Sir, I may take the liberty of pointing out that the May 16 Plan has now gone for all practical purposes and that we as a sovereign body are moving towards reconstruction the constitution of the future in an atmosphere of complete freedom. I will take the liberty of mentioning in greater detail the change which has been referred to in a paragraph of the Report. The plan of May 16 had one motive–to maintain the unity of the country at all costs. A strong Central Government was sacrified by the May 16 plan at the altar of preserving the unity which many of us, after close examination of the Plan found to be an attenuated unity which would not have lasted longer than the making of it. There were two stages envisaged in the Plan of May 16. The stages were the preliminary stage and the Union Constituent Assembly stage. A number of committees, which the House was pleased to set up, struggled to get some kind of a strong Government of India, a Government worth the name, out of these difficulties, but, the struggle, I am, free to. confess, was not very successful. As a matter of fact, very often if I may express my own sentiment, while examining the plan of May 16 over and over again the plan looked to me more like the parricide’s bag which was invented by ancient Roman law. As you know, under the ancient criminal law of Rome, when a man committed a very heinous crime he was tied up in a bag with a monkey, a snake and a cock, and the bag was thrown into the Tiber till it sank.
