242 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
members in the Central Legislature. As to the Executive, it demanded that one-half of the total number of the Executive members should be Indians and that they should be elected by the elected members of the Legislature. The Legislature was to have complete financial and legislative powers. Nay, its recommendations, passed in the form of resolutions, were to be binding on the Executive. Such “was the latest, most complete and most authoritative presentation of the claims of the leading Indian political organizations” on behalf of the Indian people. But when we come to analyse the scheme it speaks poorly of the political genius of the Indian politicians. The scheme was formulated as a fulfilment of responsible government in British India. But in practice it was not only not a measure of responsible government, but it was deficient even to subserve the ends of good government. The scheme did not ask that the legislature should have the power to make or unmake an Executive as it pleased. If it had asked that, then the scheme would have been a scheme for responsible government. But what it asked for was to compel an Executive, which was irremovable, to conduct the administration of the country according to the orders of the Legislature. The Scheme was of a piece with that of Lord Morley in an enlarged form. He had introduced an Indian element into the Government so that Indian opinion and Indian advice might have some weight with the Executive in addition to what it exercised through the legislative organ of the Government. Those who framed the Congress-League-Scheme merely increased the Indian element in the Executive and the Legislature, and added provisions aimed at converting advice into control without realizing what was to happen if the Executive refused to be bound by the wishes of the Legislature. The essence of the project was an Executive with a divided mandate legally responsible to Parliament, and practically to an elected Legislature. Such a separation of mandates, it was obvious, would have enabled the Legislature to paralyse the Executive without having power to remove it. Being without any constitutional means to change the Legislature in cases of conflict by an appeal to the Electorate it would have been obliged to carry on