z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-08.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 644
644 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Government on the other hand, then if you do not give the Federal Government the power, legislative or otherwise, to give effect to the decisions of the Supreme Court, it would not be able to do it. That is my submission.
Mr. Jayakar: But, at the same time, the difficulty will not end there. I mean, in the state of communal feeling which you are imagining, the difficulty will not end there.
Dr. Ambedkar: I quite agree that far more drastic measures will probably have to be adopted, and, as we know, in the Swiss Confederation even the military is used—at least, the power is given to the Swiss Federal Government to use the military for enforcing the judgment of the Federal Court in Switzerland. I do not wish to prescribe what means should be adopted, but what I say is this. The difficulty which arose in the United States, that the Federal Government had no power.
Chairman: I quite follow. Therefore, they would not take responsibility.
Dr. Ambedkar: Yes. That ought not to be the situation in India.
Lord Lothian: Is not there this distinction in America that the Federal Authority is able to proceed as long as it is against an individual; but this very question came up in the Convention, and they decided that the Federal Government could not proceed against a State, because one State can only proceed against another by an act of war, and they, therefore, did leave it to the good sense of the community to bring pressure on the State to fulfil the obligations. You can provide upto a certain point in dealing with the individual, but you cannot provide within a Federation for the proceeding of the Federal Government against a State Government except by embodying an act of war as part of your constitutional procedure; and that nobody will do. That is your difficulty.
Dr. Ambedkar: Well. I do not know; but, as I say, in the United States also the President has the power to use the military for suppressing rebellion.
Lord Lothian: And that becomes an act of war, and that has happened in the past
Dr. Ambedkar: That provision is embodied in the United States Constitution.
Mr. Jayakar: But, surely, the choice will lie between civil war and federal loyalty?
Dr. Ambedkar: That I perfectly realise. I am not denying the point that you are making. What I say is this, that we should not have the position that we have in the United States—that although there is a Federal Court there for the purpose of deciding disputes arising out of federal jurisdiction, there is no power in the Federal Government to make those decisions effective. What I mean is that our Federal Government or Federal Legislature should have such a power in the way in which the Australian has it.
Mr. Jinnah: The distinction is this, that in the United States the Federal Government is in charge and control of the military. You assume that your