Mr. President, Sir, this is not the Constitution which I expected for the people of our country, the Constitution which I was expecting along with many others who have been labouring for attaining the freedom of this country, the constitution planned out by Mahatma Gandhi, not only planned out, but also endeavoured to be put into practice Panchayat Raj was the one which he planned out and recommended to the nation. Before his advent and before his programme was placed before the country nobody ever dreamt that the people, divided as they were in every respect, would come together under our leadership, under one banner, and carry out the orders given by him and the Congress. He was the one man who should have been framing constitution, a simple Constitution for the people of this country that would give relief to all, to the millions. His plan was to educate the millions and to make the fight carried on by them to attain freedom ever since he set his foot on this country after coming from South Africa. You know more about Mahatma Gandhi than myself or than anybody else in this country and you, Sir, were good enough to send a reply while the drafting of the Constitution was in progress, to a letter written to you by one ardent constructive worker, an advocate, an educated man who has spent his time in the villages for a good time. In that letter he suggested about this Panchayat organisation of Mahatma Gandhi and you replied to him in detail and you were impressed by that because you were one of the foremost followers of Mahatma Gandhi and a copy of that letter was given to me by that friend and that letter was referred by you to Shri B. N. Rau, the Constitutional Adviser. I raised that point elsewhere when we were discussing and everybody was impressed there, but I myself found it difficult to introduce thePanchayat Constitution-the framework of that-into the Constitution that had made considerable progress. So, we dropped it and the leadership then suggested that there would be the directive principles introduced into the Constitution. We have got that here now. Therefore, the Constitution which I was longing to have was that Constitution. It is only that Constitution that would give really food and cloth and all the necessaries of life to the millions. The millions were ignored during the British Raj and they were ignored in our country even after the British left and we also ignored them and we are proceeding with this Constitution. ||
