92 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
possess extensive lands and who have no manual labour to perform are classified with those who have to toil for their bread on a farm with no piece of land of their own. The interests of these two classes are widely apart and conflicting with each other. It would be wrong to allow the one to be interwoven with the other, and I would suggest that a clear definition ought to be made of the term “ Shetkari ” .
Now let me refer to that question which today, believe the audience especially the people of “ Chari ” have uppermost in their minds. I mean the strike that the tenants of Chari have declared against the Savakars and land-lords for the last two years. Without going into the merits of the strike, I for once think that such disputes that may be existing between the land-lords and their tenants must as a matter of fact be decided by Arbitration Boards composed of representatives of both the parties with a Government nominee and empowered with some legal status. The decision of such an Arbitration Board ought to be binding on both the parties, I see no reason why in an instance like this, the Government should not intervene and appoint such a Board.
There are, I know, a great many grievances in this part of the Presidency which arise out of a system-popularly called the “ Khoti System ”. I am aware of the pitiable condition into which the tenants-at-will are thrown at the hands of Khots. The tenant is evicted from his land by the land-lord at his sweet will which renders the income of the tenant most unsteady and makes his life miserable. This is a glaring injustice under which the tenants are labouring. Such freedom to the Khot to evict the tenant summarily deprives him of the fruit of labour that he has put in the soil for a number of years. Such grievances of the tenants-at-will must be immediately removed by legislation which will compel the Khot to pay adequate compensation to the tenant who has suffered from the eviction. These injustices have in my opinion reached their climax in the actions of the land-lord in threatening the tenant to demolish his house situated on the Khoti land whenever a dispute arises between a tenant and