348 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
“I have no idea,” he answered, “but if I had arranged matters I would have proposed reintroduction of the Government of India Act of 1935.”
“That Act,” he said “presupposed a United India and it might have altered the communal part of the situation in a manner that would have given a greater protection to certain minorities who felt they did not have enough protection.”
“Then I would have said, work for the United Constitution for ten years. At the end of ten years, have a Constituent Assembly and divide country any way you like.”
“If the British had done that,” declared Dr. Ambedkar, “they could have said our greatest achievement has been the unity of India, and although we have made many mistakes and done many wrongs, the unity we have achieved has more than compensated for the wrongs and errors of 150 years and we intended to handover the inheritance intact.”
“I have come over on a political mission to see Prime Minister Clement Atlee, Mr. Winston Churchill, and others,” Dr. Ambedkar said, “ I want to put my point of view with what success I cannot say, as to the injustice the Cabinet Mission and the Labour Party have done to the Scheduled Castes. I think personally the Cabinet Mission was misinformed.”
Now, concluded Dr. Ambedkar, “in the reconstituted Indian Provisional Government, we have the Labour Government instead of allowing the Scheduled Castes to be nursed by their own mother that is by having two representatives in the Cabinet appointed two wet-nurses in shape of Mr. Jinnah and Mr. Gandhi.”
Dr. Ambedkar is having a memorandum printed setting out the case for the Scheduled Castes and will wait until this is ready before approaching political leaders.” [1]
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- : The Bombay Chronicle, dated 24th October 1946.