20
SAPRU IN THE WRONG
New Delhi, December 31st, 1944.
“Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in a statement in reply to Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru’s reference to the question of Scheduled Castes co-operation with the Conciliation Committee says:—
“I cannot help being surprised that Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru seems to make a grievence of the fact that I refused to cooperate with this Committee. I should think that if anybody has a grievance, it is myself and not SirTej Bahadur Sapru.
“I have no doubt that in going about his business he started at the wrong end. If he wanted the different parties to the communal dispute to agree to appear before the Committee, it was not only desirable but necessary that, before finalising the personnel of the committees, he should have, in fairness show the list of the names to the leaders of the parties concerned and invited them to say whether they had any objections to those names. Instead of doing that, he first decides the personnel at his own sweet will and present the parties with a ‘ fait accompli,’ leaving them to accept or reject it. To say the least of it, it is a very unfair, if not preposterous, way of appointing a Committee and expecting people to repose confidence in it.
Names Not Submitted
“When Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru approached me, he never gave me an inkling as to the sort of persons he was going to have in the Committee. We discussed only the general issue, namely, whether it was not desirable for an impartial body of people to consider the different demands put forward by different communities and to evaluate them and state which of those demands were reasonable and which were not. I certainly did expect that after that Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru would let me have the names of persons he intended to put on the Committee. He never did that.
“In these circumstances, if I told Sir Tej Bahadur, I was not satisfied with the personnal of the Committee and, therefore, I could not undertake to co-operate with it. I do not think I am in the wrong.