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326 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
consent of the governed. Even those who insisted, that the legitimacy of a government depended upon the consent of the governed, remained content with a victory for their proposition and did not care to probe further into the matter. They did not feel the necessity for making any distinctions within the category of the “governed”. They evidently thought that it was a matter of no moment whether those who were included in the category of the governed formed a community or a nation. Force of circumstances has, however, compelled political philosophers to accept this distinction. In the second place, it is not a mere distinction without a difference. It is a distinction which is substantial and the difference is consequentially fundamental. That this distinction between a community and a nation is fundamental, is clear from the difference in the political rights which political philosophers are prepared to permit to a community and those they are prepared to allow to a nation against the Government established by law. To a community they are prepared to allow only the right of insurrection. But to a nation they are willing to concede the right of disruption. The distinction between the two is as obvious as it is fundamental. A right of insurrection is restricted only to insisting on a change in the mode and manner of government. The right of disruption is greater than the right of insurrection and extends to the secession of a group of the members of a State with a secession of the portion of the State’s territory in its occupation. One wonders what must be the basis of this difference. Writers on political philosophy, who have discussed this subject, have given their reasons for the justification of a Community’s right to insurrection* and of a nation’s right to
- Sidgwick justifies it in these words : “…..the evils of insurrection may reasonably be thought to be outweighed by the evils of submission, when the question at issue is of vital importance.... an insurrection may sometimes induce redress of grievances, even when the insurgents are clearly weaker in physical force ; since it may bring home to the majority the intensity of the sense of injury aroused by their actions. For similar reasons, again a conflict in prospect may be anticipated by a compromise ; in short, the fear of provoking disorder may be a salutary check on the persons constitutionally invested with supreme power under a democratic as under other forms of government……. I conceive, then that a moral right of insurrection must be held to exist in the most popularly governed community. ”— Elements of Politics (1929), pp. 646-47.