76 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
“Of what good is such a Government to anybody ?” he asked the Conference. At this the British representatives looked at one another. There was a stir among the Indian representatives. “It was a Government,” continued Dr. Ambedkar, “which did realize that the capitalists were denying the workers a living wage and decent conditions of work and which did realize that the landlords were squeezing the masses dry, and yet it did not remove social evils that blighted the lives of the down-trodden classes for several years. Although it had,” he proceeded, “the legal powers to remove these evils, it did not amend the existing code of social and economic life, because it was afraid that its intervention would give rise to resistance.” He threrefore, declared : We must have a Government in which the men in power will give their undivided allegiance to the best interests of the country. We must have a Government in which men in power, knowing where obedience will end and resistance will begin, will not be afraid to amend the social and economic ‘ code of life which the dictates of justice and expendiency so urgently call for.”
Dr. Ambedkar upheld the demand for Dominion Status, but expressed doubts as to whether the Depressed Classes would be heir to it unless the political machinery for the new constitution was of a special make. While making that constitution, it should be noted, he observed, that the Indian society which was formed with an ascending scale of reverence and a descending scale of contempt and was a gradation of castes, gave no scope for the growth of the sentiment of equality and fraternity, and the intelligentsia which came of the upper strata and conducted political movements had not shed its narrow particularism of castes. Hence he asserted : “We feel nobody can remove our grievances as well as we can, and we cannot remove them unless we get political powers in our own hands. I am afraid the Depressed Classes have waited too long for time to work its miracle!”
Referring to the Indian deadlock, he recalled the memorable words of Edmund Burke whom he called the greatest teacher of political philosophy that “ the use of force is but temporary”