PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 371
Shri Naziruddin Ahmad : Doctors differ in this respect.
Dr. Ambedkar: I shall give another illustration which was recently reported in Bombay. In a place near Thana there was trouble going on between caste Hindus and the Scheduled Castes over the taking of water from a particular well. With the help of the police the Scheduled Castes there were able to secure their right to take water from that well along with the caste Hindus. The caste Hindus did not like the matter. They wanted the well to be exclusively used by them. Two days ago there was a report in the Bombay Press wherein it was stated that some caste Hindus incited some of their men to drop into it some kind of poisonous weeds. The result was that the whole water was poisoned and some of the Scheduled Caste people who drank the water suffered from the effect of the poison. I want to ask both of them whether they would limit their definition of incitement to violence, or whether they would extend it to cover where one community does something in order to harm and injure another community.
Dr. S. P. Mookerjee: In such a case you and I will go there to prevent it.
Dr. Ambedkar: You and I cannot go everywhere. You will be engaged in fighting the elections and I may be doing something else and we will have no time to go to the rescue of those people. It is no use taking the responsibility on our shoulders. It is much better that the law provides for it.
Then with regard to particular laws, I and my colleagues or the Treasury Benches have been shouting time and over again that in this Bill what we are doing is to merely confirm capacity on Parliament to make laws for certain purposes. We are not enacting particular laws. We are not even protecting the laws as they exist today. But somehow Members who are determined to oppose. Members who are determined to take the opposite view—if they will forgive me—out of pure obstinacy are not able to make this distinction between capacity to legislate and making a particular law.
Dr. S. P. Mookerjee: The obstinacy is yours not to understand.
The House then adjourned till Half Past Three of the Clock.