YOUR SALVATION..................OWN HANDS 235
He Declared : You may be faced with constituent assembly again. Your place then will not be inside the constituent assembly. You will not find any place there. Your legitimate place then will be in your own headquarters, manufacturing bombs. Yes, bombs make no mistake about it. We can handle hand grenades better than many other people.
To the Congress he has fought these 20 years, he made a sporting offer : You are fighting for Swaraj. I am ready to join you. And I may assure you that I can fight better than you. 1 make only one condition. Tell me what share I am to have in the Swaraj. If you don’t want to tell me that and want to make up with the British behind my back, hell on both of you.
To the audience present, Dr. Ambedkar spoke like a loving father to his children, telling stories of yore and the happenings during the last 23 years. He was in a reminiscent mood, narrated the episode of the first public meeting he addressed at Kolhapur, the opposition he had to face from his own people who considered loathsome practices as a precious heritage, oppression as a birth-right.
And as Dr. Ambedkar narrated the details of these practices the daintily dressed pretty maids close to the platform turned round and laughed at their wrinkled old mothers. And the mothers felt so embarrassed at the recall of things they had practised so long and abandoned with such reluctance. Said he:
“Today you have been purified of all those evils. Like white snow of an early morning you stand now before the superstition ridden men and women of the higher castes; the Marathas and the Bhandaris, who from the viewpoint of social and cultural outlook are miles behind you.
“When I started on my public career and long thereafter I considered that for good or for evil we were part of the Hindu society.