POONA SATYAGRAH 515
Scheduled Castes in India is worse than the Negroes in America and Jews in Germany and Palastine. The question was not concerned with a few only but it was concerned with crores of Untouchables in India. Concluding his speech he quoted the message of Dr. Ambedkar. He explained to the public that “The Scheduled Castes must resolve that in a Free India of the future they would be a ruling race. They should refuse to continue to play a role of subservience or accept a position in which they could be treated as servants to masters.
Tilakchand And Rajbhoj Arrested
April 18th, 1947
Today the Satyagraha was in it’s fifteenth day. Mr. Rajbhoj, the General Secretary of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, courted arrest with seventy five Satyagrahis hailed from Agra, Aligarh, Cawnpur, Tundala and Lucknow. The arrest of the chief Dictator Mr. Tilakchand Kuriel last night by the Government at Satyagrah camp encouraged the Scheduled Castes people in Lucknow and in the whole of the province. Hundreds are pouring into Lucknow to court arrest before the Council house. Even the ladies are not lagging behind the male Satyagrahis. There are instances where the Untouchable mothers are sending their sons, the sisters, are sending their brothers to court arrest.
Before the arrest Mr. Rajbhoj appointed Badalooram Sonkar from Cawnpur as the 2nd dictator of the Satyagrah of the U. P. in Lucknow.
Prior to his departure for courting arrest before the Council House, he gave the following message to the Scheduled Castes of the U. P. in particular and all over India in general.
“I may say that the treatment of the Australian Bushman by the colonisers that of the Negroes by the klu klux klan and of the Jows by the Nazis is less heinous than the sufferings of the Scheduled Castes who were subjected to in the name of religion caste and the like by the Hindus. It is nothing but a slow poisoning to us.