136 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
to improve the condition of these people. But we can place no faith in special committees. Have I not indicated to the Council how wide are the problems, and how impossible it would be to deal with them by means of Committees ? The problems extend over me whole range of Government from top to bottom. What I say is that, while extending our sympathy to the objects aimed at by the Hon’ble Mr. Dadabhoy, we can go no further than promise to refer the question to Local Governments, and ask them whether they can do more than they are doing. That is as far as we can go, and with that assurance, I will ask the Hon’ble Member to withdraw his Resolution.”
The second time the Untouchables are mentioned in the proceedings of the Legislature was in 1928 when Mr. M. R. Jayakar moved the following Resolution :—
“This Assembly recommemds to the Governor-General in Council to issue directions to all Local Governments to provide special facilities for the education of the Untouchables and other depressed classes, and also for opening all public services to them, specially the Police.”
On this occasion the Government of India was no more enthusiastic than it was in 1916. Mr. G. S. Bajpai, speaking on behalf of the Government of India said :—
“The Local Governments are alive to their responsibility, they are doing what they can. It is not my privilege to claim for them that they have achieved the ideal, but I do claim that there is an awakening and an awakened and roused sense of responsibility and a roused sense of endeavour for improving the position of these depressed classes. That being so, it is no function to interfere by direction or by demand. They (i.e. the Government) can, if the House wishes, communicate to them the views of the House on this very national problem.”
For this speech, Mr. Bajpai, according to the official report of the proceedings, was cheered ! !
Such is the record of the British Government in the matter of social Reform. What a miserable record it is ? How meagre a record it is; Six social Laws in sixty years of legislative activity ! ! From the very beginning, its attitude to social reform has been of a very halting character. It kept on some mask of a responsible Government up to 1860. After 1860 it threw off the mask. The Government would not move and reform came to a dead stop. In 1881 a great agitation was started in favour of legislation prohibiting child marriage. Rather than be pestered