LETTER TO . . . . . . . OF CABINET MISSION 205
was pampered. From a social point of view, the British accepted the arrangements as they found them and preserved them faithfully in the manner of the Chinese tailor who, when given an old coat as a pattern, produced with pride an exact replica, rents and patched and all. And what is the result? The result is that though 200 years have elapsed since the establishment of the British Rule in India, the Untouchables have remained Untouchables, their wrongs remained unredressed and their progress hampered at every stage. Indeed, if the British Rule has achieved anything in India it is to strengthen and reinvigorate Brahmanism which is the inveterate enemy of the Untouchables and which is the parent of all the ills from which the Untouchables have been suffering for ages.
You have come here to announce that the British are abdicating. It cannot be wrong for an Untouchable to ask “to whom are you leaving this legacy of authority and power?” To the protagonist of Brahmanism, which means to the tyrants and oppressors of the Untouchables. Such a method of liquidating the British Empire in India need not raise any qualms of conscience among members of other parties. But what about the British Labour Party? The Labour Party claims to stand for the unprivileged and the down-trodden. If it is true to its salt, I have no doubt that it will stand by the sixty millions of the Untouchables of India and do everything necessary to safeguard their position and not allow power to pass into the hands of those who by their religion and their philosophy of life are unfit to govern and are, in fact, the enemies of the Untouchables. It will be no more than bare act of atonement on the part of the British for the neglect of the Scheduled Castes whose trustees they always claimed to be.
What has led me to unburden myself at such length is the anxiety caused by the apparent silence of the Mission over the question of constitutional safeguards raised by the Untouchables? This anxiety has been deepened by the attitude taken by the Mission towards the pledges given to the Untouchables and to the minorities by His Majesty’s Government. The attitude of the Mission in regard to these pledges reminds one of Lord Palmerston who said, “ We have no