Sir, it has been said by previous speakers, and I would like to endorse it, that the privilege of citizenship of India should not be regarded as something very commonplace affair, cheap and easy. It is, I submit – and it promises to be still more, a great privilege, of which not only those of us who are now citizens may be proud, but even those who may hereafter become citizens of India should also be proud. It was the proud privilege in the days of the Roman Republic for any Roman citizen simply because of that citizenship to regard himself as equal to any King. The last word in status and importance was said when he proudly asserted : “civis Romanum sum=I am a Roman citizen”. I hope the time is coming when the same proud boast may justly be made by Indians, when the citizenship of India will not be merely regarded as a burden of our ‘nativity’-for we were used to be called ‘natives’ in the dead and buried past – but it would be regarded as something to which the rest of the world will look up with respect.
