z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-05.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 373
PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE 373
their position was merely to register the decision which the Congress and the League may by mutual negotiations make. Indeed, Sir William Vincent was careful to point out that “in this matter (the Government of India) cannot delegate (its) responsibility to Parliament into other hands.”
- The attitude taken by the Bombay Government is dangerous because, admitting that an error has been committed, it refuses to take upon itself the task of correcting it. I would have looked upon such an attitude as a pardonable sin if the error was not an error in the constitutional arrangement of the country. But unfortunately it is an error in the constitution, and, having found its lodgment in a most vital part thereof, it affects its working in a fatal manner. An error of such a character cannot be tolerated. A mistake in constitutional innovation directly affects the entire community and every part of it. It may be fraught with calamity or ruin, public or private, and correction is virtually impossible. The Government of Bombay practically takes for granted that all constitutional changes are final and must be submitted to, whatever their consequences. Doubtless this assumption arises from a fateful renunciation that in these matters we are propelled by an irresponsible force on a definite path towards an unavoidable end towards destruction. But I am glad to find that the Government of India in accepting the pact did not concede that its terms as embodied in the Act should stand unaltered. Far from leaving the matter shrouded in ambiguity, they made it quite clear that the arrangement was not to stand beyond the first Statutory Commission. In their Despatch on the Report of the South-borough Committee they said : “Before we deal in detail with the Report, one preliminary question of some importance suggests itself. As you will see, the work of the Committee has not to any great extent been directed towards the establishment of principles. In dealing with the various problems that came before them they have usually sought to arrive at agreement rather than to base their solutions upon general reasonings. It was no doubt the case that the exigencies of time alone made any other course difficult for them. But in dealing with their proposals, we have to ask ourselves the question whether the results of such methods are intended to be in any degree permanent…… Whatever be the machinery for alteration, however, we have to face the practical question of how long we intend the first electoral system set up in India to endure. Is it to be opened to reconstruction from the outset at the wish of the Provincial Legislature or is it to stand-unchanged at least until the first Statutory Commission ? There are reasons of some weight in either direction. In the interest of the growth of responsibility it is not desirable to stereotype the representation of the different interests in fixed proportion; the longer the separate class and communal constituencies remain set in a rigid mould, the harder it will become to progress towards normal methods of representation. On the other hand, it is by no means desirable to invite incessant struggle over their revision.” It is for the Commission to say whether the life of this error shall be prolonged. I have hopes that the Commission will not merely