POLITICAL GRIEVANCES 413
Out of 1,056 men in the I.C.S. there is only 1 from the Scheduled Castes. Such is the state of affairs so far as the I.C.S. is concerned.
In the matter of their recruitment to the central services the condition of the Scheduled Castes is equally bad. I do not propose to quote any figures. It is quite unnecessary to overburden this Memorandum with facts. For there is a clear admission on the part of the Home Department of the Government of India relating to this question. In one of their Office Memoranda relating to the recruitment of the different communities the Home Department say :—
“This Department are much concerned at the almost total lack of progress in the recruitment of the members of the Depressed Classes as revealed by the information available.”
The Memorandum from which the above statement is quoted is No. 4/5/38 Ests (s) and is dated 1st June 1939 and records a state of affairs as it existed on that date.
How is it that other communities have found a place in the services controlled by the Government of India ? What are the reasons for the exclusion of the Scheduled Castes ? As will be seen the reasons are to be found in the difference in the principles and methods for securing communal representation which the Government of India has adopted towards the Scheduled Castes and the other minority communities in India.
The principle of communal representation in the services centrally controlled came into operation in 1925 when the Government of India accepted a Resolution of Mr. Nair on the need of Communal Representation in Public Services moved in the Central Assembly on 10th March 1923 in which he complained that the Public Service was entirely monopolized by the Hindus, and particularly by the Brahmins, and that the other communities had found it extremely difficult to secure a footing. In pursuance of this Resolution the method adopted by the Government of India was to reserve one-third of all permanent vacancies for direct recruitment for the redress of communal inequalities.
This method of giving effect to the policy of Communal Representation in Public Services did not satisfy the non-Hindu communities. The matter was taken up at the Round Table Conference and a demand was made for devising a more effective method of gaining the object. This demand was accepted by the Secretary of State and by the Government of India and given effect to in Home Department Resolution No. F. 14-17-8-33 of 4th July 1934.