Sir, at the end of para 5 of the Report submitted by Sardar Patel to this house is a sentence which has specified that this Resolution does not affect the provisions granting representation to the Anglo-Indian community; and it is because of this, Sir, that I stand here to express my sense of gratitude to the Advisory Committee, guided by Sardar Patel, for this generous and understanding gesture. I should be shirking the truth if I did not admit that there were many occasions during the sessions of the Minorities Sub-Committee, when I was deeply and even unhappily anxious. I know, Sir, that autobiographical details not only savour of egotism, but they tend to irritate. But I have in representing my community, been inspired by what has been an article of faith, a belief that this community, whatever its past history, has its real home in India, That it can know no other home, that it can only find a home in all its connotations if it is accepted, and accepted cordially, by the peoples of this country. Sir, when discussions on minority rights were on the anvil, there were two questions that I asked myself. Would the leaders of India be able to forget and forgive the past? And the second question was, if the leaders of India can forget, and forgive the past, will they go further and be prepared to recognise the special needs and difficulties of this small, but not unimportant minority? Sir, today, I am able to say, with a sense of inexpressible gratitude, that the leaders of India have shown that they were not only able to forget and forgive and past, but they were also able to recognise and accept the special, needs and difficulties of the community which I have the privilege of leading. I believe that in making this gesture to this small community, the Advisory Committee has been uniquely generous. When we were discussing these problems, very often I felt that in the minds of the majority of the members of the Committee were questions, not put in so many words, but nevertheless there were questions which animated their attitude towards my request, and these questions took perhaps the uniform form, “Why should you on behalf of the Anglo-Indians ask even for equality of treatment? Can it not be said of your community that not only have you not given a single hostage to the cause of independence, but perhaps have joined with the reactionary forces intended to retard the cause of Indian independence?” Those were questions which were perhaps postulated behind the minds of the majority of the members, and I realised that this was a hurdle. Sometimes I felt that it was an insuperable hurdle. In spite of that, not only did my community receive recognition as one of the Indian minorities, but it was accorded further special treatment, and its special difficulties were recognised and catered for. Sir, in this connection, I wish to place on record my sense of gratitude- I find it impossible to express it adequately- to the attitude of the Chairman of the Advisory Committee, Sardar Patel. From some speeches in this House, the impression might have been gathered that the Advisory Committee was animated by motives of wresting from the minorities what the minorities wanted or thought was necessary. I am here to refute that suggestion. There were many people who argued with unerring logic, who argued with even an implacable sense of reasonableness, that the request put forward by the minorities should not be accepted in the larger interests of the country. When I listened to them, I often felt that the minority’s requests would never be accepted, because on the basis of logic, on the basis even of reasonableness, on the basis of national integration, many of the request put forward by the minorities were not tenable. But fortunately, I say fortunately we had a person like the Sardar as the Chairman. I saw him brush aside, sometimes brusquely, arguments which were unanswerable on the basis of logic, arguments which were irrefutable on academic and theoretical grounds and he made it clear over and over again to us in the Advisory Committee that this attitude was inspired not by logic, not by strict reasonableness, not by academic theories, but by an attempt to understand the real feelings and psychology of the minority mind. He made it quite clear that the principle on which he was working was this. It is not necessary so much to measure what we do by the yardstick of theory or of academic perfection, but what is much more important is that whatever the requests of the minorities be, if they are not absolutely fantastic then that request should be met to the maximum extent; because if there is a fear, real or imagined, it is better in the larger interests ultimately of the country to assuage that fear, and to look at it from the point of view of minority psychology. And that is why we have these provisions granted to us, provisions perhaps which we had no right to ask for, on a strictly logical or academic basis.
