WHO’S WHO IN VICEROY’S COUNCIL 7
For over five years they offered satyagraha at the Kalaram Temple. They obstructed pilgrims at the great annual fair to such an extent that the fair could not be held, and they bathed at a ghat which, till then, had been closed to them, thereby “polluting” the waters of the sacred Godavari. Many, including a large number of women, went to jail, and although the untouchables were not given the right to enter the Temple, by the time the satyagraha was called off, they had shown that they could unite and had given the caste Hindus a bit of a jolt in no way tempered by their threat to sever their connection with Hinduism once and for all.
Political Activities
As the leader of the untouchables, Dr. Ambedkar has been prominent in politics. He was nominated to the Bombay Legislative Council in 1926, and eleven years later, elected to the Bombay Legislative Assembly as the representative of the Scheduled Castes from the city of Bombay. He fought for his people at the three Round Table Conferences in London and on the Joint Parliamentary Committee which drafted the Bill on which the Government of India Act of 1935 is based.
The most notable incident in his political career was his conflict with Mr. Gandhi over safeguards under the new Constitution. Dr. Ambedkar claimed certain political safeguards for the Scheduled Castes. As a protest against the provision which the British Government were about to make for safeguards, Mr. Gandhi started a fast to death. The result of the struggle was that Dr. Ambedkar and Mr. Gandhi agreed, under what is known as the Poona Pact, to joint electorates with reservation of seats for untouchables in elections to the Lower Houses of the Provincial Legislatures under the new Constitution.
At the first elections under the new Act, Dr. Ambedkar organised his followers in his own Province of Bombay and, to a lesser extent, in the Central Provinces. In Bombay, his Independent Labour Party secured 11 of the 15 seats reserved for the “Scheduled Castes.” In the Ratnagiri District, caste Hindu candidates put up by his Party actually captured two seats not reserved for the Depressed Classes. In the Central Provinces, most of the successful Depressed Class candidates were nonCongressmen and followers of Dr. Ambedkar.