Mr. Chairman, in rising to speak on this Resolution, I would like to make it clear at the outset that I do so, not as a member of one of the several communities, into which unfortunately, our nation is today divided, but as an Indian first and last. (Hear). I do so even though I owe my origin to the very smallest or tiniest of our national minorities. It was one of those groups of people who received that welcome, that hospitality and that protection to which Babu Purushottamdas Tandon referred in his speech in seconding this Resolution. I hope, Sir, that these minorities which exist in our country, will, along with the majority, continue their progress towards becoming a nation, a process which in this ancient country was happening through the absorption of new groups that came into it through the centuries, but a process which seems to have been retarded through the rigidity of caste and through the exclusiveness of society in the past few centuries. I would only observe at this stage that the conception of a nation does not permit the existence of perpetual or permanent minorities. Either the nation absorbs these minorities or, in course of time, it must break up. Therefore, while welcoming the clause in this Resolution which promises adequate safeguards for the minorities, I would say that it is a good thing that we have these legal and constitutional safeguards, but that ultimately no legal safeguard can protect small minorities from the overwhelming domination of big masses, unless on both sides an effort is made to get closer and become one corporate nation, a homogeneous nation. That process has been shown to us by the United States of America, where peoples of different races have, with one unfortunate exception, been absorbed into one nation.
