India That Is Bharat Pdf Archive

[Agenor Ramadan]

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If the House is so pleased it may give me authority to call the next meeting at any date which I may consider necessary. I may provisionally announce that as at present advised I propose to all the next meeting to begin on 6th October. Due notice will be given to Members about it.

I had not the benefit of this draft before me, and therefore I took my stand on the Schedule as it stands in the Constitution, and there was therefore no alternative but to move my amendment. Now that you have drawn my attention to the Schedule as it will be brought before the House-and I hope will be accepted by the House,-in the light of that, there is no need for me to speak further on this amendment. I move both amendments, Sir, and commend them to the House for consideration and acceptance.

As a matter of fact, the whole of the Constitution has been based on the assumption that there will be separate States, and that those States will constitute the Union. Now, you want to go back on that and say that there are no separate States, it is too late now, I think.

Mr. President, article I is at present under consideration. it is my feeling, however, that it would have been much more proper and desirable that article 1, was taken tip for consideration after we had finish our consideration of all the other articles. Naturally the taking up of article I for consideration without settling all other questions causes some suspicions and apprehensions in our mind. We must bear this consideration in our mind that any changes necessary in article 1, which is under consideration today, would involve corresponding changes in other articles as well. It would not be easy to make such corresponding changes in the articles that have already been adopted. I repeat that any changes in article I would involve corresponding changes in all other articles, and, therefore, the more proper thing would be to decide upon the final form of article 1 in the light of and after all the other articles have been adopted by this House.

It would have been in time if you had put forward this suggestion yesterday, and it could have been then considered. But this article has been under consideration since yesterday and your suggestion cannot be considered now.

Very well. Sir, I was saying that my idea of the Constitution was, and also that of many of my friends, if it was to be a union of States, then it must be a union of Sovereign States, that is to say, of completely autonomous provinces and groups of States, containing even the smaller States which have been merged in Districts and Provinces. I thought we would give to those groups of States also the same status as the Provinces, and then we would give them all complete provincial autonomy, and thus make our position quite different from what it was under the British regime. We all know that the set-up under the British regime was designed only for administrative convenience and not for any political purpose or for giving any political power to anyone. There was no provincial autonomy as such during the British regime. I want that at least after our struggle of the last forty years, we must get our provinces independent, and after that we will have a federation of independent units which will voluntarily give some central subjects or band over to the Centre some subjects such as foreign relations, defence and communications. That was the original idea, and I can give quotations from the speeches of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and even Dr. Ambedkar to show that they were of this opinion also at that time.

My Friend, Prof. Shah and others have formed a separate party on this particular point. But here the attempt is to make India a sort of unitary government, and not only a unitary Government, but a sort of unitary empire. This merger of all the States into the Union clearly means that there is nothing more than that he wants to treat the whole of India as one and he wants to establish here a sort of not only Indian Dominion or something of that kind, but he wants to make it a sort of Indian Empire. Sir, I submit that I have been a constant opposer of the British Empire.

I was the first man to raise two questions in the Constituent Assembly; the first was with regard to the National language and the second with regard to the name of the country. We have solved the question of the National language and we are naming our country today. Therefore this day appears to be of great significance. There should be something on record in this connection and therefore I shall submit a few words and shall take only a few minutes.

The word India does not occur in our ancient books. it began to be used when the Greeks came to India. They named our Sindhu river as Indus and India was derived from Indus. There is a mention of this in Encyclopaedia Britannica. On the contrary, if we look up the Vedas, the Upanishads the Brahmanas and our great and ancient book the Mahabharat, we find a mention of the name Bharat. (Bbisma Parva)

By my reminding the House of these ancient matters it should not be understood, as our Prime Minister and other Honourable Members say, that I am looking backward. I want to look forward and I also want that there should be scientific inventions in this country. But by naming our country as Bharat we are not doing anything which will prevent us from marching forward. We should indeed give such a name to our country as may be befitting our history and our culture. It is a matter of great pleasure that we are today naming our country as Bharat. I said many a time before too that if we do not arrive at correct decisions in regard to these matters the people of this country will not understand the significance of self-government.

This leads us to the debatable point-whether the Union is a Federation or a Unitary State. I have already described it sometime ago, speaking on another article that this is not a federation proper but it is a decentralised unitary government. No doubt I admit that there is one characteristic of federation in this constitution and it is this that provinces have a fairly large number of subjects in their jurisdiction. But it is not an absolute characteristic as it is also compatible with a de-centralised form of unitary government. Therefore though there is one characteristic which can be said to be of a federal character, there are so many other characteristics of subordination. The other day when I said that the States are subordinate to the Centre our Friend Mr. T. T. Krishnamachari objected to that statement; but I can point out so many articles, so many characteristics which show how the States are subordinate to the Centre.

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