Sir, I have another complaint against this article against the use of the expressions “scheduled tribes” and “scheduled areas“. Sir, special expressions have been coined and used for denoting and connoting certain ideas and certain difficulties. But experience has shown that with more connotations used, the difficulties increase. Sir, regarding the Depressed Classes, we have substituted a word “Harijan” and that has not solved either our or their difficulties. We have to move with the times. In the Draft Constitution, we have proclaimed and provided equality for all, and provisions have been made in more than one place to give effect to these declarations. That being the position, I do not see why these expressions “scheduled tribes, scheduled areas” and the rest be kept and perpetuated in the Constitution. Sir, in this connection, it may not be out of place to recall that the Imperialist Britain very cleverly put in the idea of separate electorate in 1898. Eleven years hardly passed and you find an insistence in the Minto-Morley Reforms for implementing this in the statute and hardly thirty seven years after that you get the partition of India. With this experience, I plead with my honourable Friends not to play with fire and go on coming expressions “scheduled tribes and scheduled areas“. Why should we? They are all backward classes; we have got many backward classes and a special provision is being made and protection has been given in articles 28 to 40 and they are quite enough. As if these are not ample, you have made special provisions; but why not vest these powers in Parliament, and give confidence to the Parliament? People have devoted their life-long services-this country has given birth to persons like Thakkars and a galaxy of such workers who have made it a life-long devotion of theirs to serve these backward people. Why not have confidence In the good sense of the country, in the protection afforded in the Constitution and why perpetuate these expressions which I believe, Sir, lead into something deplorable as is our experience with regard to separate electorate?
