360 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
if the Constitution is framed by Indians for Indians and with the voluntary consent of Indians. If the Constitution is imposed by the British Government and is not accepted by one section and is opposed by another, there will arise in the country an element, hostile to the Constitution, and which will devote its energies not to working the Constitution but to breaking it. The anti-Constitution party may look upon destroying the Constitution as its only duty and may engage itself in “pronouncing” against a party working the Constitution in the real Latin American fashion.
It is useless for the British to frame a Constitution for India which they will not remain to enforce. The same result will ensue if the Constitution is imposed by one powerful section or a combination of such sections on other sections. I am, therefore, firmly of opinion that if Indians want Dominion Status, they cannot escape the responsibility of framing their own Constitution. The position is thus inescapable.
III
CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
The second question that I wish to raise is : Should there be a Constituent Assembly, charged with the function of making a Constitution ? Constituent Assembly is on the lips of everybody. The Congress parties in their resolutions, passed before the Congress ministries resigned, demanded that the Constitution for India should be made by a Constituent Assembly composed of Indians. A Constituent Assembly was included in the Cripps proposals. The Sapru Committee has followed suit.
I must state that I am wholly opposed to the proposals of a Constituent Assembly. It is absolutely superfluous. I regard it as a most dangerous project, which may involve this country in a Civil War. In the first place, I do not see why a Constituent Assembly is at all necessary. Indians are not in the same position as the Fathers of the American Constitution were, when they framed the Constitution of the United States. They had to evolve ideas, suitable for the constitution for a free people. They had no constitutional patterns before them to draw upon. This cannot however be the case for Indians. Constitutional ideas and constitutional forms are ready at hand. Again, room for variety is very small. There are not more than two or three constitutional patterns to choose from. Thirdly, there are hardly any big and purely constitutional questions about which there can be said to be much dispute among Indians. It is agreed that the future Indian Constitution should be Federal. It is also more or less settled what subjects should go to the Centre and what to the Provinces. There is no quarrel over the division of Revenues between the Centre and the Provinces, none on Franchise and none on the relation of the Judiciary to the Legislature and the Executive. The only point of dispute, which is outstanding, centres round the question of the residuary powers—whether they should be with the Centre or with the Provinces. But that is hardly a matter worth