PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 933
have been much better if my friend had expressly stated that the Bill was intended to remove any kind of a bar against the exercise of any civil and constitutional rights. I would just like to read to him a provision from the Civil Rights Bill as they call it in the United States. This is how the provision reads. Don’t read the title page of the book—it will hurt you. It is the United States Constitution Amendment XIV taken from Government of Ireland Act, 1920 and also Professor Keith’s Command Paper. This is how that provision reads. I have of course converted it to make it applicable to the untouchables but the original is taken from the text of the Civil Rights Bill :
“All subjects of the State are equal before the law and possess equal civil rights. Any existing enactment, regulation, order, customs or interpretation of law by which any penalty, disadvantage, disability is imposed upon or any discrimination is made against any subject of the State on account of untouchablity, shall, as from the day on which this Constitution comes into operation, cease to have any effect”.
I think such a positive statement was necessary. It is no doubt contained in article 13 but there can be no harm in repeating the whole of that article 13 with such amendments as are necessary in this Bill. I don’t know why the Bill is silent. The Bill seems to give the appearance that it is a Bill of a very minor character, just a dhoby not washing the cloth, just a barber not shaving or just a mithaiwala not selling laddus and things of that sort. People would think that these are trifles and piffles and why has Parliament hothered and wasted its time in dealing with dhobies and barbers and ladduwalas. It is not a Bill of that sort. It is a Bill which is intended to give protection with regard to civil and fundamental rights and therefore, a positive clause, I submit, ought to have been introduced in this Bill, which the Bill does not have now in its present form. That is one ommission which I think requires to be made good. The other omission, which, I find, is of a very grave character, is that there is no provision against social boycott. Now I feel from my experience that one of the greatest and the heinous means which the village community applies in order to prevent the scheduled castes from exercising these rights is social boycott. They boycott