DRAFT CONSTITUTION 431
go back to their province and to get themselves assimilated to the original population to which they belonged. In order to meet the situation of migration from one province to another, we felt it was desirable that such a provision should be incorporated in the Constitution.
I think another thing which has to be borne in mind in reading article 23 is that it does not impose any obligation or burden upon the State. It does not say that, when for instance the Madras people come to Bombay, the Bombay Government shall be required by law to finance any project of giving education either in Tamil language or in Andhra language or any other language. There is no burden cast upon the State. The only limitation that is imposed by article 23 is that if there is a cultural minority which wants to preserve its language, its script and its culture, the State shall not by law impose upon it any other culture which may be either local or otherwise. Therefore this article really is to be read in a much wider sense and does not apply only to what I call the technical minorities as we use it in our Constitution. That is the reason why we eliminated the word “minority” from the original clause.
But while omitting this word “minority” I think my Friend, Mr. Lari forgot to see that we have very greatly improved upon the protection such as was given in the original article as it stood in the Fundamental Rights. The original article as it stood in the Fundamental Rights only cast a sort of duty upon the State that the State shall protect their culture, their script and their language. The original article had not given any Fundamental Right to these various communities. It only imposed the duty and added a clause that while the State may have the right to impose limitations upon these rights of language, culture and script, the State shall not make any law which may be called oppressive, not that the State had no right-to make a law affecting these matters, but that the law shall not be oppressive. Now, I am sure about it that the protection granted in the original article was very insecure. It depended upon the goodwill of the State. The present situation as you find it stated in article 23 is that we have converted that into a Fundamental Right, so that if a State made any law which was inconsistent with the provisions of this article, then that much of the law would be invalid by virtue of article 8 which we have already passed.