Then, Sir, there is another aspect of the Constitution. I know that we were not writing on a clean slate, that there was our former association with the British Empire and that we were a dependency of that Empire for over a hundred years. We were ruled by them and there was the Government of India Act of 1935. Well, what was the Government of India Act! It was merely an adaptation of some of the principles of the unwritten constitution of Great Britain, adapted and made suitable for a dependency as India then was. Naturally that could not form a very proper basis for the Constitution of a free India. Naturally, everything in it was not bad. But what has happened is that our Constitution has become so voluminous because we more or less based our present Constitution on that Act. The Government of India Act contained 328 Sections and eight schedules; the present Constitution consists of 395 articles and eight schedules. We have closely followed the provisions made in the Act of 1935. It is no good trying to conceal the fact that we have based our Constitution on the unwritten constitution of Great Britain adapted to a dependency like India, as it was in 1935. It is not desirable that the constitution should have been so voluminous. We have tried to put into the Constitution what should have formed part of the legislation of the country, present or future. The whole chapter on elections is based on an Act of the Canadian Parliament which does not form part of their constitution. So this should have found its place in the present or future legislation of the country. Unfortunately all this has been tried to be put into the Constitution because we have not been able to keep clear in our mind the distinction between an act of the legislature and the provisions of a constitution.
