I
INTRODUCTORY
Dr. Gadgil and students of the Gokhale Institute,
I feel greatly honoured by your invitation to address you this evening You have met today to celebrate a day which is set out as your Founder’s Day. I had the privilege of personally knowing the late Rao Bahadur R. R. Kale the founder of your Institute. He was my colleague in the old Bombay Legislative Council. I know how much care and study he used to bestow upon every subject which he handled. I am sure he deserves the gratitude of all those who care for knowledge and study for helping to ‘establish this Institute, whose main function as I understand is to dig for knowledge and make it ready for those who care to use it. For, first knowledge is power as nothing else is, and secondly, not all those who wish and care for knowledge have the leisure and the patience to dig for it. As one who believes in the necessity of knowledge and appreciates the difficulties in its acquisition I am glad to be associated in this way with him and with the Institute he has founded.
The theme I have chosen for the subject matter of my address is the Federal Scheme embodied in the Government of India Act, 1935. The title of the subject might give you the impression that I am going to explain the Federal Constitution. That would be an impossible task in itself. The Federal Scheme is a vast thing. Its provisions are contained, first in 321 sections of the Government of India Act, 1935, secondly in the 9 Schedules which are part of the Act, thirdly in 31 Orders-in-Council issued under the Act and fourthly the hundreds of Instruments of Accession to be passed by the Indian States. Very few can claim mastery over so vast a subject and if any did he would take years to expound it in all its details.