Sir, I rise to support the point of view just placed before the House by my honourable Friend. It is known to many Members of the House that it was with this intention that I had given notice of a resolution. In that resolution I wanted that the basis of our Constitution should be altered from semi-unionistic and semi-federalistic to a proper unitary system. It was with that end in view that I had given notice of a resolution by which I wanted that the present condition of world politics made it imperative that India should be a well-knit, homogeneous and powerful nation so that she may play a prominent and decisive part for the maintenance of world peace. I then in my resolution stated the various causes that led me to that conclusion. Some people will say: ‘Why was this not pressed when we were drafting the Constitution? Fortunately or unfortunately the present administration has made apparent the pitfalls and the dangers of the present basis of the Constitution far more than anybody could have or did anticipate or imagine. Actual experience has shown that the present Constitution has many dangers ahead and I think it will be for the good of India if we could avoid those dangers and take a somewhat revolutionary decision to do away with the present basis of the Constitution. And where was the present basis of the Constitution laid? It was not laid in Delhi. It was not laid anywhere in India. It was laid in Britain and it was intended to meet a far different situation than the one with which we are faced at the present day. The draft Constitution is a mere reproduction of the Government of India Act of 1935. The ever-increasing demands of Mr. Jinnah, separate electorates, reservations & weightages, the existence of tiny little States spread over the whole length and breadth of India, that was the problem that we were trying to meet and to solve by meeting several times in London in Round Table Conferences and it was for meeting the political exigencies of that situation in India that the framework of the Constitution which we are trying to copy at present was really shaped and hammered. I think that this Constitution and the principles underlying it are entirely foreign to the genius of our people and I have been all along urging that we must search our hearts and find out a political solution for the administration of our country in a way which will be more suited to the genius of people of this country. We do not now have the abstacle of the States in our way. We do not have the intransigence of the Muslim League in our way. Under these circumstances why should we do not take the only logical step and decide upon a unitary type of constitution by which we will have the fullest co-operation of our people, by which we will be able to harness the energies and intelligence of the Indian people as a whole and by which we will be able to build the Indian nation for more quicker and at the expense of much less energy than would be the case if we retain the fundamentals of this Constitution?
