The first speech in a legislative assembly on untouchability: Maneckji Dadabhoy’s pioneering effort
By Manoj Mitta
(Edited Extract from ‘Caste Pride’ by Manoj Mitta, published by Westland Publications.)
Though Indians had begun to be represented in the legislature since 1861, none of them sought any reform of the caste system, whether for the benefit of Hindus generally or to ameliorate the lot of untouchables, the worst affected.
In the midst of this apathy, suddenly, on 16 March 1916, India found its own John Quincy Adams, someone who broke the silence in the legislature on untouchability. Maneckji Byramji Dadabhoy was an unlikely candidate to have ended Dadabhai Naoroji’s virtual embargo of three decades ago. A Bombay-born barrister and industrialist and a councillor for the Central Provinces, Dadabhoy was a Parsi.
Maneckji Dadabhoy moved a resolution in the Imperial Legislative Council on ‘Depressed Classes’, the official term at the time for untouchables. It made two recommendations to the administration of Viceroy Lord Hardinge. One was that a committee of officials and non-officials be appointed to come up with measures for ‘amelioration’ in the condition of the Depressed Classes. Two, that, as ‘a preliminary step’, the provincial governments be invited to ‘formulate schemes with due regard to local conditions’.
Dadabhoy’s resolution led to the first-ever discussion in the national legislature on untouchability.
Dadabhoy’s attempt to shine a light on the bottom layer of the Hindu hierarchy had met with resistance from two eminent Indian councillors, which explained why the government had declined to set up the committee that he had proposed. Surendra Nath Banerjea and Madan Mohan Malaviya had been presidents of the Indian National Congress. These Congress stalwarts took umbrage not so much at the substance of the resolution as to what they believed was Dadabhoy’s unwarranted attack on their religious community.
Dadabhoy had drawn parallels between blacks in the United States and untouchables in India. Though the southern states of the US were still steeped in lynching and segregation (Jim Crow laws), Dadabhoy commended the progress otherwise made by that country ‘since the abolition of the slave trade’. Putting the colonial government in the dock, he sought to establish that the Americans had fared better than the British rulers in India, and detailed the initiatives undertaken in the US to educate and empower blacks.
Given how little had been achieved by the few reformers from ‘those more favoured Indian communities’, Dadabhoy said caustically of the government’s attitude: ‘There ends the responsibility of the State and indeed, the shortest way to progress has been shown. People sunk in ignorance, despised, degraded and persecuted must look to themselves and to their persecutors for their elevation! Could there be a greater lack of imagination or appreciation of their duty in an enlightened Government?’
Having torn into the indifference of the colonial rulers, Dadabhoy dwelt on the root of untouchability, namely, the socio-religious conditioning of the Hindus. ‘That any man made after the image of god, endowed with brains and a moral sense, should pollute his fellow being with his touch, is incredible. The very idea is revolting and is enough to shock humanity. But despite of our vaunted civilisation, despite of our progress and enlightenment, large bodies, nay millions, of men have been relegated to that infamous position for centuries through Brahmanical persecution.’
With these outspoken remarks, Dadabhoy not only brought untouchability sharply into focus but also laid bare its link to ‘Brahmanical persecution’. Though Indians had been members of the Legislative Councils since 1861, it took fifty-five years for any legislator to talk about, let alone excoriate, this rampant social evil.
His moral indignation came through in his words. ‘Could human perversity go further? Could hatred brutalise humanity more?’ he asked, adding, ‘It is, Sir, a shame to Hindu society, it is a shame to Hindu culture, it is a shame to India.’ The naming and shaming of Hindu society and culture for practising untouchability added to the significance of Dadabhoy’s speech in the Legislative Council.
[In response], the redoubtable Congress leader, Surendra Nath Banerjea. He began by saying that ‘every member of this Council … will sympathise with the object of this Resolution’, and added that ‘we all welcome the discussion that this Resolution has given rise to in this Council’.
Banerjea asserted that the ancient Hindu civilisation was ‘the guarantee for law and order and social stability’. His explanation was: ‘We are trying to evolve a national system in conformity to our present environments, but we cannot push aside all those things which have come down to us in the past … We notice the defects, and we are anxious to get rid of them gradually and steadily … My friend must have a little sympathy for us; he must extend to us the hand of generosity in our efforts to deal with these problems.’
Even though, as Banerjea put it, the government could do ‘a great deal by way of education, a great deal by helping forward the industrial movement among the Depressed Classes’. He said he would ‘welcome the action of Government in a matter of this kind’, but there was a problem with going further. ‘[I]f you analyse the situation, it is a social problem, and the British Government, very properly, as I think, in conformity with its ancient traditions, holds aloof from all interference with social questions.’
Banerjea said that ‘the vital problem, the problem of problems, is one of social uplifting, and there the Government can only afford to be a benevolent spectator. It may sympathise with our efforts but it cannot actively participate.’
This argument resonated with his distinguished party colleague, Madan Mohan Malaviya, who said, ‘We Hindus have got some much worse prejudices to fight against, I acknowledge, I own it. But I do not think it is within the province of a member of this Council either to lecture to the Hindus present here or to those outside as to socio-religious disabilities among themselves which they might fight against and remove.’
