I wish to oppose very strongly the very suggestion that it should be competent for any State to complain against any other State on a matter like what is embodied in this article. I was really surprised that a man like Professor Shah should come forward and should try to protect the interests of the people for whom I never expected that he will have much sympathy. In making his speech he has referred to communal considerations also. It is of course the fashion to dub anybody as communalist, however much the critic himself is steeped in communalism and does, nothing else but help the people of his community, if not his own relatives only. This is the fashion of the day. Those who sponsor the cause of ninety per cent. of the people are dubbed as communalists, while those who never look beyond the small coterie of their own relatives and caste pose themselves as the most noble-minded and cosmopolitan-spirited persons. I would not have wished to refer to all this but I was really amazed that when there is nothing in this article about communalism, my learned Friend, Professor Shah, thought fit to refer to it. Actually he wants to protect the interests of the businessmen and the traders, the merchants and so on. Here I want to say with all the emphasis at my command that the trading and merchant profession in India has not proved an honest profession at all. It is a profession based essentially on cheating. If you see from day to day the way in which our food articles are sold, you will be amazed to see how they are adulterated, and he will be a bold man who says that he gets his food articles pure and unadulterated with something or the other. Irrespective of the profit they can make by legitimate means, the merchant class is not content with it. If under such circumstances, for instance, a State wants to bring a legislation against this sort of adulteration of foodstuffs on a large scale, my Friend Professor Shah wants that some State which only consists of traders and businessmen should be in a position to move the Supreme Court so that the Supreme Court may take steps against all the States or any State which passes such legislation.
