“The second thing I would like the Anti-Untouchability League to work for is to bring about equality of opportunity for the Depressed Classes. Much of the misery and poverty of the Depressed Classes is due to the absence of equality of opportunity which in its turn is due to Untouchability. I am sure you are aware that the Depressed Classes in villages and even in towns cannot salt vegetables, milk or butter – ways of earning a living which are open to all and sundry. A Caste Hindu, will buy these-things from a non-Hindu, but he will not buy them from the Depressed Classes. In the matter of employment his condition is the worst.
“Like the Negro in America he is the last to be employed in days of prosperity. And the first to be fired in days of adversity.
And even when he gets a foothold what are his prospects? In the Cotton Mills in Bombay and Ahmedabad he is confined to the lowest paid department where the cane am only Rs. 25 per month. More paying departments like the weaving department are permanently closed to them. The place of the boss is reserved for the caste Hindu while the Depressed Class worker must stave as his underdog no matter now senior or how efficient.
‘”Depressed Class women working in the winding or reeling departments have come to me in hundreds complaining that the Narikins, instead of distributing the raw material to all women employees equally or in fair proportion, give all of it to the caste Hindu women and leave them in the cold.”
” Think it would be fit and proper if the Anti-Untouchability League were to take up this question by creating public opinion in condemnation of it and establishing Bureaus to deal with urgent cases of inequality.
“Lastly, I think the League should attempt to dissolve that nausea which the touchable feel towards the Untouchables and which is the reason why the two sections have remained so much apart as to constitute separate and distinct entities. In my opinion the best way of achieving itis to establish closer contact between the two. Only a common cycle of participation can help people to overcome that strangeness of feeling which one has when brought into contact with the other. Nothing can do this more effectively in my opinion than the admission of the Depressed Classes to the houses of the caste Hindus as guests or servants.
“The live contact thus established will familiarize both to a common and associated life and will pave the way for that unity which we are all striving after. I am sorry that many caste Hindus who have shown themselves responsive are not prepared for this.
“During those ten days of the Mahatma’s fast that shook the Indian world there were cases in Ville Parle and in Mahad where the caste Hindu servants had struck work because their masters had abrogated the rules of untouchability by fraternizing with the Untouchables. I expected that they would end the strike and teach a lesson to the erring masses by filling the vacancies by employing Depressed Classes in their places. Instead of doing that they capitulated with the forces of orthodoxy and strengthened them. I do not know how far such fair-weather friends of the Depressed Classes would be of help to them.
“People in distress can have very little consolation from the fact that they have sympathisers if those sympathisers will do nothing more than sympathise and I may as well tell the ‘League that the Depressed Classes will never be satisfied of the bona fides of these caste Hindu sympathisers until it is proved that they are prepared to go to the same length of fighting against their own kith and kin in actual warfare if it came to that for the sake of the Depressed Classes as the Whites of the North did against their own kith and kin namely the Whites of the south for the sake of the emancipation of the Negro.
“The League will have to employ a very large army of workers to carry out its programme. The appointment of social workers might perhaps be looked upon as & minor question. Speaking for myself, I attach very great importance to the selection of a proper agency to be employed in this behalf. There can always be found workers to do a particular piece of work or any other for the matter of that if they are paid for it. I am sure such mercenary workers will not serve the purpose of the League. As Tolstoy said “Only those who love can serve’. In my opinion that test is more likely to be fulfilled by workers drawn from the Depressed Classes. I should therefore like the League to bear this aspect of the question in mind in deciding upon whom to appoint and whom not to appoint. I do not suggest that there are hot scoundrels among the Depressed Classes who have not made social service their last refuge. But largely speaking you can be surer that a worker drawn from the Depressed Classes will regard the work as love’s labour a thing which is so essential to the success of the League. (To be continued)
