846 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the proper stage, but I cannot forget the fact that a large number of hon. Members of this House are new Members and were not present at that stage. So, a very brief resume of those points may, I submit, be not irrelevant.
Mr. Speaker : I may inform the hon. Member that, so far as the representative character of this House is concerned as also its competency to consider such a Bill, that has been sufficiently thrashed out before and the present stage is not the proper stage of again raising that kind of an argument. We are now discussing the Bill clause by clause and clause 2 is before the House, so, he will restrict his remarks only to the provisions in clause 2 and the amendments before the House. Of course, the scope for that is wide enough, but not for questioning or even doubting the representative character of the House or its capacity to pass this Bill. That will be unnecessarily repeating what was said at the previous stages.
Shri Naziruddin Ahmad : Sir, I bow down to your ruling. I am not at all questioning the representative character of the House or its competency. But the question is that we have not consulted the people. Not that we have no jurisdiction, not that we do not represent the people, but on a social legislation of an all-embracing character like this we should have obtained some mandate. That was the point which I was going to submit. I do not wish to elaborate it. I wished to refer to this matter in order to develop my argument with regard to amendment No. 31. I want by this amendment to restrict the application of the Bill to the different States, upon the State, by Act, prescribing its application, and also limiting the conditions on which the Bill should apply, the persons or classes of persons to whom the Bill should apply and the stage or stages through which this application should come. Therefore, my point, so far as this amendment is concerned, is that the Bill should not be made applicable to all persons outright.
The State Government are in a better position to know the conditions of the people, their wishes and desires and their needs. It is therefore proper to allow each State to apply the Law and to such extent and through such stages as the Legislature, by Act, may provide. I know that so far as reports are concerned the Government of Bengal has opposed this bill. Though it was given out yesterday that in private conversation some hon. Member was told, some individual Minister in Bengal was in favour of the Bill, that is not the official position