IF DEMOCRACY....................OUR DOOM 257
administration and you can have good administration when you have persons belonging to the Untouchables holding high administrative posts from which they could watch how other Hindu Civil Servants are behaving towards the Untouchables and to check them, control them and prevent them from doing mischief. It is, however, not enough to ask for mere reservation. It is necessary to insist that such reservation shall be given effect to within a stated period. This is far more essential than mere reservation. For, unless you fix a period, the reservation will not come. It will be evaded on one ground or another and of course on the usual but unfathomable ground that no suitable candidate was available. We all know that to a Hindu, if he is the appointing authority, no candidate from the Untouchables would be a suitable candidate. Fourthly, you must insist upon securing representation for the Untouchables in the Central and Provincial Executives. These are key positions. It is those who occupy these positions who have the power to give direction to the course of events. They alone can control any mischief that they may be threatened of and they alone can force new and salutary changes in social, political, and economic affairs. The Untouchables must insist that their representatives are placed in these key postitions. This time it must not be left to understanding or convention. The Hindus cannot be trusted to abide by their plighted word. You must see that a provision in this behalf is made part of the constitution.
Then, there is the last demand which the Untouchables must insist upon. It is the last, but it is by no means the least in importance. Indeed, I am convinced that it is the most vital demand which to my mind must override every other demand. I refer to the project of having new settlements of the Untouchables, separate and independent, of the Hindu villages. Why have the Untouchables been the slaves and serfs of the Hindus for so many thousand years ? To my mind the answer lies in the peculiar organization of Hindu villages. You have spread out all over India some 7,00,000 Hindu villages, Attached to every Hindu village there exists a small settlement of