26 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
studied. We have not got any analysis of these opinions collected point by point and supplied to the members to enable them to deal with them. It is very difficult for private Members to read the opinions at a high speed and to analyse them, store them in different compartments of their brains and use them in a classified form. On a matter of such great importance as this, it would have been extremely desirable for the Honourable Minister’s Department to classify the opinions, as was done before in such cases, and circulate them to enable members to consider each point in the light of the objections or support in respect of each of them.
Shri L. Krishnaswami Bharati (Madras : General): It is there in the Report of the Law Committee, classified, analysed and all that.
Mr. Naziruddin Ahmad : I am grateful for the remark, but the opinions of which I am speaking have been received and circulated after the report. In fact the opinions which have been circulated by the Department were received only recently and they are on the Bill as it is. But the opinions collected in the Report of the Hindu Law Committee were collected before the drafting of the Bill, that is during the enquiry stage. The Honourable Member has missed the point that the opinions I am speaking of are not those publised in the Report. They were separately printed and circulated. These are the opinions which I talk of. I think these should have been carefully analysed and printed along with the various points. Sir, I do not wish to labour the matter. Personally I am in favour of the Bill, but these are some of the objections which I have been asked to put forward by certain of my friends. That is the reason why I have put them before the House. There are a large number of other points, but they are of a minor nature. In view of the shortness of the time at our disposal I think I should cut short my speech. Then again legislation should rather follow public opinion. It should follow rather than create or override public opinion, and I am giving a quotation from a famous authority, the father of modern politics, Edmond Burke. He said on a famous occasion:
“To follow, not to force the public inclinations, to give direction, a form and technical dress and a specific sanction to the general sense of the community is the true end of legislation.”