We expected, Sir, that the Indian society would in the future be regulated on definite principles. What are the principles that have been embodied here that people have a non-justiciable right to a means of livelihood, that the pay of man and woman would be equal, that youth and childhood will be protected etc.? All these things and everyone of the items that have been put down here are a matter of common knowledge and any modern Government would be ashamed not to own what has been embodied here. It is the absolute minimum that every modern Constitution and Government must avow. We do not want the hollow avowal of the minimum. We may not insist upon the maximum also and I am prepared for a compromise; but we do not want to depend upon mere platitudes and pious wishes, because that was not what we came here to achieve. At least since the year 1942 the character of the Congress has altogether changed. The change was due to the fact that there was a solemn promise that the Government of Independent India would be that of the peasants and workers of India and none others. That was what impelled so many rural people, so many youths from the rural population to sacrifice themselves in the “Revolution of 1942.” If you analyse the figures you will be started, Sir, to find that none of the vested interests, none of the erstwhile patriots sacrificed themselves. They were the purely the backward and illiterate people from the rural communities who sacrificed themselves. Very few indeed of the people from towns who belonged to any of the higher and well-known families were ready to join them. That being so, it is our duty to look to the promises that we had held out, and in considering the Report we should have kept that ideal in view and not tried merely to make half-hearted recommendations so as to be able to say to the Socialists that we are also socialists of a sort and to try to say to the Communists that we also respect some of their theories. A friend of mine said, Sir, that there was an admixture of the Russian and the Irish Constitutions in these recommendations. I would like to inform my Honourable friend that he is labouring under a misapprehension. There is nothing of the Russian constitution in all these recommendations. Now what is the sanctity of these recommendations? They are supposed to be directives. Instead of having all these several items, let the framers of our Constitution give us a definite programme that they are determined to give effect to. The whole of India is thirsting for it. Instead of all that we are merely going to hold out some distant and indistinct hope without providing in our constitution any effective means as to when and how they are going to be realized. Sir, I submit that it will be far better if the framers of the Report would kindly utilize the interval between this session and the next for reconsideration of their recommendations in the light of the criticism that may be levelled against the Report on the floor of this House. We may then hope to have something better than what we have here today unless the whole thing is to go to the drafting Committee whether the report is fully discussed here or not. If this happens we would be required to consider the draft. But if this comes up against for our consideration in the form of a report, we hope it will be in a different shape.
