66 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
who later became the Prime Minister of Britain, was a member of the Simon Commission. Attlee asked Dr. Ambedkar some pertinent question in the course of the Doctor’s examination.
The work of the Simon Commission continued till the winter. The Provincial Committees were also drafting their own reports. The Committee appointed by the Bombay Legislative Council to co-operate with the Simon Commission after hearing both official and non-official evidence relating to the constitutional problem, submitted later their report on May 7,1929.*
Dr. Ambedkar, who fundamentally differed with the Committee, did not sign that report and submitted a separate report containing his own views and recommendations on May 17, 1929.* Referring to the demand for the separation of Karnatak, he said he was opposed to the separation of Karnatak from the Bombay Presidency because “the principle of one language one province is too large to be given effect to in practice. The number of provinces that will have to be carved out if the principle is to be carried to its logical conclusion shows in my opinion its unworkability”. “For I am of the opinion,’’ declared the patriot in Dr. Ambedkar, “that the most vital need of the day is to create among the mass of the people the sense of a common nationality, the feeling not that they are Indians first and Hindus, Mohammedans or Sindhis and Kanarese afterwards, but that they are Indians first and Indians last. If that be the ideal then it follows that nothing should be done which will harden local patriotism and group consciousness.”
As regards the separation of Sind which had assumed tremendous significance in those days, he said it was a sectional demand, a part of a large scheme designed to make the communal majority of the Muslims a political majority in five provinces. “The scheme,” he warned the nation, “is neither so innocent nor so bootless as it appears on the surface.” He asserted that the motive that lay behind the scheme was undoubtedly a dreadful one involving the maintenance of justice
- See Writings and Speeches, Vol. 2. Pp. 315-401.