PEOPLE CEMENTED............INDEPENDENT 33
in the Nehru Committee’s Report against the infringement of the fundamental rights ? I find none, not even the appeal clause. The guarantee in the Nehru Constitution is therefore quite illusory.
Even if their was the appeal clause in the Nehru Constitution I would still advise you not to accept the scheme. Aright of appeal to the League of Nations or to the Viceroy or the Government would be a very desirable addition to the armoury of the Depressed Classes. But it cannot be an effective weapon. The best guarantee for the protection of your own interests, consists in having the power of control in your own hands so that you may yourselves be in a position not only to punish when the mischief to your interests is done but to keep a watch over your interests from day to day and prevent possible mischief from arising. This will never be secured by leaving the power in the hands of the third party be it the Governor, Viceroy or the League of Nations. For of what good will that power be to us if those who will hold it in trust for us refuse to exercise it when we call for their intervention ? The safest remedy for the protection of our interests seems to me lies in securing control over the future executive in self-governing India in your own hands and that you can have only by means of adequate representation in the Legislatures of the country. It is by this means and by this means alone that we can keep a day today watch upon the doings of the executive and thereby ensure our safety and our progress. If you can get other additional safeguards and guarantees, by all means have them. They will add more strings to your bow. But let nothing offered as a substitute for adequate representation be acceptable to you. And you will be perfectly within your rights if you refuse to consent to any change in the political constitution of the country, unless a guarantee in the form of adequate representation is given to you.
The phrase adequate representation is on the lips of every minority in India. But owing to the difficulty of defining it in quantitative terms it has, in its vague and indefinite form, become a field for acrimonious contention. But if we wish to give our