458 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
a scheme, at any rate in its extreme form. I would only note that it merely shifts the problem of permanent minorities to some-what smaller areas, without solving it.”
Again on April 23, 1941 he referred to it in his speech in the House of Commons and spoke about it in the following terms :—
“I am not concerned here to discuss the immense practical difficulties in the way of this so called Pakistan project nor need I go back to the dismal record of India’s history in the 18th century or to the disastrous experience of the Balkan countries before our eyes today in order to point out the terrible dangers inherent in any break up of the essential unity of India, at any rate in its relation to the outside world. After all, there is no British achievement in India of which we have reason to be proud than the unity.....we have given her.”
Such were the views of His Majesty’s Government only a year ago regarding Constituent Assembly and Pakistan.
It is quite obvious that the proposal for a Constituent Assembly is intended to win over the Congress, while the proposal for Pakistan is designed to win over the Muslim League. How do the proposals deal with the Depressed Classes ? To put it shortly, they are bound hand and foot and handed over to the Caste Hindus. They offer them nothing, stone instead of bread. For the Constituent Assembly is nothing short of a betrayal of the Depressed Classes. There can be no doubt as to what the position of the Depressed Classes will be in the Constituent Assembly nor can there be any doubt regarding the political programme of the Constituent Assembly. In the Constituent Assembly there may be no representatives of the Depressed Classes at all because no communal quotas are fixed by these proposals. If they are there they cannot have a free, independent and decisive vote. In the first place the representatives of the Depressed Classes will be in a hopeless minority. In the second place all decisions of the Constitutent Assembly are not required to be by a unanimous vote. A majority vote is enough to decide any question no matter what its constitutional importance is. It is clear that under this sytem the voice of the Depressed Classes in the Constituent Assembly cannot count. In the third place the present system of proportional representation by which the members to the Constituent Assembly are to be elected