Sir, a Constitution, like any other thing resulting from human striving, is a child of its age and so is this Constitution. It will be a good Constitution or a bad Constitution in relation to the circumstances that have brought it about. Years ago, in the Nehru Report of 1928, certain objectives were laid down and a certain structure was given to the Constitution. Though this Constitution does not reflect the Nehru Report in so many words and phrases, in so many clauses and articles, the spirit of that Report is introduced. Then we had the Sapru Report and the various resolutions on the objectives of the Congress and we had also the Government of India Act of 1935. For the ideas that you find embodied in this Constitution you have to go back to the various documents that were available such as the conclusions of the Round Table Conferences. Most important of all the factors we have the economic pressure, the social forces, the political developments and our relations and connections and associations with the world outside to give shape to our Constitution. No written Constitution in the world can have an isolated existence and can fail to be influenced by the economic pressure, by the connections with foreign powers or the foreign policy of the country. If you look at the American Constitution, you will find that it bears the imprint of the eighteenth Century working and development of British Constitution; and the French Constitution of the days of Bonaparte, has to a very large extent influenced the European Constitutions of nineteenth Century. No Constitution can have an isolated existence. It is but right that we should gain from the experience of others and from the British Constitution and the American Constitution. Those nations have long experience of working democratic and representative institutions. We have benefited by the experience of other parts of the world. Taking that view, we have to analyse a Constitution, as Marshal put it in 1816, and see if it provides for three great departments the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The function of the legislature is to pass two laws subject to the maintenance of the sovereignty of the people. Our Constitution, like all democratic Constitutions, upholds the sovereignty of the people. Like the American Constitution, our Constitution in its Preamble begins with the expressive words : “We , the people of India, having ……… “. We have universal suffrage. We can be sure that every man who can think will have the right to vote and contribute his share in the building of this great country. A broad-based legislature elected on adult franchise can express the will of the people and carry it out. Such legislature would make law in the real sense of the term because through the long evolution of the judicial process, we have come to the conclusion that law means the will of the people. In the olden days law meant the will of one man, later it came to be meant the will of the few, but now law really means the will of the people. Because we have adult suffrage, our legislature will express the will of the nation as a whole.
