101
THERE SHOULD BE STATUTORY COMMISSION FOR ABORIGINAL TRIBES
“The Third Conference of All India Scheduled Castes Federation was held on 5th and 6th May 1945 in Mumbai. This conference was important to understand the problems of eight crore Untouchables when tremendous activities were taking place, nationally and internationally. About one thousand delegates from all over India attended this Conference. Of these about five hundred delegates, with more than fifty women were from Nagpur alone, while about two hundred were from Gujrat. The lodging arrangement of these delegates was done at the Municipal school at Parel.
This Conference was held at the spacious ground ‘Nare Park’ of Parel, of which nomenclature was done as ‘Sadhvi Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar’. The ground was packed to its capacity with the people. Even though a ticket of ‘one rupee’ per head was charged, there were more than fifty thousand people, of which more than five thousand were women, who attended the open session. That time, about 2 to 2.5 lakhs Untouchable families were residing in Mumbai and minimum one person from at least 50 percent of these families attended this conference, many of these were old aged and many with their infants.
Initially, this conference was planned only for ‘Mumbai Scheduled Castes Federation’ in the last week of April 1945. But when Mr. S. B. Jadhav Secretary, ‘Mumbai Scheduled Castes Federation’ went to Delhi to meet Dr. B. R. Ambedkar who advised to change the nature of this Conference, that instead of limited to Mumbai it should be on all India basis. All the twenty committee members exerted and the membership was raised from six thousand to twenty thousand within a short time.
The Conference began in the evening of Saturday 5th May
- A large dais was prepared at one corner of the ground. At the centre of the dais the large painting of ‘Gautam Buddha’ was erected with decorated arches, as the Untouchables were respecting ‘Buddha’ as the first attacker of social discrimination existing in this country.