54 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
thousand. I am not saying that shortage of paper is not a question with which we are not concerned. As I said, there is shortage, but what I want to emphasise is that there is not a case of what we might call acute suffering.
Sir, proceeding further, as the House will remember, Sir Frederick James depended upon two illustrations in order to substantiate his charge of extravagance against the Government of India. Last time when the subject was debated, Sir Frederick James brought out a rent bill which is issued from the Western Court to the tenants who occupy that building. His case was that the rent bill which was presented to the tenants was a document of great enormity which contained details which were probably unnecessary and at any rate which could have been cut down in the period of the war. This time he brought out an old dilapidated copy of the Calcutta Gazette and pointed out that there were published in the Gazette certain information which could have been avoided in the course of the war.
Sir F.E. James (Madras : European): May I just interrupt my Honourable friend for one moment ? The issue I demonstrated of the Calcutta Gazette was the one which was just received from Calcutta and I think it was dated February of this year.
The Honourable Dr. B.R. Ambedkar : I am obliged to my Honourable friend. Now, Sir, the point I would like to make is this. If Sir, Frederick James was a lawyer, I am sure he would not have brought forth these two cases as illustrations of the points he was making. With regard to the rent bill, Sir Frederick James evidently forgot to look up the date on which it was printed. This bill was printed in 1938 and far from condemning the Government of India for using the bill, I think the Government of India ought to be congratulated that rather than destroying the old bills, the stock of which exists in the Government of India, the Government of India had laid aside all requirements of reforming the bill and were bent upon using the old stock which it possessed in order to conserve paper.
Sir F.E. James: Make them into scrap.
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Sir, with regard to the question of the Gazette, I think a slip was committed by Sir Frederick James by reason of the fact that he was not able to appreciate the importance of the Gazette. The Gazette is not merely a matter which