668 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
us—the Jats, the Moghuls, the Turks, the English and others—they have perhaps assimilated many of the good points in us and they have enabled us to assimilate many of their own good points, so that the confluence of these cultures over a thousand years has enriched, both in volume and in content, the stream of our own national culture. Now, we are the inheritors of this proud heritage. How shall we deal with it ? Is there a philosophy behind it or is it merely a random growth ?—an accretion of conditions, an amorphous composition in which parallel forces are in juxtaposition without organically combining with one another or is it a solution and an assimilation of all the various factors, with the merits dissolved and the demerits left on the surface ? These are the points which we have to consider. Have we considered these points before embarking upon this mighty reform? Who has initiated this reform ? When was it initiated ? In whose time was it initiated ? Has it been taken up after the National Government has come into being, or is it merely a legacy of the past Government which we have taken on hand through the Secretariat ? What is our initiative ? What is our part in dealing with it ? Society, I told you, is a living organism. It has certain philosophical truths behind it. It has economic propositions before it. Take Hindu society. Have you come across any society in the world which is more socialistic, inherently and internally, than Hindu society ?
I have got fifty acres of land. I have got two sons. My two sons are each heirs to only twenty-five acres. My first son has four sons. Each boy gets only six acres. Is property allowed to accumulate in our system of inheritance ? Not at all. It is a socialistic structure of the supremost kind. You want to destroy this socialistic structure and then you want to substitute an individualistic civilisation where each man owns his property, where property is inherited not by birth, but by survivorship. What happens ? Individualistic property comes into being. Perhaps the next step will be Dr. Ambedkar’s Bill on a law of progeniture for the common man. Then you will create and maintain an aristocracy. You bring into existence a class society, not a classless society. A classless society where learning and property, learning and wealth are well balanced gives place to a society in which wealth reigns supreme. That is exactly what happens in the West. That is exactly what cannot happen in the East. Here, through a system of social organisation, we have balanced the wealth and the culture, and then having brought them into existence, we have attached greater