934 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
them completely. It is a kind of non-co-operation. This is not merely my opinion but it is the opinion of a Committee that was appointed by the Bombay Government in order to investigate into the conditions of the scheduled castes and also of the depressed classes and aboriginal tribes. I might mention to the House that the late Thakkar Bapa was a member of this Committee and he had signed this report. I will just read only, one para from the report of that Committee which relates to the question of social boycott. It is paragraph 102. This is what the Committee said :
“Although we have recommended various remedies to secure to the depressed classes their rights to all public utilities, we fear that there will be difficulties in the way of their exercising them for a long time to come. The first difficulty is the fear of open violence against them by the orthodox classes. It must be noted that the scheduled castes form a small minority in every village opposed to which is a great majority of the orthodox who are bent on protecting their interests and dignity from any supposed invasion of the depressed classes at any cost. The danger of prosecution by the police has put a limitation upon the use of violence by the orthodox classes and consequently such cases are rare. The second difficulty arises from the economic position in which the depressed classes are found today. The depressed classes have no economic independence in most parts of the presidency. Some cultivate the land of the orthodox classes as their tenants at will. Others live on their earnings as farm labourers employed by the orthodox classes, and the rest subsist on the food or grain given to them by the orthodox classes in lieu of service rendered to them as village servants. We have heard of numerous instances where the orthodox classes have used their economic power as a weapon against those depressed classes in the villages when the latter have dared to exercise these rights and have evicted them from their land and stopped their employment and discontinued their remuneration as village servants. This boycott is often planned on such an extensive scale as to include the prevention of the depressed classes from using the commonly used paths and the stoppage of the sale of the necessaries of life by the village bania. According to the evidence, sometimes small causes suffice for the proclamation of a social boycott against the depressed classes. Frequently it follows on the exercise by the depressed classes of their right to the use of the common well; but cases have been by no means rare where stringent boycot has been proclaimed simply because a depressed class man has put on the sacred thread, has bought a piece of land, has put on good clothes or ornaments, or has carried a marriage procession with the bridegroom on the horse through the public street. We do not know