With what assurance have we sought freedom for India all these years ? We have looked forward to the time when some of the dreams that we were indulging in might become true. Perhaps, they are coming true, perhaps not exactly in the shape that we want, but, nevertheless, they will come true. It is in that conviction that we have proceeded all these years. We had no guarantees. We had no assurances about ourselves or about our future. Indeed, in the normal course of events the only partial guarantee that most of us had was the guarantee of tears and troubles, and we had plenty of that. It may be that we shall have plenty of that in the future too; we shall face them. This House will face it and the people of India will face it. So, who are we to give guarantees to anybody ? But we do want to remove misapprehensions as far as possible. We do want every Indian to feel that we are going to treat him as an equal and brother. But we also wish him to know that in the future what will count is not so much the crown of gold or of silver or something else, but the crown of freedom, as a citizen of a free country. It may be that a time may come soon when it will be the highest honour and privilege for anybody, whether he is a Ruler or anybody else, to be a free citizen of a free India and to be called by no other appellation or title. We do not guarantee because we guarantee nothing to anybody, but that is the thing which we certainly hope to achieve and we are certain to achieve. We invite them to participate in that. We welcome those Who have come, and we shall welcome those others when they come. And those who will not come–we shall say nothing about them. But, as I said before, inevitably, as things are, the gulf will widen between those who come and those who do not come. They will march along different paths and that will be unfortunate I am convinced that, even so, those paths will meet again, and meet sooner rather than later. But, in any event, there is going to be no compulsion. Those who want to come, will come, and those who do not want to come, do not come. But there is this much to be said. When we talk about people coming in and people who do not come in, let it be remembered, as Mr. Govinda Menon said, that the people of the States–I say with some assurance and with some authority in the matter–want to come into this Assembly, and if others prevent them from coming, it is not the fault of the people, but breaks and barriers are put in their way. However, I hope that these questions will not arise in the future and that in the coming month or two nearly all the States will be represented here, and, jointly we shall participate in the final stages of drawing up the Constitution.
