Sir, the Resolution, if carefully analysed, comes to this. It gives a picture of the vision of future India. That India of the future is to be a democratic and, decentralised republic, in which the ultimate sovereignty is to lie with the people and in which fundamental rights are to be safeguarded to minorities inhabiting this land. Now, Sir, these are the three fundamental features of this Resolution and it is because of these three fundamental features that I call this Resolution sacred. I shall try to be brief. Yet I cannot refrain from reminding this House that we are all assembled here in assertion of a right, a cherished and valuable right which mankind has achieved for itself after undergoing untold sufferings and sacrifices. Some sort of political structure is required in every society to make life therein possible. A careful analysis of the process of evolution of States in this world shows that the nature of these has changed with the change in the conception of life. Sir, I was not a little surprised to hear just now from an Hon’ble Member of a House which has assembled in assertion of the constituent power of the People that there can be honest difference of opinion regarding the place where political sovereignty resided in society. Certainly, Sir, not long ago, the world did not believe that all individuals composing society had an equal right to liberty and happiness. Society was composed of classes and the individual had no place in society. The place of man in society was determined by the class to which he belonged and so there was no individual liberty to be safeguarded. Poverty was not thought to be a disease which society must get rid of. Some of the great thinkers of the 18th century France, were of the opinion that the presence of poverty in society was necessary for the proper production of wealth. In such a society, Sir, there could be no place for the principle of the sovereignty of the people. Sovereignty belonged to the King whose privilege it was to rule. The people existed merely to pay the taxes demanded of them by the king and obey the laws enacted by him. But with the lapse of time, the conception of society and life changed. Men came to believe that every individual has an equal right to liberty and happiness. With this change in the conception of life, a change in the structure of the State became necessary. But those who held political power were reluctant to part with it and effect a change in the political structure. There was thus a clash between the ideologies which swayed the people and those which swayed the men in power. There were revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic at the end of the 18th century in which the principle that the power belonged to the people was vindicated. Even after this, there were rulers who would not recognise this principle and so another blood-bath in the shape of a revolution had to be gone through to get finally sanctioned the principle that political power belonged to the people. It was to achieve this constituent power that we in this country have been fighting British Imperialism for the last several years. It is this which moved this country from one end to the other in 1921 and made its millions rally under the banner of revolt raised by Mahatma Gandhi in that year. It was for asserting this basic right of a people that hundreds mounted the scaffold, thousands faced bullets and men, in lakhs swarmed the jails. There was a wide gap between the political ideals on which the Government of India was based and the political ideology which swayed the people, and the result has been strife. So, Sir, we are not here in this Assembly because the British Government in a fit of generosity have thought it proper to ask us to take over power. I have been in a position from where I can form my own opinion as to whether there is any sincerity behind all this talk of peaceful transfer of power. We are here because we have succeeded in compelling those who still entertain the dream of governing India according to the political ideals embodied in the Government of India Act, to give up that dream. We have succeeded because of that spirit of rebellion which spread all over the country in 1942. It is as a result of the 1942 rebellion that we are here in this Constituent Assembly. Gathered together in such an Assembly, it should be our first duty to draw up a picture of future free India and present it to our people. The Right Hon’ble Dr. Jayakar who spoke eloquently, has drawn a picture of the difficulties which the absence of our Muslim League friends will cause. I do not think that we required a speech from a man of the eminence of Dr. Jayakar to point out these difficulties. We know what those difficulties are. If I understood him right, however, he did not give us a counsel of despair. He has actually advised us to go on with our work if our friends of the Muslim League do not come in after some time.
