446 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
been roused and a real movement has been started. A tremendous force for raising the status both of the Untouchables and this country can be evoked if this movement based on self-respect and self-reliance is efficiently organised. It is on behalf of this social movement that I make the present appeal.
People not intimately acquainted with my activities may be surprised at my present move on behalf of a social movement. They have come to look upon me as a politician. As a matter of fact politics has never been my obsession. It has been my on and off activity. As a student of history I have been profoundly impressed by the view that however important political forces may be in the regeneration of a community, social, economic and moral forces are far more vital and that political forces are only a means to the social, economic and moral regeneration of a people. I have from the very beginning laid greater stress on social movement than on political movement. A very large part of 25 years of my public life has been mainly devoted to the cause of social uplift of the Untouchables. I mention this only to correct the impression that I am only a politician. For it is a wrong impression. I want the public to realize that I have played no insignificant part in giving momentum to the new movement and fostering its growth. In support of my statement I cannot do better than quote Mr. B. G. Kher, a Congressman and former Prime Minister of Bombay, who replying to my speech in the Bombay Legislative Assembly on the Ministers’ Salary Bill on 23rd August, 1937 said :
“Further (Dr. Ambedkar) made a great deal of competency, a point about which there cannot be two opinions. I am obliged to the honourable member for referring to the competency of the personnel of this Cabinet and for giving us his true opinion. I have a very high opinion of his competency. I also know that he has been doing such service to the Depressed Classes as no one else has been able to do (Hear, hear). May I know from the honourable what salary he gets for this service ? I know that the service he has been rendering to the cause of the Depressed Classes cannot be bought by any amount of money - (Hear, hear). What