PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 965
reverse my position and fight with them along with the rest of the Maharashstrians. Now that is what I want to say about Maharashtra.
With regard to the question that the Maharashtrians in Bombay City do not form a majority, I like to clear that idea. I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding. Some census figure has been dug out which said that the population of Maharashtrians in Bombay is 46 per “cent, or something like that. Therefore they are not in a majority. Sir, it is a complete misunderstanding. Any man who knows the census operation, who knows statistics and who knows the peculiar statistics of Bombay City would pay no attention to that figure. The census figure records the state of affairs on a particular day on which the census is taken. It does not indicate the common state of affairs. What happened on a particular day is taken as the typical example, but it is not typical at all. Secondly, the important point to be noticed is that Bombay City is one of the cities which is most subjected to immigration and emigration. Unfortunately, in the year 1941 when the new census was taken, the Government of India, in order to shorten their labour, did not repeal the immigration and emigration report figures for the year 1931. But if one were to go into the figures given on immigration and emigration in the census of 1931, he will find what violent changes there are in the immigration and emigration position. I do not think that even the non-Maharashtrian population which appears to be in a majority is permanently there in a majority. Most of them come for seasonal labour. If they happen to be there on the day of census, their existence is recorded as ‘residents of Bombay’. On the next day, they might as well leave for their native places, because they have made enough money for their living. In these circumstances, can anybody accept the census figures as true figures of the citizens of Bombay? I deny that conclusion altogether. I have been a student of the census statistics. I have studied them considerably. I know what they mean. Therefore, the claim that these figures show that the population of the Maharashtrians is less is absolutely ambiguous, if not bogus. It has no value. It only indicates what happened to be on a particular day on which the census was recorded.