226 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
hardly be possible to deny this characteristic to the Indian constitution, for the provision of the constitutional law has since then been that the additional (i.e. the Legislative) members and the ordinary (i.e. the Executive) members shall together form the Legislature for the making of the laws and regulation for the peace, order and good government of British India. [1] But judged in the light of its de facto consequences the Indian system falls lamentably below the de jure connotation of the class of governmental systems to which it belonged. If in other countries the record of Parliamentary government is one of submission of the Executive to the Legislature, in India it had been one of the Executive thwarting, often of flouting, the legislature. In vain may one search the proceedings of the Legislature to find the Executive ever paying deference to the wishes of the people. [2 ] Reforms have been incessantly, asked for by the legislature only to be denied with equal tenacity by the Executive.
The reason why the Indian parliamentary system was but an empty form is to be found in the fact that it was a Parliamentary system without a Parliamentary Executive. In other words, the Executive under the system was not responsible to the legislature and was not removable by it. The Indian Legislature could neither make nor unmake the Indian Executive. The Indian Executive made peace or war as it liked without being afraid of dismissal by the Legislature. It taxed as it pleased and spent as it liked, without the slightest compunction as to the wishes of the Legislature, it undertook acts or refused to undertake them according to its own sweet will, but had no fear of a vote of censure from the legislature. The nearest approach to the Indian
1 Cf. the important note by that eminent lawyer Sir Bhashyam Iyengar on the Reform proposals of Lord Minto in 1908.
- The following table from N. C. Kelkar’s The Case for Indian Home Rule, p.
81, is illustrative of the fact:—
| Legislative Council | No. of Resolutions moved | No. of Resolutions withdrawn | No. of Resolutions rejected | No. of Resolutions accepted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supreme … Madras … Bengal … U. P. … Bihar and Orissa … C.P. … | 3 32 38 22 5 4 | 2 26 26 10 5 2 | 1 6 12 12 0 2 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 |