I AM A GREATER . . . . . . ANYBODY ELSE 241
‘Heirs to Power’
The Cabinet Mission had decided that the heirs to British power, authority and sovereignty in this country, were two communities only - the Muslims and the Caste Hindus. In the proposed constituent assembly all questions were going to be decided by the simple majority votes of the Caste Hindus alone. The British people had decided to quit India and their powers would be inherited by the Caste Hindus and the Muslims. Were the Scheduled Castes people then not entitled to ask the Caste Hindus what they proposed doing for the safety of
60,000,000 Untouchables.
Dr. Ambedkar claimed that the Bombay Government and the Bombay Legislative Assembly were part and parcel of Congress and the Satyagraha was intended as a protest against the Congress policy.
Dr. Ambedkar announced that he had no desire to launch Satyagraha in Muslim Provinces such as the Punjab and Bengal because ‘we have no quarrel with the Muslims. They have assured us that our interest will be safeguarded’.
Indignantly repudiating that the Satyagraha movement was motivated by a sense of frustration, Dr. Ambedkar said that in the last election the Scheduled Castes had won cent percent. There would have been a frustration if the Scheduled Castes votes had voted for candidates put by the Congress. He was prepared to prove statistically that not even four per cent of the Scheduled Castes voted for Congress Harijans who had been returned entirely on the votes of Caste Hindus. He did not suffer from a sense of defeat. It was triumph that
90 per cent of the Scheduled Castes were behind his Federation.
Poona Pact
The Poona Pact which prevented true representatives of the Scheduled Castes from being returned to legislatures must go. It had resulted in disenfranchising 60,000,000 Untouchables. Even according to international law no treaty was final or sacrosanct as the Poona Pact had now become injurious to their cause, the Scheduled Castes were entitled to fight for its revision.