Sir Alexander Cardew
Member, Governor’s Executive Council (1918)
Acting Governor of Madras Presidency (1919)
Sir Alexander Cardew, was a main British
administrator in the Madras Presidency during the
British rule. As an executive he noticed seriously
the social disparities found in the then prevailed
society and recommended to Government of India,
providing opportunities to uplift the deprived
sections predominated by brahminical hegemony.
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The Note by the Hon’ble Sir Alexander Cardew, K.C.S.I., I.C.S., to the Government of India contained in the letter No.1146 (Reforms) dated the 31st December 1918. The following relevant extracts are made from that Note:
“2. It may first be asked whether the democratic idea is in accordance with the prevailing philosophy of the people of India. The fundamental principle of the modern democratic State is the recognition of the value of the individual and the belief that as such individual has but one life, full opportunity should be accorded to each to attain his maximum development in that life. Neither of these propositions is accepted in the current philosophy of India. This rather holds that the present life is for each only one of a series of existence; that the position of each individual in this life has been determined for him by his merit or demerit in previous births; and that, therefore, his place in the social organism is irrevocably fixed and cannot be changed. It may therefore be safely asserted that the root notions of democracy run counter to all the ideas which for thousands of years have formed the common stock of popular belief in India.
“3. Closely connected with the doctrine, that each man’s place in the present birth has been determined by his actions in the past existence is the institution of caste which has the effect of stereotyping and fixing unalterably the position of each individual in the social scale. Thus a man born a Brahmin cannot be other than a Brahmin and a man born Pariah can never be other than a Pariah. Equality of opportunity is impossible under such conditions and it is neither recognized nor desired by Indian public opinion.
“4. At the apex of the caste pyramid stands the Brahmin. The caste, originally representing, at least in Southern India, a racial difference, has established through a long period of time its absolute supremacy over all other castes. The Brahman’s claim to supremacy is based not only on race and intellect but also on the injunctions of religion. The sanctity of a Brahman’s person and religious merit to be obtained by feeding him, paying for his education, providing money for the marriage of his daughters, endowing him with land, has been an established belief in India for centuries……..Brahmans possessed numberless privileges………….
“6. With such predominance in most walks of life, it is not surprising that the Brahman has easily secured control in politics…………. No representative of the great Pariah community nor of the Christian community has ever sat, or would ever have a chance of sitting, for one of these constituencies. This experience strongly suggests that the political machine in the future as in the past will be under the control of the Brahmans, unless special measures are resorted to, to secure adequate representation of the other classes.
“8. Next to the Brahman sed longo intervello comes the great group of Hindu—castes, some higher, some lower, generally grouped together as non-Brahmans but all equally exclusive and largely antagonistic to one another. It is notorious that if a member of one of these castes attains to a position of influence he fills the offices in his gifts with his fellow castemen. The Standing Orders of the Government recognize this tendency and contain directions to counteract it. The joint report is not ignorant of this, for it says, ‘there runs through Indian Society a series of cleavages of religion, race and caste which constantly threaten its solidarity.’ These distinctions of castes do not merely threaten the solidarity of Indian Society—they prevent such solidarity from ever existing.
“9. Below both the Brahmans and the non- Brahman caste Hindus, come the low castes or more correctly the persons of no castes who number in this Presidency (i.e. Madras) some ten millions of people. For convenience they may be referred to as the Panchama or Pariah community. These people are regarded not merely as belonging to a lower class, but as conveying by their very presence an actual pollution which requires purifactory religious ceremonies.
“13. The difficulty of introducing democratic institutions into a society such as this, illiterate, divided into hard and fast castes, with Brahman at the top, with the various Non- Brahman Hindu castes in the middle and the low castes liable to be oppressed impartially by both, at the bottom must be very great. Nor does this difficulty seem to have been sufficiently realized by the writers of the Joint Report. Surely the first essential of any scheme of reform is that adequate safeguard should be provided for the good government of the inarticulate masses of the population………..”
“19. If this is a correct description of the existing state of affairs then the Minorities of Europe cannot be said to have a better case for obtaining guarantees of their rights than the Depressed classes. Many people in the world have fallen law by force of circumstances. But having fallen they are free to rise. The Depressed classes on the other hand form a solitary case of a people who have remained fallen because their rise is opposed to the religious notions of the majority of their countrymen. Much was made before the Muddiman Committee by certain persons of the resolutions passed by the various Legislative Councils, throwing open wells, dispensaries and dharamshalas to members of Depressed classes and of the circulars issued by Ministers of Education requiring children of the Depressed classes to be admitted to schools in common with the rest. But what a mockery such resolutions and circulars are will be apparent to the Commission from the perusal of Annexure A to this statement. It will illustrate the attitude of the majority towards the Depressed classes as evidenced by incidents reported from time to time in the various newspapers in the country (item Nos.1 and 10). From a perusal of these news items it will be realized that the Depressed classes cannot be employed in the army, navy and the police, because such employment is opposed to the religious notions of the majority (item No.8). They cannot be admitted in schools, because their entry is opposed to the religious notions of the majority (item No.12). They cannot avail themselves of Government dispensaries, because Doctors will not let them cause pollution to their persons or to their dispensaries (item Nos.2 and 5). They cannot live a cleaner and higher life, because to live above their prescribed station is opposed to the religious notions of the majority (item Nos.1 and 6). So rigorous is the enforcement of the Social Code against the Depressed classes that any attempt on the part of the Depressed classes to exercise their elementary rights of citizenship only ends in provoking the majority, to practice the worst form of social tyranny known to history (item Nos.4, 7 and 11). It will be admitted that when society is itself a tyrant, its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its functionaries and it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection against such tyranny is usually to be found in the Police power of the state. But unfortunately in any struggle in which the Depressed classes are on the one side and the upper class of Hindus on the other, the Police power is always in league with the tyrant majority (item No.11), for the simple reason that the Depressed classes have no footing whatsoever in the Police or in the Magostracy of the country.
- In view of this, it is unfair to the Depressed classes to be lulled into the belief that their interests would be safe in the hands of their country-men, because some Councils have passed resolutions and some of the Ministers have issued circulars favouring the Depressed classes. The Sabha desires to caution the Commission against being lured into forming a better opinion of the Hindu majority from its best instances. Pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other, of superior wisdom ordering all things for the greatest good of the dependants are very gratifying to read. But such pictures would be to the purpose only if any one from the Depresses Classes denied the existence of good men in the Hindu society. Nobody among the Depressed classes doubts that there would be great and universal happiness under the government of a good Hindu. But the fact is that laws and institutions required to be adapted not to good men but to bad. From this point of view, it is safer to grant the minority the necessary protection by the inclusion of guarantee clauses than to leave it unprotected on the fanciful ground that that the tyrant majority has in it a few good men sympathetic to the minority. Such guarantees may be looked down upon by persons other than the Depressed classes as being unnecessary; but from the standpoint of the Depressed classes it is but an essential safeguard. There is such an enormous dread of the Reforms prevalent amongst the Depressed classes that they have from the very beginning opposed their introduction. So strong was their feeling against the Reforms that in one of the addresses presented to Mr.Mantagu the Depressed classes declared “we shall fight to the last drop of our blood, against any attempt to transfer the seat of authority in this country from the British hands to the so-called high class Hindus.” Nothing can allay such fears as the system of guarantees can do. Government is based upon faith and not upon reason. If the Depressed classes can have no faith in the new constitution it is statesmanship to buy that faith if it can be done so with the concession of guarantees herein demanded.
Source: Dr.Baba Saheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches Vol.2 (pages 443- 446), Published by the State Government of Maharashtra in 1982
