"The condition of the low castes - it is painful to call them low castes - is not only unsatisfactory as this resolution says - it is so deeply deplorable that it constitutes a grave blot on our social arrangments; and further, the attitude of our educated men towards this class is profoundly painful and humiliating. I do not propose to deal with this subject as an antiquarian; I only want to make a fe general observations from the standpoint of justice, humanity, and national self-interest. I think all fair-minded persons will have to admit that it is absolutely monstrous that a class of human beings, with bodies similar to our own, with brains that can think and with hearts that can feel, should be perpetually condemned to a low life of utter wretchedness, servitude and mental and moral degradation, and that permanent barriers should be placed in their way so that it should be impossible for them ever to overcome them and improve their lot. This is deeply revolting to our sense of justice. I believe one has to put oneself mentally in their place to realise how grevious this injustice is. We may touch a cat, we may touch a dog, we may touch any other animal, but the touch of these human beings brings pollution! And so completel is now the mental degradation of these people that they themselves see nothing in such treatment to resent, that they acquiesce in it as though nothing better than that was their due.
I remember a speech delivered sever or eight years ago by the late Mr. Ranade in Bombay, under the auspices of the Hindu Union Club. That was a time when public feeling ran high in India on the subject of the treatment which our people were receiving in South Africa. Our friend, Mr. Gandhi, had come here on a brief visit from South Africa and he was telling us how our people were treated in Natal and Cape Colony and the Transvaal - how they were not allowed to walk on foot-paths or travel in first-class carriages on the railway, how they were not admitted into hotels and so forth. Public feeling, in consequence, was deeply stirred, and we all felt that it was a mockery that we should be called British subjects, when we were treated like this in Great Britain's colonies. Mr. Ranade felt this just as keenly as anyone else. He had been a never failing adviser of Mr. Gandhi, and had carried on regular correspondence with him. But it was Mr. Ranade's peculiar greatness that he always utilised occassions of excitement to give proper turn to the national mind and cultivate its sense of proportion. And so when everyone was expressing himself in indignant terms about the treatment which our countrymen were receiving in South Africa, Mr. Ranade came forward to ask if we had no sins of our own to answer for in that direction...He began in charactersitic fashion, expressing great sympathy with the Indians in South Africa in the streuggle they were manfully carrying on. He rejoiced that the people of India had awakened to a sense of the position of their countrymen abroad, and he felt convinced that this awakening was a sign of the fact that the dead bones in the valley were once again becoming instinct with life. But he then proceeded to ask:- Was this sympathy with the opressed and down trodden Indians to be confined to those of our countryment only who had gone out of India? Or was it to be general and to be extended to all cases where there was oppression and injustice? it was easy, he said, to denounce foreigners, but those who did so were bound in common fairness to look into themselves and see if they were absolutely blameless in the matter. He then described the manner in which members of low caste were treated by our own community in different parts of India. It was a description, which filled the audience with feelings of deep shame and pain and indignation. And Mr. Ranade very justly asked whether it was for those who tolerated sych disgraceful oppression and injustice in their own country to indulge in all that denunciation of the people of South Africa. This question, therefore, is in the first place a question of sheer justice.
Next, as I have already said is a question of humanity. It is sometimes urged that if we have our castes, the people in the West have their classes, and after all, there is not much difference between the two. A little reflection will, however, show that the analogy is quite fallacious. The classes of the West are a perfectly elastic insititution, and not rigid or cast-iron like our castes. Mr. Chamberlain (Secretary of State for the colonies of the British Government) who is the most masterful personage in the British Empire today, was at one time a shoemaker and a screw-maker. ofcourse, he did not make shoes himself, but that was the trade by which he made money. Mr. Chamberlain today dines with Royalty, and mixes with the highest in the land on terms of absolute equality. Will a shoemaker ever be able to rise in India in the social scale in a similar fashion, no matter how gifted by nature he might be? A great writer has said that castes are eminently useful for the preservation of society, but they are utterly unsuited for purposes of progress. And this I think is perfectly true. If you want to stand where you were a thousand years ago, the system of castes need not be modified to any material degree. if, however, you want to emerge out of the slough in which you have long remained sunk, it will not do for you to insist on a rigid adherence to caste. "
From a speech entitled "Elevating the Depressed Classes" by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Another stark reminder of perhaps how magnificently we have failed to inherit the nation our founding fathers envisioned for us.
Realise that this was an idea expressed a 107 years ago and yet we continue to struggle to come to terms with it.
It also highlights the scholarship of the political and social leaders of a certain time in evident contrast to the lack thereof in our leadership of the day. A leadership that truly fails to express a position of any kind in respect of any social, political or even moral questions that may be posed to it.
