MEMORANDUM . . . . . . . CABINET MISSION 177
(c) Under the village system —
(i) The Scheduled Castes are not allowed to live inside the village. They have to live on the outskirts. They are not allowed to take water from the village well. They are not allowed to send their children to the village schools. No barber in the village will shave them. They are a community apart, with no son of communion with the Caste Hindu residents of the village.
(ii) They have no independent means of livelihood. They own no land. There is no avenue open to them for earning an independent living. The Hindu village is the only market they have. But no Hindu can buy from them. A majority of them live by begging food from their Hindu patrons in the village. They form a mass of landless labour, utterly destitute, a class of hereditary paupers, waiting to eke out such livelihood as they can from such employment and on such wages as the Hindu landowners may give.
(iii) They have to do forced labour day in and day out on pain of being driven away from their quarters by the Hindu landholders, who look upon them as a cheap labour force, on which all of them can draw, and are, therefore, always ready to combine against the Scheduled Castes.
(iv) They have to live a life of degradation, dishonour and ignomy from generation to generation. It is a state of eternal perdition. They cannot wear clean clothes, they cannot wear ornaments, they cannot eat rich food, they cannot sit on a chair in the presence of a Hindu and they must do all the dirty jobs.
(v) The tyranny of the village Hindus upon the Scheduled Castes is so great and has become so pervasive that as the last election has shown, the Scheduled Castes cannot even exercise their right to vote for a candidate of their choice, if the Hindu villagers do not like him.