136 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
proviso attached to it, and concluded his letter by saying that “pending the arrival of your reply I will try to hold the storm of indignation that is bursting over my head from the Depressed Classes from all parts of India from bursting in public.” [1]
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar has issued the following statement from Bombay, on Tuesday the 23rd August 1932, on the Communal Award :—
“No one expected the Communal Award to be everything to everybody and I myself was prepared for some variations in the proposals made by me and my Colleague Rao Bahadur Srinivasan at the Round Table Conference on behalf of the Depressed Classes. But the Communal Award has ruthlessly scaled down their representation in the Provincial Legislatures to quite insignificant proportions. The result is that the Communal Award creates positive grievances by refusing to them adequate representation.
“1 see no justification for this enormity. What has, however, shocked me most is the denial of the right to representation to the Depressed Classes of the Punjab. Knowing as I do the conditions of the Depressed Classes in that Province, I have no hesitation in saying that comparatively speaking their social condition is really worse than that of their fellows in other Provinces of Northern India. Their case for Special Representation was the strongest.
“What reasons His Majesty’s Government had for depriving this most deserving class of their seat, I am unable to see unless it be to satisfy the claims of the most turbulent and vociferous sections in that Province. This injustice becomes most flagrant when it is realized that the Indian Christians and the Anglo-Indians without a tithe of the population of the Depressed Classes and without any shadow of social grievances have been provided for with special seats two for the former and one for the latter. These injustices I fear will make the All-India Depressed Classes Federation which is to consider the question averse to the acceptance of the award.” [2]
1 : Keer, P.204.
2 : The Free Press Journal, dated 24th August 1932.