Now this declaration that is placed before you is not a new move and yet it is a complete reorientation of something that has existed in an entirely different way. Suppose we had been cut off from England completely and we have then desired to join the Commonwealth of Nations, it would have been a new move. Suppose a new group of nations wants us to join them and we join them in this way, that would have been a new move from which various consequences would have flown. In the present instance what is happening is that a certain association has been existing for a considerable time past. A very great change came in the way of that association about a year and eight or nine months ago, from August 15, 1947. Now another major change is contemplated. Gradually the conception is changing. Yet that certain link remains in a different form. Now politically we are completely independent. Economically we are as independent as independent nations can be. Nobody can be 100 per cent independent in the sense of absolute lack of inter-dependence, but nevertheless India has to depend on the rest of the world for her trade, for her commerce and for many supplies that she needs, today for her food unfortunately, and so many other things. We cannot be absolutely cut off from the world. Now the House knows that inevitably during the past century and more all kinds of contacts have arisen between England and this country, many of them were bad, very bad and we have struggled throughout our lives to put an end to them. Many of them were not so bad, many of them may be good and many of them good or bad whatever they may be, are there. Here I am, the patent example of these contacts, speaking in this honourable House in the English language. No doubt we are going to change that language for our use but the fact remains that I am doing so and the fact remains that most other Members who will speak will also do so. The fact remains that we are functioning here under certain rules and regulations for which the model has been the British Constitution. Those laws existing today have been largely forged by them. Therefore we have developed these things inevitably. Gradually, laws which are good we will keep and those that are bad we will throw away. Any marked change in this without something to follow creates a hiatus which may be harmful. Largely our educational apparatus has been influenced. Largely our military apparatus has been influenced by these considerations and we have grown up naturally as something rather like the British Army. I am placing before the House certain entirely practical considerations. If we break away completely, the result is that without making sufficient provision for carrying on in a different way we have a gap period; of course if we have to pay a price, we may choose to do so. If we do not want to pay the price, we should not pay it and face the consequences.
