MAHARASHTRA AS A LINGUISTIC PROVINCE 123
- So much for Prof. Dantwala’s arguments. I will now examine Prof. Gheewala’s arguments. Prof. Gheewala also relies on Lord Acton. He quotes a portion of a passage from Lord Acton’s Essay on Nationality. I reproduce below the passage in full :
“The greatest adversary of the rights of nationality is the modern theory of nationality. By making the State and the nation commensurate with each other in theory, it reduces practically to a subject condition all other nationalities that may be within the boundary. It cannot admit them to an equality with the ruling nation which constitutes the State, because the State would then cease to be national, which would be a contradiction of the principle of its existence. According, therefore, to the degree of humanity and civilization in that dominant body which claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are exterminated, or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a condition of dependence.”
I do not understand why the learned Professor has dragged in the name of Lord Acton. The passage does not really help him. There is one thing which seems to be uppermost in his mind. He thinks that if Bombay is included in Maharashtra the Province of Maharashtra will consist of two nationalities—one consisting of the Marathi-speaking people and the other of the Gujarathi-speaking people and the Marathi-speaking people who would be the dominant class will reduce the Gujarathi-speaking people to a subject condition. It is in support of this he thought of citing Lord Acton. Such a possibility is always there. There is no objection to the way in which he has presented the problem. But there are great objections to the conclusions he draws.
In the first place, in a country like India in which society is throughout communally organized it is obvious that in whatever way it is divided into areas for administrative purposes, in every area there will always be one community which by its numbers happens to be a dominant community. As a dominant community it becomes a sole heir to all political power, which the area gets. If Marathi-speaking people in a unified Maharashtra with Bombay thrown into it will become dominant over the Gujarathi-speaking people, will this prospect be confined to Maharashtra only ? Will such a phenomena not occur within the Marathi-speaking people ? Will it not be found in Gujarat if Gujarat became a separate Province ? I am quite certain that within the Marathi-speaking people who are sharply divided between the Marathas and the non-Marathas, the Marathas being a dominant class will reduce both Gujarathi-speaking and the non-Marathas to a subject condition. In the same way in Gujarat in some parts the Anavil Brahmins from a dominant class. In other parts it is the Patidars who form a dominant class. It is quite likely that the Anavils and the Patidars will reduce the condition of the other communities to