6 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
anti-priest. Dr. Ambedkar, who represented the awakened spirit of the Untouchable Hindus, was marching towards the Tank from which the Muslims and Christians took water along with the so-called touchable Hindus, but from which the Untouchable Hindus who worshipped the Hindu Gods, stuck to the same Hindu religion through ages past, were, although their throats parched with thirst, not allowed to take even a drop of water.
Thus, led for the first time in their history by a great leader of their own, the Untouchables were marching to vindicate their rights. They all displayed discipline, energy and enthusiasm. The march wended its way through the streets of Mahad and terminated at the Chawdar Tank. Dr. Ambedkar himself was now standing on the verge of the Tank. Enlightened among the enlightened, the equal of any erudite man on earth, a Hindu of noble aspirations, yet unable even to take water from a public watercourse or to read in a public library in Hindustan, the land of his birth and faith, was now defying the arrogance of the tyrants, exposing the baseness of a people who boasted that their religion treated even animals with forbearance, but who treated their coreligionists worse than cats and dogs.
Dr. Ambedkar took water from the Tank and drank it. The vast multitude of men followed suit and vindicated their right. The processionists then returned peacefully to the pandal.
Two hours after this event, some evil-minded caste Hindus raised a false rumour that the Untouchables were also planning to enter the temple of Veereshwar. At this a large crowd of riffraff armed with bamboo sticks collected at street corners. All orthodox Mahad was up in arms and the whole town at once became a surging mass of rowdies. They said that their religion was in danger, and strangely enough they clamoured that their God, too, was in danger of being polluted ! Their hearts fluttered, their hands shivered, and their faces were ablaze with anger at this humiliating challenge.
Enraged at this misconstrued outrage on their religion and at the thought of defilement of the temple of Veereshwar, the caste Hindus dashed into the pandal of the Depressed Classes Conference. Many of the delegates were at that time scattered in