z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-03.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 115
ON VILLAGE PANCHAYATS BILL 115
Constitution. We do not want, I do not want, the mere right to go to the ballot box and not knowing who is my representative, or if there is going to be any representative to represent me at all. I want a system in which not only I will have a right to go to the ballot box, but I will have a right to have a body of people belonging to my own class who will be inside the House, not only discuss matters but take part in deciding issues. I say, therefore, that communal representation is not a vicious thing, it is not a poison, it is the best arrangement that can be made for the safety and security of the different classes in this country. I do not call it a disfiguring of the constitution. I call it............
Dr. M. K. Dixit: Decoration.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Yes, decoration of the constitution. Then my honourable friend asks, should we admit this principle in the judiciary? Well, if my honourable friend can assure me that the existing judiciary is not without its communal bias, that, the Brahmin judge, when he sits to adjudicate upon issues between a Brahmin defendant and a Brahmin plaintiff, he decides as a mere judge I perhaps would be inclined to consider his proposition favourably. But I know what sort of judiciary we have. If my honourable friend and if this House had the patience, I could reel off heaps of stories where 1 know to my knowledge that the judiciary has abused and prostituted its position.
( Honourable Members Oh ! Oh! )
It is because we are not certain that what they call the village folk, the folk who are bound together by ties of blood, by ties of kith and kin, will not make a conspiracy to utilise the political and judicial power that they will get to put down the other classes that we want this provision. Sir, I have no doubt at all that this is one of the best provisions that we can have in the constitution, and I whole heartedly support the amendment of my honourable friend Mr. Mitha.
† Rao Bahadur R. R. Kale: ...... Then Sir, I do object to the remarks of my honourable friend Dr. Ambedkar with regard to the judiciary of this presidency. It pained me certainly to hear him say that he questioned the bona fides and straightforwardness of our judiciary, which has been proclaimed even by the Privy Council to be second to none, when matters went to that Tribunal ......... It has been held by the highest tribunal in the land, namely, the Privy Council in its judgments from time to time, as being the best judiciary in the whole of the World.
An Honourable Member: In the whole world ?
Rao Bahadur R. R. Kale: Yes, in the whole world. My point is that it is certainly a serious slander to say that the judiciary is influenced by communal considerations. It pained me very much when I heard my
†B.L.C. Debates, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 326-27, dated 10th February 1933.