z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-07.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 539
IN SUB-COMMITTEE NO. III 539
Depressed Classes on this Sub-Committee.
Chairman : We have every sympathy with your position, and are prepared to support it; but the difference between putting a paragraph in the constitution declaring for fundamental rights and the drafting of laws carrying out those fundamental rights is a real one. You cannot get into a constitutional declaration any details of a law which is going to enforce it. What you have got to do is, when you get your representation, when you get your declaration of rights, not in detail, in your constitution, then, as a representative of your people co-operating with the other people in the Legislature you have to produce the law which you think carries out the declaration in the constitution, because if you put anything more by way of detail into your constitution and the constitution is not carried out in that respect, then the constitution is not carried out at all. So you will never get on in that way.
Dr. Ambedkar: My submission is this. I perfectly agree with you that this declaration of fundamental rights is of no consequence. I attach no importance to it myself personally, because after all, what is important to an individual is not that his rights should be declared but that he should have the remedy in order to enforce those rights. That is the effective guarantee of the rights in the declaration, and therefore I want that the constitution should give me some means whereby I can get redress when I am wrong. It is no use merely saying that there is no “untouchability” and so on.
Chairman: As a matter of fact we have got the point clearly in our minds, so it need not be reiterated ; but what Dr. Ambedkar says is that a declaration in the constitution is not good enough for him unless it is enforceable by law. That is so. In order to make it enforceable by law, laws must be passed creating the penalties and the crimes—the crimes first of all, and the penalties. You cannot create a crime of this kind. I think, not safely—I am in the hands of Lord Reading; he is a lawyer, I am not—you cannot, in drafting a general introductory clause to your constitution, create by that a crime which gives you more rights than those that you can claim under the constitution. Under the constitution you have got certain rights given to you, and I am not at all sure what is the position. Supposing a Depressed Class person was actually persecuted in violation of this declaration, could he not move for some redress in the Courts ?
Lord Reading: Well, you have got to give him some remedy for it, of course. You must make it a misdemeanour.
Chairman : Can you do that in the constitution ?
Lord Reading: No, I do not think so. If you will forgive me for a moment I do not think Dr. Ambedkar was pressing for that. As I understand it, he wants us to make a definite statement that he had put the claim forward, that he was not satisfied merely with the declaration of