Both Banerjea and Malaviya took swipes at Dadabhoy. Banerjea said that, even if he had done it ‘unintentionally’, Dadabhoy had gone ‘somewhat out of his way to level an attack against the Hindu community’. More bluntly, Malaviya said Dadabhoy had gone ‘out of his way to make remarks against the Hindu community which, I think, he ought to have avoided’.
Accusing Dadabhoy of doing ‘little justice to the Government’, Malaviya said that it had been for decades ‘endeavouring to promote in a special degree the education of the backward classes’. Given that the government was already ‘very much alive’ to untouchability, he was anxious that Dadabhoy’s resolution should not give the impression that ‘we are starting a new campaign’.
Dadabhoy [in his reply] said, tongue firmly in cheek, ‘I anticipated that the champions of public liberty, public spirit and public enterprise and culture—men like my friends the Hon’ble Mr Surendra Nath Banerjea or the Hon’ble Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya—would take the trouble of moving a Resolution to this effect.’
Further, ‘I waited all this time to see if one of these enthusiastic members would bring in a Resolution for the amelioration of the Depressed Classes; but when I found that none of them had taken up the matter—though at times this matter is discussed even in the Congress pandal in a certain manner; when I found that it was not taken up in this Council—I thought it my duty to do so—’
Banerjea interrupted him at this point, ‘I must make a correction. We have taken up the matter and we are doing our best in Bengal. It is therefore not a correct statement, so far as I am concerned, to say that we have not been doing anything in connection with the elevation of the Depressed Classes. I hope my Hon’ble friend will make that correction.’
Far from making any correction, Dadabhoy responded tartly, ‘My Hon’ble friend has entirely misunderstood me. I said that he had failed to take any action in this Council. I expected him to take this action, and as he had failed to do so, I, as a Parsi, representing a Hindu constituency, thought it my duty to bring this matter for public discussion in this Council.’ It was a biting retort to the accusation that he had no locus standi on the matter. ‘My friends, the Hon’ble Mr Banerjea and the Hon’ble and learned Pandit, have said that I made certain statements in disparagement of the community to which they have the honour to belong. I entirely repudiate that. I have the greatest respect for the community to which my Hon’ble friends belong.’
But Dadabhoy pulled no punches while discussing the conduct of Hindus towards untouchables. ‘In the course of my speech, I first pointed out the history of these Depressed Classes, and showed how Hindu society in the past had neglected its duty in the matter. It is only latterly that enthusiasm has, to a certain extent, been awakened and something done for these unfortunate classes.’
Dadabhoy expressed confidence that the discussion triggered by his resolution would not be in vain. ‘This debate will stimulate our countrymen to further action; it will stimulate our friends, Messrs Banerjea and Malaviya, to take up this cause with greater energy; it will stimulate Government to further beneficent action. I have no doubt the Government will take steps in the near future for giving special facilities for the advancement of these unhappy and wretched classes.’
The Times of India, for instance, said that, though his speech was ‘full of interesting information’ on the disabilities suffered by the Depressed Classes, ‘unfortunately he allowed himself to be carried away by his feeling and made use of some expressions which were understood as reflecting on the Hindu religion and civilisation, on the one hand, and on the earnestness of Government in desiring the amelioration of the condition of those classes, on the other. The result was that, to use his own words, he found himself in the unfortunate position of being left in the lurch by many of the Hindu members as well as by the official members.’ Appreciating the government’s letter to the provinces, the Times said, ‘Mr Dadabhoy’s valiant effort in the Legislative Council has not been infructuous.’
Dadabhoy’s ‘valiant effort’ marked the beginning of a centralised compilation of official data on untouchables.
Dadabhoy had to pay a price for speaking out on untouchability. Ambedkar pointed to this in a written statement he submitted in January 1919 before the Southborough Committee, which had been set up to determine the franchise for the elections to be held under the Montagu– Chelmsford reforms. In what was his first foray into public life, twentyseven-year-old Ambedkar made a strong plea for the representation of untouchables in legislative bodies. To underline the need for such representation, he cited the defeat that Dadabhoy had suffered in the election subsequent to his resolution initiative.
‘The high caste men in the Council do not like any social question being brought before the legislature, as may be seen from the fact of the Resolution introduced by the Honourable Mr. Dadabhoy in 1916 in the Imperial Legislative Council. That it was adversely criticized by many who claimed to evince some interest in the untouchables is too well known to need repetition.’ Ambedkar did not mince his words, even though Surendra Nath Banerjea was a member of the Southborough Committee as well.
‘But what is not well known,’ Ambedkar said, ‘is that though the Resolution was lost, the mover was not pardoned; for the very moving of such a nasty Resolution was regarded as a sin. At a subsequent election, the mover had to make room for the Honourable Mr [G.S.] Khaparde, who once wrote in an article: “Those who work for the elevation of the untouchables are themselves degraded.”’ Ambedkar asked, ‘Isn’t this sympathy of the higher castes for the untouchables, sympathy with a vengeance?’
For all the heightened awareness of Dalit struggles in recent decades, the first full-blown discussion on untouchability in the national legislature— marked by the selfless courage of Maneckji Dadabhoy in shaming Hindu society, and the betrayal of Brahminical discomfiture by Malaviya and Banerjea—has still not got its due in history.
(The author & publisher are gratefully acknowledged for permission to publish this.)