SCHEDULED CASTES...............NEGLECTED 373
(6) (a) In the Province of East Punjab there operates what is called the Land Alienation Act which is intended to protect the agriculturists from the money lenders. But there cannot be slightest doubt that it is a most vicious piece of legislation inasmuch as it contains a definition of Agriculturist which is communal and not occupational. According to this law. a person is an agriculturist if he belongs to a community which is declared by the Government as an agricultural community. The old Punjab Government took particular care not to declare the Scheduled Castes as an agricultural community although every member of the Scheduled Castes is either a cultivator of land or an agricultural labourer. The result is that the Scheduled Castes in East Punjab are debarred from buying or acquiring landed property and are compelled to lead the life of landless labourers dependent upon the Hindu, Sikh and Jat landowners for their livelihood. This is a cruel piece of legislation and I think ought not to be allowed to remain on the Statute Book.
(b) The East Punjab Government should be to amend the definition of the term ‘agriculturist’ and make it occupational so that everybody who earns his livelihood by agriculture irrespective of his caste and creed becomes an agriculturist entitled to own and acquired landed property.
I have enumerated all the difficulties of the Scheduled Castes which have been brought to my notice and the remedies, which I think, if adopted, will remove them. Some of the remedies lie in the hands of the Government of India and the rest in the hands of the Government of East Punjab. There can be no question of applying such remedies as lie in the hands of the Government of India if it has the will to do so. Even with regard to those remedies which lie in the hands of the Government of East Punjab, the Government of India need not feel helpless. For, since the Government of India is paying the cost of rehabilitation, it has a moral right to compel the Government of East Punjab to adopt particular measure which the Government of India thinks necessary for a fair and equal treatment of all classes of people. That is the reason why I have not hesitated to include for action by the