Once this fundamental proposition is accepted, when once it is known that this is the desire of the Indian people, then all that has been done by the Ministry of States during the last two or three years will be found to flow logically from that decision. The decision that the legislative and executive field of the Centre shall extend to Indian States, the decision that there shall be Federal financial integration, and the decision that the Constituent Assembly of India should frame the constitution for the States, all of them, logically follow out of this idea. But even in spite of that, I must inform this House that among certain people, not alone in the Indian States, but also in the Provinces, there is some misapprehension about this idea. They look upon the Government of India with memories–with bitter memories which have been there In the minds of the Indian people regarding the exercise of paramountcy. I wish to make it clear that the paramountcy of the Government of India during the days of the British is different from the paramountcy of the Union Government which it must have if it is to be a Union Government. The Government of India before the 15th August, 1947, so far as the Indian States were concerned, was a foreign government which represented the sovereignty of the British. Therefore, whatever the Government of India did during those days was really an interference from outside. But once this Constitution is passed, the nature of the Government of India changes. The people from the Provinces should not think that it is a government of theirs only, and the people from the Indian States should not think that it is a government of somebody else. Whenever in the Constitution, and wherever in the Constitution, the words “Parliament”. “President” and “the Government of India” are used, it must be remembered that these institutions denote or represent the sovereignty of the people of India, including the people of the Indian States. In other words, the Indian States and the Provinces are going to pool their sovereignty and to have a single undivided sovereignty in India.
