RESIGNATION
The House I am sure knows,
unofficially if not officially, that I have ceased
to be a Member of the Cabinet. I tendered my resignation on Thursday the 27th
September to the Prime Minister and asked him to relieve me immediately. The
Prime Minister was good enough to accept the same on the very next day. If I
have continued to be a Minister after Friday the 28th, it is because the Prime
Minister had requested me to continue till the end of the Session—a request to
which I was, in obedience to constitutional convention, bound to assent.
Our Rules of Procedure permit a Minister who has
resigned his office, to make a personal statement in explanation of his
resignation, Many members of Cabinet have resigned during my tenure of office.
There has been however no uniform practice in the matter of Ministers who have
resigned making a statement. Some have gone without making a statement and
others have gone after making a statement. For a few days I was hesitant what
course to follow. After taking all circumstances into consideration I came to
the conclusion that the making of a statement was not merely necessary, but it
was a duty which a member who has resigned owes to the House.
The House has no opportunity to know how the Cabinet
works from within, whether there is harmony or whether there is a conflict, for
the simple reason that there is a joint responsibility under which a member who
is in a minority is not entitled to disclose his differences. Consequently the
House continues to think that there is no conflict among members of Cabinet
even when as a matter of fact a conflict exists. It is, therefore, a duty of a
retiring Minister to make a statement informing the House why he wants to go
and why he is not able to continue to take further joint responsibility.
Secondly, if a Minister goes without making a statement, people may
suspect that there is something wrong with the conduct of the Minister, either
in his public capacity or in his private capacity. No Minister should, I think,
leave room for such suspicion and the only safe way out is a statement.
Thirdly we have our
newspapers. They have their age-old bias in favour of some and against others.
Their judgements are seldom based on merits. Wherever they find an empty space,
they are prone to fill the vacuum by supplying grounds for resignation which
are not the real grounds but which put those whom they favour in a better light
and those not in their favour in a bad light. Some such thing I see has
happened even in my case.
It is for these reasons that I decided to make a
statement before going out.
It is now 4 years, I month and
26 days since I was called by the Prime Minister to accept the office of Law
Minister in his Cabinet. The offer came as a great surprise to me. I was in the
opposite camp and had already been condemned as unworthy of association when
the interim Government was formed in August 1946. I was left to speculate as to
what could have happened to bring about this change in the attitude of the
Prime Minister. I had my doubts. I did not know how I could carry on with those
who had never been my friends. I had doubts as to whether I could, as a Law
Member, maintain the standard of legal knowledge and acumen which had been
maintained by those who had preceded me as Law Ministers of the Government of
India. But I kept my doubts at rest and accepted the offer of the Prime
Minister on the ground that I should not deny my co-operation when it was asked
for in the building up of our nation. The quality of my performance as a Member
of the Cabinet and as Law Minister, I must leave it to others to judge.
I will now refer to matters
which have led me to sever my connection with my colleagues.
The urge to go has been growing from long past due to variety of reasons.
I will first refer to matters purely of a personal
character and which are the least of the grounds which have led me to tender my
resignation. As a result of my being a member of the Viceroy's Executive
Council, I knew the Law Ministry to be administratively of no importance. It
gave no opportunity for shaping the policy of the Government of India. We used
to call it an empty soap box only good for old lawyers to play with. When the
Prime Minister made me the offer, I told him that besides being a lawyer by my
education and experience, I was competent to run any administrative Department
and that in the old Viceroy's Executive Council I held two administrative
portfolios, that of Labour and C.P.W.D., where a
great deal of planning projects were dealt with by me and would like to have
some administrative portfolio. The Prime Minister agreed and said he would give
me in addition to Law the Planning Department which, he said, he was intending
to create. Unfortunately the Planning Department came very late in the day and
when it did come I was left out. During my time, there have been many transfers
of portfolios from one Minister to another. I thought I might be considered for
any one of them. But I have always been left out of consideration. Many
Ministers have been given two or three portfolios so that they have been
overburdened. Others like me have been wanting more work. I have not even been
considered for holding a portfolio temporarily when a Minister in charge has
gone abroad for a few days. It is difficult to understand what is the principle
underlying the distribution of Government work among Ministers which the Prime
Minister follows. Is it capacity? Is it trust? Is it friendship? Is it pliability? I
was not even appointed to be a member of main Committees of the Cabinet such as
the Foreign Affairs Committee or the Defence Committee. When the Economic
Affairs Committee was formed, I expected, in view of the fact that I was
primarily a student of Economics and Finance, to be appointed to this
Committee. But I was left out. I was appointed to it by the Cabinet, when the
Prime Minister had gone to England. But when he returned, in one of his many
essays in the reconstruction of the Cabinet, he left me out. In a subsequent
reconstruction my name was added to the Committee, but that was as a result of
my protest.
