Now, it seems that exactly as the British Government wanted during the last fifty or sixty years to train us in democratic forms of Government, so also our own Government, our own leaders, who were condemning the policies of the British Government, are now introducing the same technique in the case of the States people, and I have a feeling that the Government at the Centre and also most of the Members from the provinces here have a step-motherly feeling towards the people of the States. This will be evident from what has happened about the merged States. Last January we passed here an amendment to the Government of India Act for completely merging some States into the provinces of Bombay, Madras, C. P. and Orissa. At that time we had hoped and we had some assurance from some quarters that there would be election under the restricted franchise of the 1935 Act, but there has been no election and I know definitely that in two of the provinces at least, members have been nominated by the provincial government through official machinery. It is an interesting thing to know that the nominations were not even made by Congress Committees. One would presume that Government being run by Congress, it would listen to the Congress Committees. In one province the recommendations of the Congress Committees were thrown out. In another the Congress Committees were not consulted at all. One would take it that as the government is run by the Congress Party it would consult its own machinery, but it was not done. In most cases officials have nominated the members. They are called people’s representatives. To my mind it is an insult to the people of the States that some people who were unknown in public life or used to side with the Raja, have been nominated. From this I want the House to understand that now that autocracy has been destroyed and we have democracy all over India and the whole country is integrated into one whole, there is a tendency on the part of the Government at the Centre to keep the people of the States under tutelage.
