may not be the same as must be the sense of responsibility of the British Government.
“Prime Minister, permit me to make one thing clear. The Depressed Classes are not anxious, they are not clamorous, they have not started any movement for claiming that there shall be an immediate transfer of power from the British to the Indian people. They have their particular grievances against the British people and I think I have voiced them sufficiently to make it clear that we feel those grievances most acutely. But, to be true to facts, the position is that the Depressed Classes are not clamouring for transfer of political power. Their position, to put it plainly, is that we are not anxious for the transfer of power ; but if the British Government is unable to resist the forces that have been set up in the country which do clamour for transference of political power—and we know the Depressed Classes in their present circumstances are not in a position to resist that— then our submission is that if you make that transfer, that transfer will be accompanied by such conditions and by such provisions that the power shall not fall into the hands of a clique, into the hands of an oligarchy, or into the hands of a group of people, whether Muhammadans or Hindus ; but that that solution shall be such that the power shall be shared by all communities in their respective proportions. Taking that view, I do not see how I, for one, can take any serious part in the deliberation of the Federal Structure Committee unless I know where I and my community stand.”
The Prime Minister in his concluding observations said:—
“Let us adjourn, and I will call you together again. In the meantime what I would like would be if those of you are sitting opposite me, the representatives of the small minorities, would also try your hands.
“If there are any common agreements among yourselves, I would suggest that you circulate them.....It is not the British Government that is going to stand in the way of any agreement .. .Therefore what I would like you to have in your minds after the rather depressing statements to which we have listened, is this: That the British Government wants to go on; the