484 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
experts and one representative each of the Hindu and Muslim communities. The terms of reference of the Commission should be the Government of India Act of 1935 and they should be required to recommend what changes should be made in the Act as it stood.
Questions under (b) should be referred to a conference of the leaders of the different communities. If the conference failed to arrive at an agreed solution, His Majesty’s Government would have to make an award. This would no doubt be accepted if it were reasonable.
Dr. Ambedkar then described the position of the Scheduled Castes today. It was estimated that they numbered sixty million, though this figure was probably inaccurate, firstly, because there were no reliable statistics for the States and, secondly, because the census had become mixed up with politics. All these people were subject to very serious disabilities. In the villages they were without land and were virtually the slaves of the Caste Hindus. As an instance of the power of the latter, he said that when some Untouchables had escaped from their villages to take up well-paid work under the Military authorities, the Caste Hindus had managed to force them back to work for them. Owing to the preponderance of Caste Hindus in the Subordinate Police and Revenue Services the Government was already, from the point of view of the Untouchables, not a British but a Hindu one. An example had been the recent arrest of 100 of their boys in Bombay for throwing stones at Mr. Gandhi, when the police had also taken the opportunity to do considerable damage in the Scheduled Caste area of the city.
Politically, although the Scheduled Castes like the other communities, had been granted separate electorates in 1932, they had virtually been deprived of them by the Poona Pact.* Instead, they had got the system of double elections which meant that in the second election, in which all the Hindus voted, the Caste Hindus could nullify the result of the first election in which Untouchables were the only voters. He referred to the figures appended to the Working Committee’s resolution of April
2nd which showed, firstly, that in many cases the Congress Scheduled Caste candidates, though outvoted by the Federation candidates in the primary elections, had beaten them in the final elections : and, secondly, how small was the number of Scheduled
- See No. 45, note 3.