54 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
citizens. The States also charge non-residents higher tuition in State Colleges and Universities, and permit only residents to be admitted to their hospitals and asylums except in emergencies.
In short, there are a number of rights that a State can grant to its own citizens or residents that it may does legally deny to non-residents, or grant to non-residents only on more difficult terms than those imposed on residents. These advantages, given to the citizen in his own State, constitute the special rights of State citizenship. Taken all together, they amount to a considerable difference in rights between citizens and non-citizens of the States. The transient and the temporary sojourner is everywhere under some special handicaps.
The proposed Indian Constitution is a dual polity with a single citizenship. There is only one citizenship for the whole of India. It is Indian citizenship. There is no State citizenship. Every Indian has the same rights of citizenship, no matter in what State he resides.
The dual polity of the proposed Indian Constitution differs from the dual polity of the U.S.A. in another respect. In the U.S.A. the Constitutions of the Federal and the State Governments are loosely connected. In describing the relationship between the Federal and State Governments in the U.S.A. Bryce has said:
“The Central or National Government and the State Governments may be compared to a large building and a set of smaller buildings standing on the same ground, yet distinct from each other.”
Distinct they are, but how distinct are the State Governments in the U.S.A. from the Federal Government ? Some idea of this distinctness may be obtained from the following facts :
Subject to the maintenance of the republican form of Government, each State in America is free to make its own Constitution.
The people of a State retain for ever in their hands, altogether independent of the National Government, the power of altering their Constitution.
To put it again in the words of Bryce :
“A State (in America) exists as a commonwealth by virtue of its own Constitution, and all State Authorities, legislative, executive and judicial are the creatures of, and subject to the Constitution.”
This is not true of the proposed Indian Constitution. No States (at any rate those in Part I) have a right to frame its own Constitution. The Constitution of the Union and of the States is a single frame from which neither can get out and within which they must work.
So far I have drawn attention to the differences between the American Federation and the proposed Indian Federation. But there are some other