202 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
At least it is significant that it has required an Act of Parliament to do so. But the Government of India had not made any legal separation of the title to the revenues, and if it could have done that by its own law it could have undone it as well. Nor can it be said that the separation of Provincial revenues involved separate possession. If the Provincial Governments had been allowed to establish their own treasuries to receive the collections from Provincialized revenues, then Provincial revenues in the sense of separate possession could have had a meaning. But by the rules, Provincial Governments were not to deposit their funds elsewhere than in the treasury of the Imperial Government. Consequently the possession of the revenues remained in the hands of the Government of India and the disbursement from the provincial revenues was carried out from the Imperial Treasury by the officers of the Imperial Government. None the less, the view was hard to die. But such an erroneous view was never more confidently stated than by the Honourable Mr. Sayani, and never more forcibly controverted than by Sir James Westland in a passage-at-arms between the two on the occasion of a Budget debate in the Council Hall of the Government of India from which the following is reproduced :—
The Honourable Mr. Sayani said :—
“The whole theory underlying the system (of Provincial Finance) is that the revenues of the country, far from belonging to the Provinces which raise them or being available for their own requirements.... constitute a common fund to be absolutely at the disposal of the Central Government, out of which it is to dole out what amount it pleases for provincial services.”
Catching the condemnatory tone of these comments, the Finance Minister, Sir James Westland, rose to say :—
“The Honourable Mr. Sayani, if I correctly followed him, stated that the arrangements of the Government of India were made upon the theory that the revenues were not the revenues of the separate Provinces and were not applicable to the expenditure of the several Provinces, but were the revenues of a common fund, the Local Governments being merely the agents of the Government of India for their realization. I think he mentioned the theory in some words like these, only for the purpose of condemning it. Well, I wish to assert that theory in the most positive manner I can. The revenues are the revenues of the Government of India—its Constitutional Possession. The Government of India is a body created by Act of Parliament, and