752 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
So in the interests of the secular State that we want to establish in this country, we should try to carry the people also with us. It is no good Government alone saying that we are a secular State, and if that is not properly understood, properly appreciated by the general mass of the people in the country, then the State cannot long continue to be secular. We will be losing the ideal that we want to realise in this country and we will be postponing the day of such realisation. That is why, Sir, I say that people are at present not in a proper mood. They are sullen. They are in a pique; just as a child which is in a pique refuses to eat even the sweetest thing, people are not in a mood to appreciate this reform. Even though it may contain some good parts. So the best thing would be not to press down the throats of the people anything which they do not want. Dr. Ambedkar last time quoted Burke. He struck a gloomy note and gave us a warning just as he did at the conclusion of his speech during the third reading of the Constitution He said :
“Anybody who wants to conserve should be prepared to repair.”
It is very good, Sir, we should be prepared to repair, but does this Bill represent mere repair? I should say it pulls down the house in which we have been living. It wants to plan a new structure. It wants to make structural alterations. It is not mere carrying out repairs here and there. It is a structural repair. I should say that it is a new structure that it wants to put in the place of the old one.
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : All repair is structural repair.
Shri O. V. Alagesan : I have no objection to carry out even structural repairs, but before carrying out such structural repairs, this House itself should undergo a structural repair. That is what I want to say. By saying this, I do not minimise even by an iota the representative and sovereign character of this House. Sir, when we put through other legislation— Prof. Shah was labouring this point— nobody is surprised. It is a routine matter, but this is treated on a different basis. This is viewed with suspicion, with anger. That is the reason why I say we should discriminate, and allow the House that will have been structurally repaired to carry out this reform with greater confidence and with a degree of success which can be attained by then.
Sir, another point is the atmosphere in which this Bill is sought to be pushed through. Sir, there was a great one in this country who led our thought and action. Even though we were slaves he taught