484 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The last thing that I refer to is that democracy requires ‘public conscience.’ There is no doubt about it that although there is injustice in every country, the injustice is not equally spread. There are some where the impact of injustice is very small. There are some against whom the impact is very great. And there are some who are absolutely crushed under the burden of injustice. One might very easily cite the case of Jews in England. They were the people who suffered certain injustice which the Christians never did. What happened was that the Jews alone had to struggle in order to get this injustice removed. But the English Christians never helped them. In fact, they liked it. The only man who helped the Jews in England was the King. This may be extraordinary. But the reason also is extraordinary and the reason is this: Under the old Christian law the children of the Jews could not inherit the property of the father for no other reason except that he was a Jew and not a Christian, and the King being the residuary legatee of the State received the property of a dead Jew. Now the king liked that sort of thing. He was very happy. When the children of the dead Jew went to the King in application the King handed over to them a little bit of the property of their dead father and kept the rest for himself. But as I said, no English man ever helped the Jews, and the Jews continued to struggle for their liberation. This is the result of what is called “public conscience.” Public conscience means conscience which becomes agitated at every wrong, no matter who is the sufferer and it means that everybody whether he suffers that particular wrong or not, is prepared to join him in order to get him relieved. You take South Africa, the most recent example. Well, the people who are suffering there are the Indians. Are not they? The white people are not suffering yet you find this Reverend Scott who is a white man doing his level best and in order to get this injustice removed. Recently, I have been reading that a large number of young boys and girls belonging to the white race are also joining the struggle of the Indians in South Africa. That is called “public conscience.” I do not want to shock you, but sometimes I feel how forgetful we are. We are talking about South Africa. I have been wondering within myself whether we who are talking so much against segregation and so on do not have South Africa in every village. There is; we have only to go and see. There is South Africa