DRAFT CONSTITUTION 441
Criminal Procedure Code which contains a provision with regard to habeas corpus can be amended by the existing legislature. Our Specific Relief Act also can be amended and the writ of habeas corpus and the right of mandamus can be taken away without any difficulty whatsoever by a legislature which happens to have a majority and that majority happens to be a single-minded majority. Hereafter it would not be possible for any legislature to take away the writs which are mentioned in this article. It is not that the Supreme Court is left to be invested with the power to issue these writs by a law to be made by the legislature at its sweet will. The Constitution has invested the Supreme Court with these rights and these writs could not be taken away unless and until the Constitution itself is amended by means left open to the Legislature. This in my judgment is one of the greatest safeguards that can be provided for the safety and security of the individual. We need not therefore have much apprehension that the freedoms which this Constitution has provided will be taken away by any legislature merely because it happens to have a majorty.
Sir, there is one other observation which I would like to make. In the course of the debates that have taken place in this House both on the Directive Principles and on the Fundamental Rights. I have listened to speeches made by many members complaining that we have not enunciated a certain right or a certain policy in our Fundamental Rights or in our Directive Principles. References have been made to the Constitution of Russia and to the Constitutions of other countries where such declarations, as members have sought to introduce by means of amendments, have found a place. Sir, I think I might say without meaning any offence to anybody who has made himself responsible for these amendments that I prefer the British method of dealing with rights. The British method is a peculiar method a very real and a very sound method. British jurisprudence insists that there can be no right unless the Constitution provides a remedy for it. It is the remedy that make a right real. If there is no remedy, there is no right at all, and I am therefore not prepared to burden the Constitution with a number of pious declarations which may sound as glittering generalities but for which the Constitution makes no provision by way of a remedy. It is much better to be limited in the scope of our rights and to make them real by enunciating remedies than to have a lot of pilous wishes