484 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
representation to the whole body of people who were in the census designated as “depressed classes”, which would have meant a very large division in the share of representation of the general Hindu population, or whether we were going to cut that class into something more precise, more definite, something which represented what were known as classes with disabilities imposed upon them and not those which were merely backward? Therefore, a decision was taken that the representation should be given only to what, were really untouchables and to no others. Now, some people did not like the word “untouchables”. They said, “We do not want that word ‘untouchables’.” So we had a term known as the “excluded classes”. That the Hindus did not like. They said: “These are our blood brothers and you must not have a terminology which would indicate that they are outside us.” And so we devised this phrase—scheduled castes—and I might say that to some extent I was responsible for it. I said, if you do not want the word untouchables, and if you do not want the term excluded classes, then have this term of scheduled castes. After all, they will have to be scheduled. Consequently the enumeration which is contained in the 1935 Act Order in Council for scheduled castes has been drafted with the greatest care and attention and I have no doubt in my mind that there is no community which is omitted from it which as a matter of fact ought to have been included, nor added any which ought not to have been added. It is as exact a classification as one could make. I may tell my friend Dr. Deshmukh that while sitting here I was myself making some mathematical calculations in order to find out what variations there were from the list contained in the Order in Council following the Government of India Act, 1935 and the list produced or rather notified by the President. Now I find that so far as these lists are concerned, this is the position. Unfortunately here it is done in the alphabetical order while there it was shown presidency-wise. Well, in Assam there are
15 communities listed in the order issued by the President. I do not find that any single community which was included in the Order in Council has been omitted. All of them are there.