As I heard page after page, paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence of the masterly document that has been just now read to us. I felt exalted and transported to a new world of vision, a dream-land which we had in mind when we effected a compromise at Haripura, in terms of the resolution which, fortunately, has been recalled to your minds by being read verbatim. That was the result of a struggle between two sections, the more conservative and the more radical, which was ultimately brought about by the masterly intervention of the present Home Minister and the Prime Minister and our revered Mahatmaji. It was in 1936 that I began to take direct and active interest in the affairs of the States because I felt that they could not be kept apart from the provinces of India for any length of time and as I travelled from State to State and cleared thousands of miles by car, I felt that there was no natural partition between the States and the Provinces. They were not separated either by forests or jungles or deserts or rivers or mountain ranges but they were all of a piece with one another and only a toll bar represented by a rope was the dividing line between the two areas and if you travel through Kathiawar which is now called Saurashtra with its 417 States, you cannot pass any two miles without changing over from State to province and province to State. That was an impossible state of things. How it had come into being was unimaginable and there was no point in postponing the consideration of the amalgamation of the provinces and the States. That was how the Haripura Resolution was brought into existence and today we have the unique satisfaction that under the strategy and statesmanship of our Home Minister who is also the Minister for the States, it has been possible for him to bring about this unity in financial matters, in strategic matters, in matters of the army and above all, in matters of the Constitution.
