742 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The untouchables by reason of their poverty became subject to slavery oftener than did the touchables. So that up to 1843 the untouchables in India had to undergo the misfortune of being held in double bondage-the bondage of slavery and the bondage of untouchability. The lighter of the bonds has been cut and the untouchable is made free from it. But because the untouchables of today are not seen wearing the chains of slavery on them, it is not to be supposed that they never did. To do so would be to tear off whole pages of history.
The first claim is not so widely made. But the second is. So great a social reformer and so great a friend of the untouchables as Lala Lajpat Rai in replying [1] to the indictment of the Hindu Society by Miss Mayo insisted that untouchability as an evil was nothing as compared with slavery and he fortified his conclusion by a comparison of the Negro in America with the untouchables in India and showed that his conclusion was true. Coming as it does from Lala Lajpat Rai the matter needs to be more closely examined.
Is untouchability less harmful than slavery ? Was slavery less human than untouchability ? Did slavery hamper the growth more than untouchability does ? Apart from the controversy raised by Lala Lajpat Rai, the questions are important and their discussions will be both interesting and instructive. To understand this difference it is necessary to begin by stating the precise meaning of the term slavery. This is imperative because the term slavery is also used in a metaphorical sense to cover social relationship which is kindered to slavery but which is not slavery. Because the wife was entirely in the power of the husband, because he sometimes ill-used her and killed her, because the husband exchanged or lent his wife and because he made her work for him, the wife was sometimes spoken of as a slave. Another illustration of the metaphorical use of the term is its application to serfs. Because a serf worked on fixed days, performed fixed services, paid fixed sums to the lord and was fixed to the land, he was spoken of as a slave. These are instances of curtailment of freedom, and inasmuch as they are akin to slavery because slavery
1 Unhappy India.