PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 909
has sanctioned about Rs. 50 lakhs for the year 1953-54 for the purposes of carrying on propaganda against untouchability. The scheme, I understand, is that a part of the money is given to private agencies choosen by the State Governments and part of the money is given to all-India or Organisations directly by the Government of India. That is the scheme. I have no idea what my hon. friend means by the abolition of untouchability. What is untouchability ? Let us understand it very carefully. Untouchability, so far as I understand it, is a kind of a mental disease of the Hindus. It is not a disease from which I am suffering, not any tumour which I have got, not a rheumatic pain or any of the physical disabilities which can be removed but it is a mental twist; every Hindu believes that to observe untouchability is the right thing. I do not understand how my friend is going to untwist the twist which the Hindus have got for thousands of years; unless they are all sent to some kind of a mental hospital, it is very difficult to cure them and I do not want them to be sent there. Therefore, let us understand what we talk and what we are doing. Besides, all must realise that untouchability is founded on religion. There is no doubt about it and let us not be ashamed of realising it. Manu, in his law book, very difinitely prescribes untouchability. He said that the untouchables shall live outside the village, that they shall have only earthen pots, that they shall not have clean clothes, that they shall beg for their food and so on and I canot see how you blame the Hindus. For thousands of years, by the teaching of this dirty law. they have got inculcated in their mind the doctrine that untouchability is a most sacred thing. The Hindu has been taught that the most pious and best of life is that of a rat who lives in a hole, unconnected with anyone, he must not touch this, he must not touch that, he must not eat this, he must not eat that, etc. and this is a kind of life which a rat observes by living in a hole. A rat would not allow another rat to come into its own house. That is the position and all that we can do is to see that untouchability which, as I said, is a mental twist of the Hindus does not protrude so much into public life as to involve the civil liberties of the people.