I myself have got different views in the matter. I know very well that if there is no real sympathy, if it be only lip sympathy not only ten years but twenty years will be of no avail. So long as the advanced community in this country, simply realise that they have done some wrong to their brethren, and that it is now their duty to give some help, I think we shall not get what we really want and what the country really needs. I should appeal to them to think entirely in a different light. Who are the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes? Do not constitute 85 or 90 per cent of India’s population? Many of my friends have times without number expressed concern for the rural people. To my mind, the term rural people is synonymous with the sum total of the Scheduled Castes and scheduled Tribes and the backward classes. You are leaving behind 85 or 90 per cent. of the total population in a backward condition. Unless you level up this 85 per cent. of the population, is it possible for India to advance a step further, that is expected of free India now ? I think not. This is not my personal view. I can cite one of the greatest men of India, our late revered poet, Rabindranath Tagore. In an exasperated mood, he cried aloud in his poem “My unfortunate country“; in fact the who theme of that poem is this, that unless and until you level up this 90 per cent. of your population, you can never rise up, because what he says is, those you have left behind they are dragging you down. If you understand from that angle of vision that unless you level up the 80 or 90, or whatever that may be, per cent. of the population, you cannot rise up yourself; you cannot progress as you want to. I think it would be really action by which this unfortunate condition of this country could be improved.
