I must at this stage try to disabuse a notion which I find exists in the minds of certain people–not alone in the Indian States, but also in what are called the provinces. The notion is that this attempt or this idea to incorporate a part in the Indian Constitution to govern the Indian States has come from above, that it is an imposition from the Ministry of States, and that the people of the States are taking unwillingly what has been imposed upon them. I wish to declare here and now that that idea is wrong. The people of the Indian States have from the beginning of the struggle for Indian independence joined hands with the people of the provinces and it is on account of the fact that the statements made by the Cabinet Mission in 1946 and the Indian Independence Act and the Constituent Assembly as planned by the Cabinet Mission did lay down a different procedure for the Indian States that Constituent Assemblies came into existence in the lndian states. I recall at this juncture a meeting which took place in Mysore in 1946 during the days of the Cabinet Mission, which was attended by representatives of Indian States People’s movements in Travancore, Cochin, Pudukkottah and Mysore. In that meeting a unanimous Resolution was passed by the representatives of the people that the Constituent Assembly for India should frame the Constitution for Indian States as well. That is to say, long before this plan was thought of by the Ministry of States the representatives of the people of the South Indian States assembled in Mysore in May 1946 and decided that it is the Indian Constituent Assembly which should frame a constitution for the Indian States. Thereafter as I submitted earlier, the Rau Committee also, which consisted of a majority of representatives from the Indian States, reported that it is this Constituent Assembly, representing as it does the will of the people of India including Indian States, that should frame the Constitution for India.
