APPENDIX 575
Endowments—in fact everything of importance had to be under their control. Over and above this, even over the few departments which were thrown as crumbs to the ill-qualified Non-Brahmins, Muslims or Depressed Class Ministers, the Prime Minister had to exercise due control and direct and dictate the policy that had to be pursued. The procedure whereby all power was so effectively concentrated in the representatives of a small community was followed in the other six provinces as well and so once more under the guise of a democratic form of government, the wise rule of the successors of the Peshwas was continued. The inevitable result of such policy was the further enslavement of other nationalities and the exercise of uncontrolled power and authority with the help of British Administrators and Governors to put down such elements as may dare to raise their fable voices of protest. The abuse of the much condemned criminal law—Amendment Act to put down the so called Hindi agitators in this presidency, the installing of Vidya Mandir in the Central Provinces and Bombay furnish eloqent proof of the nature of the democracy that one should expect.
The warning that Dr. Ambedkar has given is, therefore, timely and essential “we ought to ask the question” says, “Whether the governing class in a particular country has a sense of responsibility, so that the government of the country can be entrusted to that country. We have all forgotten the fact that the right to govern must be decided in the light of the sense of responsibility of the governing class. What is the out look of the governing class ? What is its philosophy ? What does it believed in ?” Answering these questions, Dr. Ambedkar pertinently observes, “If you have governing class which believes in graded inequality if it believes you must not touch another human being, if it believes that a certain class alone is entitled to education and not others, if it believes that one class alone is entitled to property and another class is born to be servile and to die in servility. If a national Government was formed and if it went into the hands of this governing class, do you think that such a national government will be better than the present Government of India ?” These doubts are by no means imaginary. They are on the other hand based on the bitter experience of the past and on the black