Mr. Vice-President, Sir, before I take up the points raised by Prof. K. T. Shah in moving his amendment, I would like to dispose of what I might say, a minor criticism which was made by Mr. Kamath. Mr. Kamath took the Drafting Committee to task for having without any warrant altered the language of the report made by the committee dealing with the Union Constitution. If I understood him correctly, he accused the Drafting Committee for having dropped the word “Rashtrapati” which is included in the brackets after the word President, in paragraph 1 of that committee’s report. Now, Sir, this action of the Drafting Committee has nothing to do with any kind of prejudice against the word “Rashtrapati” or against using any Hindi term in the Constitution. The reason why we omitted it is this. We were told that simultaneously with the Drafting Committee, the President of the Constituent Assembly had appointed another committee, or rather two committees, to draft the constitution in Hindi as well as in Hindustani. We, therefore, felt that since there was to be a Draft of the Constitution in Hindi and another in Hindustani, it might be as well that we should leave this word “Rashtrapati” to be adopted by the members of those committees, as the word “Rashtrapati” was not an English term and we were drafting the Constitution in English. Now my friend asked me whether I was not aware of the fact that this term “Rashtrapati” has been in current use for a number of years in the Congress parlance. I know it is quite true and I have read it in many places that this word “Rashtrapati” is used, there is no doubt about it. But whether it has become a technical term, I am not quite sure. Therefore before rising to reply, I just thought of consulting the two Draft Constitutions, one prepared in Hindi and the other prepared in Hindustani. Now, I should like to draw the attention of my friend Mr. Kamath to the language that has been used by these two committees. I am reading from the draft in Hindustani, and it says:- “HIND KA EK PRESIDENT HOGA…..”
