1058 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
If that is not the ground on which the argument rests, then the other ground is that this Constitution proceeds on some wrong principles. Sir, so far as this matter is concerned, it seems to me that a modern constitution can proceed only on two bases : One base is to have a parliamentary system of government. The other base is to have a totalitarian or dictatorial form of government. If we agree that our Constitution must not be a dictatorship but must be a Constitution in which there is parliamentary democracy where government is all the time on the anvil, so to say, on its trial, responsible to the people, responsible to the judiciary, then I have no hesitation in saying that the principles embodied in this Constitution are as good as, if not better than, the principles embodied in any other parliamentary constitution.
The other argument which perhaps might have been urged—I was not able to hear every Member who spoke—is that this Assembly is not a representative assembly as it has not been elected on adult suffrage, that the large mass of the people are not represented in this Constitution. Consequently this Assembly in framing the Constitution has no right to say that this Constitution should have the finality which article 304 proposes to give it. Sir, it may be true that this Assembly is not a representative assembly in the sense that Members of this Assembly have not been elected on the basis of adult suffrage. I am prepared to accept that argument, but the further inference which is being drawn that if the Assembly had been elected on the basis of adult suffrage, it was then bound to possess greater wisdom and greater political knowledge is an inference which I utterly repudiate.
Mr. Naziruddin Ahmad : It would have been worse !
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : It might easily have been worse, says my Friend Mr. Naziruddin Ahmad, and I agree with him. Power and knowledge do not go together. Often times they are dissociated, and I am quite frank enough to say that this House, such as it is, has probably a greater modicum and quantum of knowledge and information than the future Parliament is likely to have. I therefore submit, Sir, that the article as proposed by the Drafting Committee is the best that could be conceived in the circumstances of the case.
Mr. President: I shall now put the amendments to vote.
[The amendments were negatived and those of Dr. Ambedkar, as mentioned earlier were adopted. Article 304, as amended, was added to the Constitution.]