PEOPLE CEMENTED............INDEPENDENT 31
opportunity theirs is the most degraded condition. Besides the Untouchables, there is still in this country an equally huge population of aboriginals and hill tribes who are left to roam about in a nomadic and barbarous state without any attempt to bring them within the pale of civilization and culture. These things bear an eloquent testimony to the spirit of service and the sense of responsibility which the aristocracy has shown in the past. We are asked to believe that the conduct of the aristocracy will be entirely different in the future. I am not sufficiently credulous to accept this. For, I know of no instance of the satans of to-day to have been transformed overnight into angels on the morrow.
- We are also told that the settlement of the social problem should wait till the political freedom of the country is achieved. A wise man will not fall in with this line of thought. Before one enters into what is called a parlour one must make certain that it is not a trap. Every one of us knows or ought to know that the man in possession is more powerful than the man who is out of possession. Every one of us also knows or ought to know that those in possession of power seldom abdicate in favour of those who are out of it. You cannot therefore hope the effectuation of the settlement of the social problem if you allow power to slip into the hands of those who stand to lose by the settlement unless you are prepared to have another revolution to dethrone those whom you have helped to capture power. Gentlemen, my advice to you is the advice of the great political philosopher Edmund Burke, who said, “Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.” Following that advice I think it would be just and proper for us to insist that the best guarantee for the settlement of social problem is the adjustment of the political machine itself, and not the will of those who are contriving to be left in unfettered control of that machine.
III. Safeguards for the Depressed Classes.
- It must therefore be made clear that while we do not think that the social factors can be a bar to self-government in India we do not admit that the constitution of a self-governing