The Prime Minister, I am sure, will agree that I have
never complained to him in this connection. I have never been a party to the
game of power politics inside the Cabinet or the game of snatching portfolios
which goes on when there is a vacancy. I believe in service, service in the
post which the Prime Minister, who as the head of the Cabinet, thought fit to
assign to me. It would have, however, been quite unhuman for me not to have
felt that a wrong was being done to me.
I will now refer to another
matter that had made me dissatisfied with the Government. It relates to the treatment
accorded to the Backward Classes and the Scheduled Castes. I was very sorry
that the Constitution did not embody any safeguards for the Backward Classes.
It was left to be done by the Executive Government on the basis of the
recommendations of a Commission to be appointed by the President. More than a
year has elapsed since we passed the Constitution. But the Government has not
even thought of appointing the Commission. The year 1946 during which I was out
of office, was a year of great anxiety to me and to the leading members of the
Scheduled Castes. The British had resided from the commitments they had made in
the matter of constitutional safeguards for the Scheduled Castes and the
Scheduled Castes had no knowing as to what the Constituent Assembly would do in
that behalf. In this period of anxiety I had prepared a report*[f14] on the condition
of the Scheduled Castes for submission to the United Nations. But I did not
submit it. I felt that it would be better to wait until the Constituent
Assembly and the future Parliament was given a chance to deal with the matter.
The provisions made in the Constitution for safeguarding the position of the
Scheduled Castes were not to my satisfaction. However, I accepted them for what
they were worth, hoping that the Government will show some determination to
make them effective. What is the position of the Scheduled Castes today? So far
as I see, it is the same as before. The same old tyranny, the same old
oppression, the same old discrimination which existed before, exists now, and
perhaps in a worst form. I can refer to hundreds of cases where people from the
Scheduled Castes round about Delhi and adjoining places have come to me with
their tales of woes against the Caste Hindus and against the Police who have
refused to register their complaints and render them any help. I have been
wondering whether there is any other parallel in the world to the condition of
the Scheduled Castes in India. I cannot find any. And yet why is no relief granted
to the Scheduled Castes? Compare the concern the Government shows over
safeguarding the Muslims. The Prime Minister's whole time and attention is
devoted for the protection of the Muslims. I yield to none, not even to the
Prime Minister, in my desire to give the Muslims of India the utmost protection
wherever and whenever they stand in need of it. But what I want to know is, are
the Muslims the only people who need protection? Are the Scheduled Castes, the
Scheduled Tribes and the Indian Christians not in need of protection? What
concern has he shown for these communities? So far
as I know, none and yet these are the communities which need far more care and
attention than the Muslims.
