DRAFT CONSTITUTION 1189
Members of the Drafting Committee, to you and to all others who played such an important and necessary role in the various stages of this Constitution. Without being open to the charge of making any invidious distinction, I would like to add a special word of thanks to you on behalf of the back-benchers of this House. For, at various stages of the Constitution, when we were rightly or wrongly exercised by certain doubts in regard to certain clauses of the Constitution, you used your good influence on our behalf with the Drafting Committee to clear these doubts.
Sir, the Constitution of a country always is a very important and precious document, because it gives us an idea of how the great people of a country fashion their institutions, how they want to live, what are the political arrangements under which they exercise their judgment and what are the hopes and aspirations which they entertain for the future.
*Shri K. M. Jedhe (Bombay : General) : Mr. President, Sir, I stand here to congratulate Dr. Ambedkar and his colleagues for having taken great pains in framing India’s new Constitution. We have spent nearly three years and now we are completing our great work. Some Members while congratulating Dr. Ambedkar have called him the present Manu. I am certain that he would not like this appellation. I know he hates Manu, who has created four castes, the lowest of which is the untouchable class. I remember that he has publicly burnt Manu Smriti in the huge meeting of the untouchables at Mahad in 1929. He is the great leader of the Harijans and is greatly extolled by them as their champion and is worshipped as an idol. They are very proud of him. They call him Bhim and make it known to the public that he has framed Bhim Smriti. I also call it Bhim Smriti though I belong to the Sprasya Class. Dr. Ambedkar is a great lawyer and a man of great ability and intellect; nobody will doubt that. Untouchability has been removed by law and while framing the Constitution, Dr. Ambedkar was very keen and earnest in safeguarding the interests of the Harijans. All Harijans must be grateful to him. At the same time, we must also be grateful to our country’s Father, Mahatma Gandhi, who gave us independence. He was a great soul who made great efforts during his life-time to remove untouchability. His great wish was to bring the Harijans to the level of touchables. He is not among us to see his great
*CAD, Official Report, Vol. X, 24th November 1949, p. 890.