812 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
to these three limiting conditions which are made applicable to persons who enter Assam after 19th July 1948, any fear such as the one which has been expressed by my Friend Mr. Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri that the flood-gates will be opened to swamp the Assamese people either by Bengalees or by Muslims, seems to me to be utterly unfounded. If he has any objection to those who have entered Bengal before 19th July 1948—in this ease on a showing that the man has resided in India, citizenship becomes automatic—no doubt that matter will be dealt with by Parliament under any law that may be made under article 6. If my friends from Assam will be able to convince Parliament that those who have entered Assam before 19th July
1948 should, for any reason that they may have in mind or they may like to put before Parliament, be disqualified, I have no doubt that Parliament will take that matter into consideration. Therefore, so far as the criticism of these articles relating to immigrants from Pakistan to Assam is concerned, I submit it is entirely unfounded.
Then I come to the criticism which has been levelled on the provisions which relate to immigrants from India to Pakistan, I think that those who have criticised these articles have again not clearly understood what exactly it is proposed to be done. I should like, therefore, to re-state what the articles say. According to the provisions which relate to those who are immigrants from India to Pakistan, any one who has left India after the first March 1947, barring one small exception, has been declared not to be citizens of India. That, I think, has got to be understood very carefully. It is a general and universal proposition which we have enunciated. It is necessary to enunciate this proposition, because on the rule of International Law that birth confers domicile, a person has not to acquire what is called domicile of origin by any special effort either by application or by some other method or by some kind of a grace. The origin of domicile goes with birth. It was felt that those persons who left India, but who were born in India notwithstanding that they went to Pakistan, might, on the basis of the rule of International Law, still claim that their domicile of origin is intact. In order that they should not have any such defence, it is thought wise to make it absolutely clear that any one who has gone to Pakistan after the 1st March—you all know that we have taken 1st March very deliberately, because that was the date when the disturbances started and the exodus began and we thought that there would be no violation of any principle of International justice if we presumed that any man who, as a result of the disturbances