AMELIORATION OF THE DEPRESSED CLASSES

The resolution of the Senate of the Gujarat National University in regard to Mr. Andrews’ question about the admission of children of the ‘depressed’ classes to the schools affiliated to that University is reported to have raised a flutter in Ahmedabad.  Not only has the flutter given satisfaction to a ‘Times of India’ correspondent, but the occasion has led to the discovery by him of another defect in the constitution of the Senate in that it does not contain a single Muslim member.  The discovery, however, I may inform the reader, is no proof of the want of national character of the University.  The Hindu-Muslim unity is no mere lip expression.  It requires no artificial proofs.  The simple reason why there is no Mussalman representative on the Senate is that no higher educated Mussalman, able to give his time, has been found to take sufficient interest in the national education movement.  I merely refer to this matter to show that we must reckon with attempts to discredit the movement even misinterpretation of motives.  That is a difficulty from without and easier to deal with.

The ‘depressed’ classes difficulty is internal and therefore far more serious because it may give rise to a split and weaken the cause—­no cause can survive internal difficulties if they are indefinitely multiplied.  Yet there can be no surrender in the matter of principles for the avoidance of splits.  You cannot promote a cause when you are undermining it by surrendering its vital parts.  The depressed classes problem is a vital part of the cause. Swaraj is as inconceivable without full reparation to the ‘depressed’ classes as it is impossible without real Hindu-Muslim unity.  In my opinion we have become ’pariahs of the Empire’ because we have created ‘pariahs’ in our midst.  The slave owner is always more hurt than the slave.  We shall be unfit to gain Swaraj so long as we would keep in bondage a fifth of the population of Hindustan.  Have we not made the ‘pariah’ crawl on his belly?  Have we not segregated him?  And if it is religion so to treat the ‘pariah.’  It is the religion of the white race to segregate us.  And if it is no argument for the white races to say that we are satisfied with the badge of our inferiority, it is less for us to say that the ‘pariah’ is satisfied with his.  Our slavery is complete when we begin to hug it.

The Gujarat Senate therefore counted the cost when it refused to bend before the storm.  This non-co-operation is a process of self-purification.  We may not cling to putrid customs and claim the pure boon of Swaraj.  Untouchability I hold is a custom, not an integral part of Hinduism.  The world advanced in thought, though it is still barbarous in action.  And no religion can stand that which is not based on fundamental truths.  Any glorification of error will destroy a religion as surely as disregard of a disease is bound to destroy a body.