Mr. Chairman, Sir, I stand here to
support the Resolution as originally moved by Pandit Jawahar Lal
Nehru. In my opinion, it is really unfortunate that a resolution of
such a sacred nature should have been subjected to amendments. I
purposely call it sacred because by this Resolution an attempt is made
to give expression to that aspiration to be free which has stirred us for
the last several years. Sir, the Resolution
gives a picture of the vision of future India. That India of the future is to
be a democratic and decentralized republic in which the ultimate
sovereignty is to lie with the people and in which fundamental rights
are to be safeguarded to minorities inhabiting this land.120 These are the three fundamental features of this Resolution and it is
because of these three fundamental features that I140 call this Resolution sacred. I shall try to be brief. Yet I
cannot refrain from reminding this House that we are160 all assembled here in assertion of a cherished and valuable right which
mankind has achieved for itself after undergoing untold sufferings and
sacrifices. Some sort of political structure is required in
every society to make life therein possible. A careful analysis of the
process of evolution of States in this world shows that the nature of
these has changed with the change in the conception of life. Sir, I was not
surprised to hear just now from an honourable240 Member that there can be honest difference of opinion regarding
the place where political sovereignty resided in society. Sir, not long ago,
the world did not believe that all individuals composing society had an equal
right to liberty and happiness.280 Society was composed of classes and the individual had no place in
society. The place of man in society was determined by the class to which he
belonged and so there was no individual liberty to be safeguarded. Poverty was320 not thought to be a disease which society must get rid of. Some
of the great thinkers of the 18th century France were of the opinion that the
presence of poverty in society was necessary for the proper production of360 wealth. In such a society, there could be no place for the
principle of the sovereignty of the people. Sovereignty belonged to the King
whose privilege it was to rule. The people existed merely to pay the taxes
demanded of them by the king and obey the laws enacted by him. But with the
lapse of time, the conception of420 society and life changed. Men came to believe that every individual has
an equal right to liberty and happiness. With this change in the conception of
life, a change in the structure of the State became necessary. But those who
held political power were reluctant to part with it and effect a change in the
political structure. There was thus480 a clash between the ideologies which swayed the people and those which
swayed the men in power. There were revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic
at the end of the 18th century in which the principle that the
power belonged to the people was vindicated. Even after this, there
were rulers who would not recognize this principle and so another
blood-bath in the shape of a revolution had to be gone through to get finally
sanctioned the principle that560 political power belonged to the people. It was to achieve this constituent
power that we in this country have been fighting British Imperialism
for the last several years. It is this which moved this country from
one end to the other600 in 1921 and made its millions rally under the banner of revolt raised
by Mahatma Gandhi in that year. It was for asserting this basic right of a
people that hundreds mounted the scaffold, thousands faced bullets, and lakhs640 of people swarmed the jails.
There was a wide gap between the political ideals on which the
Government of India was based and the political ideology which
swayed the people, and the result has been strife. So, we are not here in
this Assembly because the British Government in a fit of generosity have
thought it proper to ask us700 to take over power. I have been in a position from where
I can form my own opinion as to720 whether there is any sincerity behind all this talk of
peaceful transfer of power. We are here because we have succeeded
in compelling those who still entertain the dream of governing India according
to the political ideals embodied in the Government of India Act, to give up
that dream. We have succeeded because of that spirit of rebellion which spread all
over the country in 1942. It is as a result of the 1942 rebellion that
we are here in800 this Constituent Assembly. Gathered together in such an Assembly, it
should be our first duty to draw up a picture of future free India
and present it to our people. The Right Hon'ble Dr. Jayakar who spoke
eloquently, has drawn840 a picture of the difficulties which the absence of our Muslim League
friends will cause. I do not think that we required a speech from a man of the
eminence of Dr. Jayakar to point out these difficulties. We know what
those difficulties are. However, if I understood him right, he did not give us
a counsel of despair. He has actually advised us to go on with our work if our
friends of the Muslim League do not come in after some time. Our leader Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru has made it quite clear that
we are anxious to see our Muslim League friends occupying their
rightful place in this Assembly. Every one of us is equally anxious
to960 see them come back. But I fail to understand how this particular
Resolution would stand in the way of their980 coming here at a future date. If we have understood the political
ideology of the Muslim League correctly, if we understood the Cabinet
Declaration correctly, there is one matter in which all are agreed and that
is that the future India is to be a united India and that
that India might also be outside the British Commonwealth of Nations, if
the Indian people so decide. From the pronouncements made from time to time
by Muslim League leaders, I think we can rightly draw the conclusion
that the Muslim League also stands for a free and independent India. So,
according1080 to all of us including the League, the future India is going
to be an independent free India. In that independent India, the source of
authority is going to vest in the people who inhabit this land. That is the1120 cherished right which has been won for the people
inhabiting this globe by those who have gone before. That is the principle for
which we have been fighting all along.
When this Constituent Assembly meets and we
draw up a declaration, I think the first thing to be included in
that declaration should be this elementary right of a people which
decides to be free, and therefore to this feature of the Resolution no
one can have any objection.
1200 Now, the Union which we are going to have
in India is going to be a Union of all the parts of India. This
certainly means that the future India is going to be a united India.
I will again say that the shape of that future India which this Resolution
envisages certainly shows that the framers of this Resolution1260 have taken pretty good care to
see that nothing is said in this Resolution which can create
difficulties in the1280 way of our friends of the
Muslim League coming into this Assembly at some later date. I know
that there are members in this Assembly who believe that there has
arisen an Indian nation with an Indian culture and an Indian civilization.
Such men certainly are only too anxious to have a republic of the unitary type in
this country. There has been such a tremendous increase in the economic
forces of production in the world that if full use is to be made
of these forces in this world, it is necessary that we
should have still larger political units which will transgress the national
boundaries of national States. It is a realization of this truth which
makes many1400 Indians feel that India
must have a centralized republic. But in spite of that, if we want
to have a republic in India which will be democratic and at the same
time decentralized, it is because the framers of this1440 Resolution have taken care to take into
account the feelings of our Muslim League friends. Sir, there was a time when
because of the historical circumstances prevailing in the world of those days,
States of large sizes, containing populations homogeneous in language and
religion, could be erected. There can be no doubt that a national State
with a homogeneous population is a living force. But unfortunately, at a time
when there is a tendency for these national States to pass out of
existence, we have to deal with a bitter legacy left behind by them and
that is the legacy of small nationalities, consisting often of a few
thousands or a few lakhs, clamouring for separate States of their own. This
has been creating havoc in this world. The whole of Eastern
Europe has become the zone for breeding wars because in that portion of
Europe are living small nationalities so intermixed that they cannot be divided
into small States,1600 and yet they clamour for
separate political existence.
