32 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
India can ignore the necessity of checks and balances to ensure that in the political re-construction the smaller and the weaker communities will not go to the wall. How best to do this, as far as the Depressed Classes are concerned, is therefore the next question that I propose to deal with. There are some students of the political problem of India who admit the necessity of finding some solution of this question and also agree that the same should be embodied in the constitution of a self-governing India. These students in finding their solution have drawn largely upon the constitution of the postwar States to which I have referred in the earlier part of my speech, and it is very natural that they should draw upon that source. For these are the only States in which a close similarity to the existing Indian conditions is to be found. The scheme for the protection of minorities which obtains in these States consists in the enactment of the clauses in the constitution recognising what are called the fundamental rights of the minorities. The Nehru Committee’s report adopts this scheme as the best sort of protection for safeguarding the interests of the Depressed Classes. I must sound a note of warning against your being duped by such a scheme. The Indian politician seems to have an inordinate degree of faith in the efficiency of a constitutional law embodying what are called fundamental rights, and is as eager to offer its benefits to the minorities in India as a guarantee against the autocracy of his own class as he was eager to have it in favour of his own class against the encroachments of the bureaucracy. We must however refuse to be satisfied with such a scheme for our protection. While such declarations are not unwelcome it must be pointed out that no declaration of rights howsoever comprehensive in its scope and howsoever clear in its terms and tenor, can insure the enjoyment of those rights. The guarantee of a right consists not in its declaration but in the provision of a remedy for its enforcement in case it is violated. In the constitutions of the post-war States I have mentioned, there is at least the provision that if the minorities feel that their fundamental rights are infringed and violated by the majority in power they can appeal to the League of Nations, which has a Committee appointed for the sole purpose of receiving and passing upon their complaints. Is there any remedy provided