Caste and Race in India c12.86

c12.86

Reserved representation is thus not necessary. Nay, it is harmful in so far as it tends to perpetuate the distinction based on birth. Co-operation in the satisfaction of the needs of common social life through the machinery of Government is one of the potent factors that have dissolved tribal bonds and created nation-communities. This co-operation may be based on both territorial contiguity and affinity of interests. Special representation for some castes, which have, as shown above, interests that are neither common to them, nor necessarily conflicting with the interests of other castes, means the negation of such co-operation. In countries where the nation-community is strongly built up on the basis of the feeling of unity no such principle is recognized for the representation of the different interests, even when they can be parcelled out into groups with conflicting interests. Thus we have not heard of "labour" claiming special representation in the British Parliament. Where it is a question of engendering a feeling of unity the people must be made to co-operate irrespective of their caste. It is only by such activity that the feeling of nation-community can be created. To harp on the caste-differences and to allow special representation is to set at naught the fundamental condition for the rise of community feeling.