914 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
with these bayonets except sit on them. “Now, you have created these peasant proprietors. You can’t sit on them : they will sit on you. You have bungled and bungled most wrongly notwithstanding the advice of many people not to do it. But just to win political elections, you did it and you are bearing the fruits of it now. However, this limitation of holdings therefore is an impossible thing.
I happened to study the report of the United Provinces Tenancy Committee appointed by my friend Mr. Govind Vallabh Pant. I know every line of it and I wonder whether the people who raised the cry that holdings ought to be limited know anything about the facts of it. What is the average holding in Uttar Pradesh ? The lowest is about 1 acre and the highest is about four or five acres. That is all that there is and the further fact is that every inch of land in the U. P. has been under cultivation and in occupation. You can do nothing there and that I am sure, is the case in most of the other States. Therefore my submission to the Hon. the Home Minister is this that unless you want to go on fooling the Scheduled Castes by telling them, ‘Oh, keep quiet, we are going to give you a peice of land. Either we will have a ceiling ot we will finance your purchase. We will do this or do that, unless you want to go on fooling them like this, you ought to think of some other method of doing that. This is a problem which you must solve and if you do not solve it, you know what consequences there might be—most evil consequences. The fire is burning outside; it may easily come in and the Scheduled Castes may carry the banner and you and your Constitution will go under. Nothing will remain.
Now, Sir, I am going to make one suggestion to my hon. friend and it is this. I find from the Planning Commission’s Report that a very large amount of what might be called cultivable waste is to be found in this country. According to the Planning Commission it is 98 million acres. Now, my suggestion to my friends is this. The Government is going, I understand, to amend the Constitution. They are fond of amending the Constitution. Why have a Constitution at all, I do not understand, if you are amending it every Saturday ? However, as you are amending it, I suggest that you amend