What can be done for them by those who feel the barbarity of the treatment meted out to them, by those who feel that the Indians who demand freedom should show respect to others, and give to others a share of the consideration they claim for themselves?  

“Here, as everywhere education is the level by which we may hope to raise them, but a difficulty arises at the outset, for one class of the community, moved by a noble feeling of compassion and benevolence, but not adding thereto a careful and detailed consideration of the conditions, demands, for the children of the pariah community admission to the schools frequented by the sons of the higher classes, and charges with lack of brotherhood those who are not in favour of this policy. It becomes, therefore, necessary to ask whether brotherhood is to mean levelling down, and whether it is usual in a family to treat the elder children and the babies in exactly the same way. If is a zeal not according to knowledge and not according to nature – which would substitute equality for brotherhood, and demand from thee cultured and refined that they should forfeit the hardly won fruits of the education of generations, in order to create an artificial equality, as disastrous to the progress of the future as it would be useless for the improvement of the present. The children of the depressed classes need, first of all, to be taught cleanliness, outside decency of behaviour, and the earliest rudiments of education, religion, and morality. Their bodies, at present, are ill-odorous and foul with liquor and strong smelling food out of which for generations they have been built up; it will need some generations of purer food and living to make their bodies fit to sit in the close neighbourhood of a school-room with children who have receive bodies from an ancestry trained in habits of exquisite personal clean- liness, and fed on pure food-stuffs. We have to raise the Depressed Classes to a similar level of physical purity, not to drag down the clean to the level of the dirty, and until this is done, close association is undesirable. We are not blaming these children, nor their parents, for being what they are; we are stating a mere palpable fact. The first daily lesson in a school for these children should be a bath, and the putting on of a clean cloth; and the second should be a meal of clean wholesome food, those primary needs cannot be supplied in a school intended for children who take their daily bath in the early morning and who come to school well-fed.  

“Another difficulty that faces teachers of these children is the contagious diseases that are bred from first, to take one example, eye-disease, wholly due to neglect, is one of the most common and ‘catching’ complaints among them. In our Panchama schools in Madras, the teachers are ever on the alert to detect and check this, and the children’s eyes are washed daily, and disease is thus prevented. But is it to be expected that fathers and mothers, whose daily care protects their children from such dirty diseases, should deliberately expose them at school to this infection?  

“Nor are the manner and habits of these forlorn little ones desirable things to be imitated by gently-nurtured children. Good manners, for instance, are the result of continual and rigid self-control, and of consideration for the comfort and convenience of others; children learn manners chiefly by imitation from well-bred parents and teachers and, secondarily, by suitable precept and reproof. If, at the school, they are to be made to associate with children not thus trained, they will quickly fall into the ways which they see around them. For, until good habits are rendered fixed by long practice, it is far easier to be slipshod than accurate, to be careless than careful. Ought the children of families in which good manners and courtesy are hereditary to be robbed of their heritage, a robbery that enriches one, but drags the whole nation down? Gentle speech, well-modulated voice, pleasant ways, these are the valuable results of long culture, and to let them be swamped out on true brotherhood… (pages 4 to 6). 

(Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings & Speeches, Vol. IX. Rs 50, 1990. Govt. of Maharashtra, Bombay). The book may be had from the Director,, Government Printing. Stationery and Publications, Netaji Subhash Road, Bombay 400 004.