Sir, I am sick of hearing in this House that in certain respects we are following the Government of India Act, 1935. Those of us who opposed the enactment of that Act and those of us who knew stage by stage how the stranglehold of Britain and the autocratic British government was being perpetuated in the Government of India Act, feel ashamed and humiliated to hear that today, when we are coming to Free India or Dominion India within a fortnight or so, we are trying to frame a constitution for India on the lines of the Government of India Act that perpetuated these strangleholds on India and postponed the formation of the Federal Government from 1935 to 1947. Sir, these few sections that we find in the Government of India Act, –Sections 136 to 149–about finances and borrowing, about subventions and grants-in-aid were not inserted with any intention of securing social security and social justice to the people of the Provinces that came into existence accidentally. We have seen how these sections were flouted when the World War II came in 1939. By a particular section- section 126 (a) which was passed in 1939, all the Provinces, all the Provincial resources and all the people of India were made the hand-maidens and slaves of the British Government, so that the soldiers of India could help the British Government to fight this war and achieve victory at the cost of India. We know what happened. Nearly Rs. 5,000 crores worth of material was sent out of India to Britain and her allies at controlled pre-war rates and in the same way India was robbed of her food and the result was that 50 to 75 lakhs of people died in Bengal of famine and starvation. Another result was inflation. That was the social security and social justice that the Government of India Act gave us.
