316 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
States ? If they are not States with sovereignty why are they allowed to join the federation ? If they are not States with sovereignty and if the sovereignty is with the Crown, why has the Crown not transferred its sovereignty to the Federation in respect of these territories ? What will be the ultimate destiny of such excluded States? Will these be merged in some Indian States or will these be merged in some Indian Provinces? I mention all this, firstly because I want to show that this Federation is not an All India Federation and secondly because I want to draw attention to the move of some Indian States to get these excluded States to merge into them.
A second question may be raised. Will this Federation help to unite the people of British India and the Indian States into one nation ?
A Federation is necessarily a composite body. Within it are units which are smaller political communities. Above the units is a larger political community called the Federation. Whether these different political communities will remain merely political associations or whether they will develop a common social fabric leading ultimately to the formation of a nation will depend upon what form their association takes. As Bryce points out—
“When within a large political community smaller communities are found existing, the relation of the smaller to the larger usually appears in one or other of the two following forms. One form is that of the League, in which a number of political bodies, be they monarchies or republics are bound together so as to constitute for certain purposes, and especially for the purpose of common defence, a single body. The members of such a composite body or league are not individual men but communities. It exists only as an aggregate of communities, and will therefore vanish so soon as the communities which compose it separate themselves from one another. Moreover it deals with and acts upon these communities only. With the individual citizen it has nothing to do, no right of taxing him, or judging him, or making laws for him, for in all these matters it is to his own community that his allegiance is due.
“In the second form, the smaller communities are mere sub-divisions of that greater one which we call a nation. They have been created, or at any rate they exist, for administrative purposes only. Such powers as they possess are powers delegated by the nation, and can be overridden by its will. The nation acts directly by its own officers, not merely on the communities, but upon every single citizen and the nation, because it is independent of these communities, would continue to exist were they all to disappear ………….”.
The former is the case where the form of Government is a confederation. The latter is the case where there exists a unitary form of Government. A Federal Government is between the two. It must not however be assumed that nationalism is compatible only with a Unitary Government and