Sir, during the last three days while the House has been discussing the Chapter on Federal Judicature, I have been placed in an atmosphere of depression. My reaction was to oppose the amendment of Shrimati Durgabai, but when I heard my esteemed Friend Shri Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar I felt much more confused and depressed. Sir, our foreign rulers have left us little. They bled us white and they left us with a number of lawyers here and outside who interpret the law for the maintenance of justice. In my boyhood days I used to pass through Calcutta and watch the Scales of Justice in the Writers’ Building, the old Government Offices there. That Scale of Justice is the thing they have left behind and not real justice. Why my lawyer friends are so much enamoured of the interpretation of justice under the British system I do not know. I thought it unfortunate that during the transition stage we cannot suddenly think in terms of the Indian conception of justice. My conception of justice would be that justice should be based on truth. Whether in the Supreme Court or in the High Courts of Judicature, what is done is the interpretation of the laws left behind to us as heritage by our former British masters. So, Sir, I feel very much depressed. I wish that we had in this Chapter only three or four articles in which my honourable Friend, Dr. Ambedkar could put things in such a way that justice shall be rendered to everybody. But what we have are provisions for interminable and intermingling appeals from court to court finally ending in the Supreme Court. Now my honourable Friend Dr. Ambedkar is bringing out one or two more articles which, Sir, provide for criminal appeals being brought before the Supreme Court. In these circumstances, how will people get justice? Will it be justice or mere transfer of money from one pocket to another? This is all unproductive money. If my money passes to Shri Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar’s pocket or to Dr. Ambedkar’s pocket, that will not be productive wealth. That will be unproductive wealth. Families have been destroyed in the past by these appeals to the Privy Council and their properties passing to the pockets of the lawyers who defended their contentions in the Privy Council.
