44 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
what has become of the sentiments expressed by Lord Birkenhead when he moved the resolution in Parliament for the appointment of the Simon Commission. It was then said that the Depressed Classes formed a special trust and that the British people could not hand over that trust without making adequate provision for their safety. Are the Simon Commission’s recommendations to be taken as the fulfilment of those magniloquent sentiments? Gentlemen, we must be careful as to how other people are treating us. I am afraid that the British choose to advertise our unfortunate conditions not with the object of removing them but only because such a course serves well as an excuse for retarding the political progress of India. In these circumstances I think it is the duty of our leaders to trouble themselves less about what the Britishers have done for us so far and to care more for what is to happen to us in future and shape our course accordingly without fear from anybody, and insist upon a just if not a generous treatment to which we are entitled by reason of our particular circumstances.
V. Depressed Classes and Swaraj.
- I think I have said all that I need say regarding the guarantees and safeguards that we must have in the future constitution of a self-governing India. That does not exhaust the topics that this meeting has to take into consideration. This meeting will never be said to have fulfilled its purpose if it omitted to formulate its opinion on the present political agitation in the country. You will remember that the Indian National Congress at its meeting held at Calcutta in December 1928 passed a Resolution, which was virtually an ultimatum to the British parliament, demanding the establishment in India of Dominion form of Government by the end of December 1929 failing which it threatened to change the goal of India from Dominion Status to complete Independence. The result of this ultimatum by the Congress was the announcement by the Viceroy that the goal of British policy in India was to give India Dominion Status. This did not satisfy the Congress, It wanted Dominion Status not as a goal but an event to be accomplished immediately and the Congress therefore when it met in December 1929 proceeded