PEOPLE CEMENTED............INDEPENDENT 57
force that will be counted by all others, so that their views and their interests will prevail on all occasions. The Depressed Classes movement seems to me to suffer from two grave lacunae. First of all, there is no such thing as a public opinion of the Depressed Classes and secondly, there is no means for a concerted action by the Depressed Classes as a whole. It seems to me that the real reason why our grievances have remained unredressed is because we have remained dumb for ages and have not cared to ventilate them. We cannot with justice blame the Government or the reformers for our condition. We must admit that the voiceless state in which we have chosen to remain imposes its responsibility upon them without giving them a clear guidance or a strong backing. I have been anxiously considering as to why the resolutions that we pass at our meetings, the representations that we make to Government, and the demands that we make on our behalf do not receive the same serious consideration at the hands of the powers that be as they do in the case of other communities. And it has been borne in upon me that we are ineffective because we are still provincial in our actions. The demands made in any one Province do not receive the support and backing of other Provinces when they certainly would if they were putforth by a central organization. I think it is high time that the Depressed Classes be stirred themselves and formed an All-India Organisation which would give voice to their opinions and provide them with the machinery for concerted action. There has come into existence for the last two or three years a body known as the “All-India Depressed Classes Association”. It is an open secret that the Association is a body which has only office-bearers but no members. That is certainly the case of its branch in my Province. Such a bogus, make-believe organisation cannot be of any service to the Depressed Classes. You must have an organisation which will be a live institution, which will express the true sentiments of the Depressed Classes and will gather in its fold the true workers of the community with its net-work spread over the whole of the country. It will be a great service, if this meeting were to appoint a small committee to draft the constitution of such an organisation as I have referred to. It is great consideration and it should be made good without delay.