204 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
conquered by an army of Indians and the Indians who formed the army were all Untouchables. British Rule in India would have been impossible if the Untouchables had not helped the British to conquer India. Take the Battle of Plassey which laid the beginning of British Rule or the battle of Kirkee which completed the conquest of India. In both these fateful battles the soldiers who fought for the British were all Untouchables.
- What have the British done to these Untouchables who fought for them? It is a shameful story. The first thing they did was to stop their recruitment in the army. A more unkind, more ungrateful and more cruel act can hardly be found in history. In shutting out the Untouchables from the Army the British took no note that the Untouchables had helped them to establish their rule and had defended it when it was menaced by a powerful combination of native forces in the Mutiny of 1857. Without any consideration as to its effects upon the Untouchables the British by one stroke of the pen deprived them of their source of livelihood and let them fall to their original depth of degradation. Did the British help them in any way to overcome their social disabilities? The answer again must be in the negative. The schools, wells and public places were closed to the Untouchables. It was the duty of the British to see the Untouchables, as citizens, were entitled to be admitted to all institutions maintained out of public funds. But the British did nothing of the kind and what is worst, they justified their inaction by saying that Untouchability was not their creation. It may be that Untouchability was not the creation of the British. But as Government of the day, surely the removal of Untouchability was their responsibility. No Government with any sense of the functions and duties of a Government could have avoided it. What did the British Government do? They refused to touch any question which involved any kind of reform of Hindu society. So far as social reform was concerned, the Untouchables found themselves under a Government distinguished in no vital respect from those native Government under which they had toiled and suffered, lived and died, through all their weary and forgotten history. From a political standpoint, the change was nominal. The despotism of the Hindus continued as ever before. Far from being curbed by the British High Command, it