342 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
After pointing out that Government spent larger sums on education now-a-day than in the past, Dr. Ambedkar said that one of the reason for this deterioration was that students were more interested in politics than in learning. According to him that had been the bane of their education. He positively differed from the view that a set of politicians held that politics was legitimate pursuit of a student’s activities.
Criticising the activities of the All-India Students’ Federation, Dr. Ambedkar said that all those discussions of the Federation of which they found so much hub-bub in the Press, all that it was doing, was nothing but seconding the Congress resolutions in a very stale manner. He had found no originality in their discussions.
Giving his suggestions as to what students of the Scheduled Castes should do, Dr. Ambedkar said that, he advised them to form a separate organisation because he wanted them to keep themselves aloof from politics. It was necessary, he said, that they should dissociate themselves from the All-India Federation and bother more about the problems that were germane to the life of a student. He wanted them also to concern themselves with the difficulties which confronted them in their educational career. In this connection he said that he had heard that in private colleges no consideration was shown to the economic or social difficulties of the Scheduled Castes. No special provision was made for their admission and no special provision was made in the matter of scholarship. “All Students” he remarked, “are treated on the same footing, the rich and the poor, the multi-millionaire and the beggar.”
If there had been an All-India organisation of the students of the Scheduled Castes communities and it had collected necessary data of their difficulties, they would have been able to compel the Government or the governing elements in the country to make due provision for allowing them to have a look into the matter. Dr. Ambedkar advised the students not only to get a