z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-07.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 519
IN SUB-COMMITTEE NO. II 519
necessary to emphasize is that the Governor may have the power which as I say belongs to him as of right to compose the Ministry in any way he likes provided that the Ministry does not violate in its operation the principle of its being, namely, that it is to work on the principle of joint responsibility.
Now the next question to which I will address myself, Sir, is how best to achieve this result, how best to bring out a responsible and unified Executive. It seems to me there are two ways open to us. One way is to define in the constitution itself the character of the Executive by law ; the other is to leave to convention the constitution of the Executive. Both these ways are adopted, as you all know. We all know that in the Dominions of Canada, South Africa and Australia, responsible Government of a unified character is entirely a matter of convention. Everyone of us knows that in the Canadian Act or in the Acts of South Africa or Australia the words “responsible Government” do not arise. It is not even mentioned in the Canadian Act, as I found to my great surprise, that the Ministers who are to advise the Governor are to be members of the Legislature, although as a matter of fact they are. On the other hand, as we know, in the constitutions of Ireland, Malta and Rhodesia this is a subject which is not left to convention, it is something which is incorporated in law. In Ireland we know that the Prime Minister is a creature of statute, the joint responsibility is also defined by law.
I therefore think that we shall have to make our choice between the two, and in making the choice I for one would be guided by two considerations. I fully realise that when a matter is left to convention it is possible that the convention may be wrongly worked, that it may be abused, and may be abused with impunity. The danger of matters being left to convention in a country like India seems to me to be greater because there are no parties in India which have a keen eye on the way in which the constitution works and we may have Ministers less interested in working the constitution in the right spirit than in maintaining their seats in the Cabinet. On the other hand it seems to me that where matters are defined by law it must necessarily take away all the discretion that must necessarily be left to a Governor. In a country like India where the political field with all its communal and racial difficulties is an absolutely uncharted sea, it seems to me that we must so contrive that sufficient discretion will be left with the Governor. My concrete suggestion therefore is this, that joint responsibility of the Executive should be prescribed by law and that everything else should be left to the discretion of the Governor, so that we shall have satisfied both the conditions : we shall have provided that whatever responsibility there is, is joint responsibility and that the composition of the Executive is at the same time not hampered in such a manner that the communities which do require to be represented in the Cabinet may be represented or that the necessity which Prime Minister may feel of