These are some of the difficulties that have been created. It is not here necessary to deal with them in detail. The most important consequence of this encroachment on the States sphere would be that we would be helping the communist techniques. Their technique is that by creating trouble in a Province or a State, they would partially paralyse the administration and thereby force the Emergency Powers. Then, they will try to make those drastic powers unpopular. What is more, they will make the guilty Ministers and guilty officers heroes. The legislature of the State would, as I have submitted, be deprived of the right of discussion. If the President takes upon himself the responsibility of emergency powers, then his action, I suppose, cannot be discussed in the States legislatures. The only way of ventilating Provincial and States grievances is to allow the Provinces and the States to find out the guilty persons and hold them up to ridicule and contempt and that would be entirely lost. This would have the effect of bringing all sorts of people, good and bad, law-breaking And law-abiding persons into one congregation. The Centre will be unpopular and the guilty States would be regarded as so many martyrs and the Centre would be flouted and would be forced to use more and more Emergency Powers and would be caught in a vicious circle. Then, the States will gradually get dissatisfied and they will show centrifugal tendencies and this will be reflected in the general elections to the House of the People at the Centre. The result would be that very soon these very drastic powers calculated to strengthen the hands of the Centre will be rather a source of weakness in no distant time. I have a fear which is not based without sufficient consideration and thought that we are gradually, but perhaps unconsciously, drifting towards dictatorship. It is a strange thing that though dictators have always been unpopular and destroyed in the long run, yet, it is a strange phenomenon of modern times that dictatorships do grow up. They arise honestly out of good working democracy; they arise out of the desire to deal with lawlessness honestly by constitutional short cuts. The fear of the Communists is at the back of these emergency powers being centralised. This was the very reason which led Hitler to establish his dictatorship. ln fact, his object was to get rid of the Communists in Germany. Having successfully suppressed the legislature and successfully suppressed expression of public opinion, Hitler produced a big fighting machine and then he felt the desire to have territorial expansion which led to the last war which led to his downfall. Mussolini also built a dictatorship by similar process, and both of them had to share the same fate. I only hope that we are not drifting towards that end. I have, however, a suspicion that the very steps which the various modern dictators have taken, perhaps unconsciously taken, with the bona fide belief of doing good to the country, we are unconsciously following the same road to lead to a dictatorship. There is a feeling in the House, especially among the younger sections that dictatorship of some kind is a great necessity in India, I submit that though that is a very natural feeling, dictatorships have only one end and that is failure. In fact, they get into a vicious circle; they create opposition by dictatorship; that opposition is checked by further acts of dictatorship; the opposition secretly grows and ultimately is enough to set aside the very power which created it. On the other hand, the best thing is to allow the natural democratic forces to work. As everyone knows, even here, newspapers are not free and there is a feeling amongst the newspapers that they cannot freely publish facts if they go against the Government or in any way put the Government in an unfavourable light. I think these are bad signs. This series of articles will accentuate an unhealthy opposition without any doubt. I hope that every law-abiding, citizen, every man who has faith in the Constitution and in democratic method should rise and oppose this tendency. In fact, this is a Symptom of a deep-seated disease, namely, to acquire power and to concentrate power in the hands of the Centre. As I have submitted. this will react on the very persons who want dictatorship. The best thing is to allow free scope for public opinion. This result has unfortunately been hastened by the fact that throughout the country, in the States and in the Provinces and in the Centre, there is no regular, organised opposition. There is irregular, disorganised, unorganised opposition in the country which in the absence of legitimate vent, expresses itself. in general dissatisfaction and law-breaking tendency on a large scale. In fact,. the habitual law-breakers and honest citizens are brought together on the same platform on account of repressive measures. I hope that my warnings would prove false; nobody would be more glad than myself to find in the long run that I am wrong. But, I have a fear that we are marching. towards a dictatorship and we might go the same way as the two latest dictatorships went.
