इसको पढिए और बताइए कि क्या अम्बेडकर के पास दलित मुक्ति के उपाय नहीं थे? इसके अलावा उनके राजकीय समाजवाद को भी ईमांदारीपूर्वक परखें।: ~Then, there is a last demand which the untouchables must insist upon. I am convinced that it is the most vital demand which to my mind must override every other demand. I refer to the project of having new settlements of the untouchables, separate and independent of the hindu villages. Why have the untouchables been the slaves and serfs of the hindus for so many thousand years? To my mind, the answer lies in the peculiar organisation of hindu villages. You have spread out all over India some 700000 hindu villages. Attached to every hindu village lives a small settlement of untouchables. This settlement of untouchables is usually very small as compared with the village to which it is attached. Secondly, this settlement of untouchables is without any resource and without any opportunity for improvement. It is invarriably a settlement of landless population. Being untouchable, it could not sell anything, for nobody would buy from an untouchable. It is wholly a population, destitute and dependent for its livelihood upon the hindu villages. It lives by begging food or by offering its labor for partly wages. In this setting, you can understand why untouchable has remained in degraded position for so long. While this village system continues to exist in its present form, the untouchables will never achieve their independence, whether social or economic and will never get out of the inferiority complex which they have developed as a result of their social and economic dependence. The village system must, therefore be broken. It is the only way that is open for the untouchables if they really wish to emancipate themselves from the stranglehold which the hindus have acquired over them through the village system. My suggestion is that you should insist upon a provision being made in the constitution for the formation of new and independent villages exclusively of untouchables at public cost to be undertaken by the central government. Yhere is a good deal of cultivable land which belongs to the government and which is unoccupied. This could be reserved for the purpose of giving effect to this scheme of new villages of untouchables. Government could buy from private individuals outlaying vacant land and use it for same purpose. It would not be difficult to induce the untouchables to shift from their present habitats to these new villages and settle there as independent farmers. -- B. R. Ambedkar, while addressing All-India Depressed Classes Conference held at Nagpur on 18,July, 1942.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 05:46:42 +0000
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