202 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
representatives in the services so that the administration may not be wholly hostile to them. If you accept the justice of the demand of the Untouchables for constitutional safeguards, you will have no difficulty in understanding why the Untouchables want separate electorates. The Untouchables will be a minority in the Legislature. They are destined to remain a minority. They cannot overcome the majority which being communal in its making is, so to say, fixed and pre-ordained. All they can do is to place themselves in position to able to determine the terms on which they will be prepared to work with the majority and not be compelled to accept the terms prescribed by the majority, and secondly, if the majority refuses to work with them and declines to redress their wrongs, they would at least be free to utter their protest against the majority on the floor of the Legislature. How are the Untouchables to maintain their freedom to protest ? Only if their representatives in the Legislatures do not owe their election to the votes of the majority. This is the basis of their demand for separate electorates.
- No safeguards are going to be of any value to the Untouchables unless the Untouchables get a separate electorate. Separate electorate is the crux of the matter. I have before me a copy of the representation submitted to the Cabinet Mission by three Congress Harijans who were interviewed by the Mission on the 9th April 1946. They were no better than the three tailors of Tooly Street who had the audacity to present an address to the Parliament saying: “We the people of England.” Apart from this, it is instructive to note that there is no difference between the demands put forth by me on behalf of the Scheduled Castes Federation and the demands put forth by these Congress Harijans. The only difference that exists relates to the question of electorates. I do not know how you interpret the demands of the Congress Harijans. They are not really demands. They represent what the Congress is prepared to give to the Untouchables by way of political safeguards. This is not merely my understanding. It is my knowledge. For I have been informed by person who knows the mind of the Congress that if I was prepared to accept joint electorates, the Congress on its part would be quite prepared to concede all other demands of mine.