354 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
paid considerable attention to this subject. I may say that I have studied with great care the situation in Ireland, a country which resembles very closely our own. In Ireland, the peasantry is hungering for land. Land in Ireland has been unevenly distributed. Some have very large estates ; some have very small. There are many who are landless. What has the Irish Constitution done ? I want the Members who are representing the landed interests to consider this case in a comparative manner. Now, so far as the Irish constitution is concerned, property in land particularly is not a Fundamental Right. Article 43 of the Irish Constitution clause (2), states that the exercise of the right mentioned, that is the right on land, should be regulated by the principles of social justice. It does not say that land shall not be taken except on the basis of full compensation or without any discrimination as between landlords. What the Irish law does is this. They have appointed what is called the “Congested Board”, as they call it, or congested Areas board. It is a separate organisation created by law and this Board has been given the power to acquire land, to break up holdings, to equalise land, to make uneconomic holdings economic ones by taking land from a neighbouring owner and the right of assigning compensation has been given to this Board of congested areas. There is no judicial authority to interpret the action of this board.
An hon. Member: And no appeal?
Dr. Ambedkar: And no appeal at all. Some people have of course, taken appeals to the courts, but the courts have held that no appeals lie with any court.
Now, I can, speaking for myself, say without any hesitation that I am not at all an admirer of the new schemes that have been drafted by these States who have acquired land. It is, in my judgment, not a very good thing to create peasant proprietors in this country. Our difficulty in this country has arisen by reason of the fact that we have small landlords holding half an acre of land or an acre or two acres, with no money, no measure, no bulls, no bullocks, no implements, no seeds and no arrangement for water. And yet they are the landlords and the holders of the land. Looking at the future,