Now, finally I may be permitted to say one thing and that is a very serious thing which I have not spoken yet on the floor of this House. But I feel there are some people strongly and vehemently opposed to me, and therefore I must give a warning. As you know, Sir, among Muslims there are two sections, call them sub-communities if you like, they are Shias and Sunnis. Out of the 31 members from the Provinces, I have the honour to be the sole Shia in this House. Out of the 2 members from the States, it is fifty, fifty, as one comes from one State and he is Shia and the other is a Sunni. And I would like to tell you that throughout the Shias have been opposing separate electorates, and have been opposing reservation of seats. They have always been nationalists. I was president of the Bihar Provincial Shia Conference for ten years, and throughout we have consistently said that we want joint electorate, pure and simple. Recently on 31st December 1948, there was the All India Shia Conference, the 35th session in Muzaffarnagar in U.P. which was presided over by Sir Sultan Ahmed, whom everybody knows. And the resolution was unanimously passed there that there should be no separate electorates and no reservation of seats. I went from her to attend the conference, and I will read out just a portion from the Presidential Address :-
“The Draft Constitution provides that Reservations of Seats for Minorities will continue for ten years from now, by way of allowing handicap. It has been conceded in a kindly spirit of tolerance and fellow feeling and according to current principle of safeguarding the rights of minorities. From this point of view is it perfectly intelligible. But to my mind it appears that the disease of separation is thereby suffered to be prolonged and the germ will continue to be at work for these ten years, with all its after-effects, however mildly it may operate. This reservation in a sense is a measure of dealing softly with a long standing prejudice and curing a trouble as imperceptibly as possible and avoid creating any impression of lack of sympathy on the part of the majority legislators. Could we however not take courage in both hands and abolish even separation of seats along with its greater evil the separation of electorates. Let no separation linger in any form, however innocent. Let us grow into a full bloom of trustfulness and oneness, allowing no speck of, no suggestion whatever of separatism leaving no visible trace of the ways of alienation that made us unfriendly and uncompromising in the past. We should wake up once for all in the glowing dawn of a great living and the historic atmosphere of a new freedom and fellowship may well be expected to give us the boldness to accept a complete code of co-operative life. There is another ground why this speck of separatism should not be perpetuated. Other minorities will also be encouraged to demand it. Minority within a minority must be logically entitled to it and thus, far from adding and aiding unity, it will only serve to promote separatism and create sectional strife, leading to untold religious, social and political complications. Reservation carries with it as a corollary the maintenance of a communal political organisation and this must be avoided at all costs.”