Next, Sir, I am most unhappy that Dr. Ambedkar should have said what he has said about the village panchayats. All the democratic tradition of our country has been lost on him. If he had only known the achievements of the village panchayats in Southern India over a period of a millennium, he would certainly not have said those things. If he had cared to study Indian history with as much care as he seems to have devoted to the history of other countries, he certainly would not have ventured those remarks. I wish to remind the House, Sir, of the necessity for providing as many political institutions as possible in order to enable our villagers to gain as much experience in democratic institutions as possible in order to be able to discharge their responsibilities through adult suffrage in the new democracy that we are going to establish. Without this foundation stone of village panchayats in our country, how would it be possible for our masses to play their rightful part in our democracy? Sir, do we want centralisation of administration or decentralisation? Mahatma Gandhi has pleaded over a period of thirty years for decentralisation. We as Congressmen are committed to decentralisation. Indeed all the world is today in favour of decentralisation. If we want on the other hand centralisation, I wish to warn this House that would only lead to Sovietisation and totalitarianism and not democracy. Therefore, Sir, I am not in favour of the so-called slogan of a strong Centre. The Centre is bound to be strong, is bound to grow more and more strong also on the lines of modern industrial development and economic conditions. Therefore, it is superfluous, indeed dangerous to proceed with this initial effort to make the Centre specially strong. In the Objectives Resolution that we passed in the beginning we wanted provinces to have the residual powers, but within a short period of two years public opinion rather has been interpreted by those drafters to have swung to the other extreme, to complete centralisation at the Centre and strengthening the Centre over-much.
