436 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The other problem is that of poverty in India. People in India are very poor so much so that 90 per cent people do not get proper meals. They do not get any clothes. They do not have any shelter. Food-stuffs worth crores of rupees are being imported every year. If we have to import even foodstuffs from outside and spend so much, how will we be able to pull on? But all these things have no place in the minds of Congressmen. They have only one problem to solve and that is Muslim problem.
I want to inform you that we are putting up candidates for the coming elections through the Scheduled Castes Federation. The Scheduled Castes Federation is for all Backward Classes. Every Backward Class will be given representation. Nobody should be afraid of it. Chamars and Bhangis are all equal. We should be united and nobody should think himself separate from the other. I want to request all men and women that they should leave aside every thing on the day of polling and go to the polling booths and cast their votes. Already our votes are not sufficient and if the voters do not cast their votes on that day, it would not be good for us. We will be unrepresented. The day of polling is the day of life and death for the Scheduled Castes.
Every political party which is taking part in the coming elections has been allotted a Party Symbol. Our Federation’s symbol is ‘Elephant’. I have selected this so that there may not be any confusion in the minds of our people. Some parties selected oxen, horses, donkeys as their symbols. But for distinction I have selected ‘Elephant’.
This time we will not have the cumulative system of voting so that we may cast all our votes to a single candidate of our choice. But we have distributive system and will have to distribute our votes among different candidates. In a constitutency where a seat has been reserved for Scheduled Castes, people will have two votes, one for general seat and the other for the reserved seat. We cannot cast both of our votes to our party candidate who is standing for the reserved seat. We can cast in his favour only one vote and the other vote must be given to the other candidate standing on general seat. So we shall have to join some party which will give their second vote to our