22 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The question therefore arises why the Hindus having such traditions of charity and humanity and possessing such grand philosophy should behave so heartlessly towards their fellow human beings and in such unreasonable ways. In the reply to this question lies the real significance of this Conference. The Hindu Community is set in the steel-frame of the caste system, in which one caste is lower than another in social gradation involving particular privileges, rights, inhibitions and disabilities with regard to each caste. This system has created vested interests which depend upon maintaining the inequalities resulting from the system.
The so-called Caste-Hindus are bitterly opposed to the Panchamas (person belonging to the fifth class, the Depressed Class) using a public tank not because they really believe that the water will be thereby spoiled or will evaporate if Mahars and others use the tank, but because they are afraid of losing their superiority of caste and of equality being established between the former and the latter. We are resorting to this Satyagraha not because we believe that the water of this particular tank has any exceptional qualities, but to establish our natural rights as citizens and human beings.
Struggle for Equality
This Conference is held to unfurl the banner of Equality and thus may be likened to the National Assembly in France convened in 1789. Our Conference aims at the same achievement in social, religious, civic and economic matters. We are avowedly out to smash the steel-frame of the castesystem.
Low Aim Is A Crime
Some men may say that this should be satisfied with the abolition of Untouchability only, leaving the caste-system alone. The aim of abolishing Untouchability alone without trying to abolish the inequalities inherent in the caste-system is a very low aim. Let us remember “not failure but low aim is a crime”. Let us probe the evil to its very roots and be not satisfied with mere palliatives to assuage our pain. If the disease is not rightly diagnosed the remedy will be useless and the cure may be postponed.