z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-05.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 371
PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE 371
- The wrong in the Lucknow Pact is not so much that it treated the Mohamedans in the different Provinces in a dissimilar manner, providing for them generously in some and niggardly in others. This is comparatively speaking a small matter. The principal defect in the Lucknow Pact is that in allotting the seats to the Mohamedans it did not take into consideration the effect it will have upon other interests. The framers of the pact, as pointed out by the Government of India, failed to remember that whatever advantage is given to the Mohamedans is taken away from some other interest or interests. Sir William Vincent, too, was careful enough to point this out. He also said in his minute of dissent, “The compact meets with much more acceptance than criticism of the present time; but hereafter, when the value of votes and representation comes to be realised, it must be expected drat the interests which are hard hit by it will complain with some injustice that the Government of India should have endorsed it.” The extent to which this prediction has been realised is remarkable, and the universal dissatisfaction that is felt with the result of the Lucknow Pact is more than sufficient testimony to show that settlement embodied in the Lucknow Settlement is a wrong settlement. Now there can be nothing improper in asking that what is wrongly settled shall be re-settled. Such a demand is bound to meet with opposition from the Mohamedan community. Having obtained representation on an extravagant scale, they are sure to take their stand on precedent and past rights. But as Thomas Paine pointed out, the error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity respecting their rights is that they would not take that time to the starting point when no vested rights existed. If they did they would realise that rights, far from being immutable, are historical accidents and are therefore liable to readjustment from time to time. This must be so, for all political and social progress is based upon the maxim that wrong cannot have a legal descent and that what is not rightly settled is never settled.
This is not the only instance in which a pact like the Lucknow Pact is sought to be revised. The Act of Union between Ireland and England was also a pact of the same sort. It certainly had a far greater binding force than the Lucknow Pact. In fact it was regarded as a treaty which guaranteed to Ireland 100 seats in Parliament. All the same, Mr. Balfour’s Government, when it found that the excessive representation granted to Ireland had become a positive wrong, did not hesitate to bring in a Bill in
1905 which would have had the effect of reducing the Irish seats by 30. That owing to the resignation of Mr. Balfour’s Government the Bill did not become law is another matter. But the fact remains that a revision of the Irish Settlement in the matter of the representation was not excluded by the fact that the settlement was based upon an agreement between the two parties. Nor was Mr. Balfour agreeable to the view that such revision could be carried out only with the consent of Ireland. Indeed, he had launched upon the scheme of redistribution in the teeth of the Irish opposition. But it is not necessary to go so far a field to find a precedent when there is