26 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
to mention the many small creeds that prevail there. Ponder over this. Is the Indian cosmos more bewildering, more heterogeneous than the human cosmos we find in these countries? I dare say it is not. In making your decision about India you shall have to take cognizance of these facts if your judgment is to be honest, independent judgment. Gentlemen, is there any answer to the question that arises as a result of this comparison that if Latvia, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Roumania, with all their difference of race, creed, language and culture, can function as united self-governing communites, why cannot India ? I have none to give. And I am looking forward to hear with great interest those of our friends who think they can.
- It seems to me, to insist that the divergent elements in a country shall be one united whole before it can have the blessings of self-government is sometimes to reverse the order of things and to ignore the unifying effects of the great process of self-government. It is given to very few countries to have within their boundaries a homogeneous people connected by one language, one religion and one culture. But there are many in which, as a result of historical, geographical and political factors, sets of peoples, differing in their creeds, in their languages and in their cultures, have been intermingled. Such people could never have become heirs to a system of self-government which is theirs to-day, if the rule of homogeneity had been applied to them in all its absolutistic rigour. And after all is said and done, has not the system of self-government itself been the cause of unification of many a people who, in its absence, would have remained as discordant and as distinct as they were in their original conditions ? Has not the self-governing constitution adopted by the German Empire been the cause of the unification of the German people ? Could the Bavarians, Prussians, Saxons and the various other groups that prevailed as distinct nationalities and as separate States before 1870 have merged themselves into one united nation if they had not been brought under a common Government ? A common government is often the best instrument one can devise to mould a diverse people into a nation. But why go so far to Germany for illustration.