Mr. President, Sir, I would like to deal with the points raised by honourable Members in regard to the Fundamental Rights. With many of the provisions in that Part, honourable Members have been in agreement. But the attack has been focussed on two sets of provisions, one dealing with the liberty of the individual citizen, and the other dealing with property. Sir, it is a moot question whether in a country with a Parliament elected on the basis of adult suffrage, where the common man is supposed to have a preponderant voice in the administration of the country and the making of the laws, it is necessary to have a set of fundamental rights incorporated in the Constitution. My honourable Friend Shrimati Purnima Banerji mentioned that she would have preferred that the fundamental rights were left without any subtraction therefrom in the same manner as is found in the American Constitution. Again, I have to mention that those friends who wanted a set of fundamental rights, particularly those dealing with individual liberty and so on, copied from the American Constitution, forgot the historical background of the incorporation of such fundamental rights in the American Constitution. These were incorporated merely because of the fear of a group of people who framed the Constitution, who felt that the newly-created Centre would develop to be a monster and would make inroads not merely into the rights of the States, but also into the rights of the individual-the natural abhorrence of those people of the same type of mind as Jefferson who were responsible for the incorporation of the fundamental rights in the American Constitution to a powerful national Government was the main cause. But, it would not be right to incorporate those provisions without any variations, or any amendment or subtraction in a Constitution that we are framing in 1949.
