258 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Untouchables. This settlement of Untouchables is usually numerically very small as compared with the Hindu village to which it is attached. Secondly, this settlement of Untouchables is economically without any resource and without any opportunity for improvement. It is invariably a settlement of landless population. Being Untouchable it could not sell anything, for nobody would buy from an Untouchable. It is wholly a population, destitute, and dependent for its livelihood upon the Hindu village. It lives by begging food or by offering its labour for a paltry wage. In this setting you can well understand why the Untouchable has remained in a degraded condition for so many centuries. As against the Hindu village, the Untouchables simply cannot offer any resistance. They are numerically small and they are economically poor. While this village system continues to exist in its present form, the Untouchables will never achieve their independence, whether social, or economic, and will never get over the inferiority complex which they have developed as a result of their state of social and economic dependence. The village system must, therefore, be broken. It is the only way that is open for the Untouchables if they really wish to emancipate themselves from the stranglehold which the Hindus have acquired over them through the village system. My suggestion is that you should insist upon a provision being made in the Constitution for the formation of new and independent villages exclusively of Untouchables at the public cost to be undertaken by the Central Government. There is a good deal of cultivable land which belongs to Government and which is unoccupied. This could be reserved for the puipose of giving effect to this scheme of new villages of Untouchables. Government could buy from private individuals out-lying vacant land and use it for the same purpose. It would not be difficult to induce the Untouchables to shift from their present habitats to these new villages and settle there as independent farmers. The process may take time. But, that does not matter. It is so vital that we must insist upon the scheme being made by the constitution itself a matter of obligation upon the Central Govenment.
There is one other point about which I must speak to you a few words. That is about the necessity of forming one central