But now, somehow or other, these gentlemen have changed their attitude, and instead of making those groups of Indian States assume the same status is the Provinces, they have merged the smaller States and put them out of existence-only a very few remain now-and they have frustrated my hopes of having a federation of these completely autonomous units. Instead of proclaiming these groups of States as being on the same level as the Provinces and allowing them to have their own elected governors, now they have appointed Pramukhs and Raj Pramukhs and many other things which are beyond my comprehension to understand and which is all quite ridiculous. What do Pramukhs and Raj Pramukhs mean ? They do not allow any sort of independence, either to the Provinces or to the groups of States. Even at a very early state of our deliberations I raised this point. When Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru moved his motion about Provincial constitution to be provided here, I raised this objection. I asked, “Why do you anticipate the decision of the Constituent Assembly ? How do you know what will be the status of the Provinces now? Why are you planning this model provincial constitution, and what right have you got to produce such a model constitution for the provinces before realising what will be the position of the Provinces ?” He wanted to silence me, and replied to me by asking, “Why do you bother about it ? We have already made up our mind that we will have such and such provincial constitutions.” Sir, we had said that we would have independent provinces and that the Governors would be elected governors. But now what do we find here ? Instead of Governors, you have adopted that thing-Pramukhs. And afterwards, for some unknown reasons, or due to some mystery, now Dr. Ambedkar came forward the other day and proposed a new thing. He said, “No, we will have no elected Governors, but the Governors will be nominated by the President, and even though he is the nominee of the President, the President would not trust him, in an emergency; and they say the state of emergency should be determined by the Centre or by the President.”
