422 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
no bar for religious instruction being given. The only limitation which he advocates is that nobody should be compelled to attend them. If I have understood him correctly, that is the view he stands for. We have another view which is represented by my friend Mr. Man and Mr. Tajamul Husain. According to them, there ought to be no religious instruction at all, not even in institutions which are educational. Then there is the third point of view and it has been expressed by Prof. K. T. Shah, who says that not only no religious instruction should be permitted in institutions which are wholly maintained out of State funds, but no religious instruction should be permitted even in educational institutions which are partly maintained out of State funds.
Now, I take the liberty of saying that the draft as it stands, strikes the mean, which I hope will be acceptable to the House. There are three reasons, in my judgment, which militate against the acceptance of the view advocated by my friend Mr. Ismail, namely that there ought to be no ban on religious instructions, rather that religious instructions should be provided ; and I shall state those reasons very briefly.
The first reason is this. We have accepted the proposition which is embodied in article 21, that public funds raised by taxes shall not be utilised for the benefit of any particular community. For instance, if we permitted any particular religious instruction, say, if a school established by a District or Local Board gives religious instructions, on the ground that the majority of the students studying in that school are Hindus, the effect would be that such action would militate against the provisions contained in article 21. The District Board would be making a levy on every person residing within the area of that District Board. It would have a general tax and if religious instruction given in the District or Local Board was confined to the children of the majority community, it would be an abuse of article 21, because the Muslim community children or the children of any other community who do not care to attend these religious instructions given in the schools would be none-the-less compelled by the action of the District Local Board to contribute to the District Local Board funds.
The second difficulty is much more real than the first, namely the multiplicity of religions we have in this country. For instance, take a city like Bombay which contains a heterogeneous population believing in different creeds. Suppose for instance, there was a school in the City of Bombay maintained by the Municipality. Obviously, such a school