I could not contain within myself the indignation I have
felt over the neglect of the Scheduled Castes by the Government and on one
occasion I gave vent to my feelings at a public meeting of the Scheduled
Castes. A question was asked, from the Hon'ble the
Home Minister, whether my charge that the Scheduled Castes had not benefited by the rule which guaranteed to them
12 1/2, per cent representation was true. In answer
to the question the Hon'ble
the Home Minister was pleased to say that my charge was baseless. Subsequently
for some reason—it may be for satisfying the qualms of his conscience—he, I am
informed, sent round a circular to the various Departments of the Government of
India asking them to report how many Scheduled Caste candidates had been
recently recruited in Government service. I am informed that most Departments said
in reply ' NIL ' or
nearly nil. If my information is correct, I need make no commentary on the
answer given by the Hon'ble
the Home Minister.
From my early childhood I have dedicated myself to the upliftment of the Scheduled Castes among whom I was born.
It is not that there were no temptations in my way. If I had considered my own
interests, I could have been anything I wanted to be and if I had joined the
Congress I would have reached to the highest place in that organisation. But as
I said, I had dedicated myself to the upliftment of the Scheduled Castes and I
have followed the adage which says that it is better to be narrow-minded if you
wish to be enthusiastic about a cause which you wish to accomplish. You can
therefore, well imagine what pain it has caused me to see that the cause of the
Scheduled Castes has been relegated to the limbo of nothing.
The third matter which has given me cause, not merely
for dissatisfaction but for actual anxiety and even worry, is the foreign
policy of the country. Any one, who has followed the course of our foreign
policy and along with it the attitude of other countries towards India, could
not fail to realise the sudden change that has taken place in their attitude
towards us. On 15th of August 1947 when we began our life as an independent
country, there was no country which wished us ill. Every country in the world
was our friend. Today, after four years, all our friends have deserted us. We
have no friends left. We have alienated ourselves. We are pursuing a lonely
furrow with no one even to second our resolutions in the U.N.O. When I think of our foreign policy, I am
reminded of what Bismark and Bernard Shaw have
said. Bismark has said that " politics is not a game of realising the ideal.
Politics is the game of the possible. "
Bernard Shaw not very long ago said that good ideals are good but one must not
forget that it is often dangerous to be too good. Our foreign policy is in
complete opposition to these words of wisdom uttered by two of the world's
greatest men.
How dangerous it has been to us this policy of doing the
impossible and of being too good is illustrated by the great drain on our
resources made by our military expenditure, by the difficulty of getting food
for our starving millions and by difficulty of getting aid for the
industrialisation of our country.
Out of 350 crores of rupees
of revenue we raise annually, we spend about Rs.
180 crores of rupees on the Army. It is a colossal expenditure which has hardly
any parallel. This colossal expenditure is the direct result of our foreign
policy. We have to foot the whole of our Bill for our defence ourselves because
we have no friends on which we can depend for help in any emergency that may
arise. I have been wondering whether this is the right sort of foreign policy.
Our quarrel with Pakistan is a part of our foreign
policy about which I feel deeply dissatisfied. There are two grounds which have
disturbed our relations with Pakistan—one is Kashmir and the other is the
condition of our people in East Bengal. I felt that we should be more deeply
concerned with East Bengal where the condition of our people seems from all the
newspapers intolerable than with Kashmir. Notwithstanding this we have been
staking our all on the Kashmir issue. Even then I feel that we have been
fighting on an unreal issue. The issue on which we are fighting most of the
time is, who is in the right and who is in the wrong.
The real issue to my mind is not who is in the right but what is right. Taking
that to be the main question, my view has always been that the right solution
is to partition Kashmir. Give the Hindu and Buddhist part
to India and the Muslim part to Pakistan as we did in the case of India. We are
really not concerned with the Muslim part of Kashmir. It is a matter between
the Muslims of Kashmir and Pakistan. They may decide the issue as they like. Or
if you like, divide it into three parts; the
Cease-fire zone, the Valley and the Jammu-Ladhak
Region and have a plebiscite only in the Valley. What I am afraid of is that in
the proposed plebiscite, which is to be an overall plebiscite, the Hindus and Buddhists of Kashmir are likely to be dragged into
Pakistan against their wishes and we may have to face the same problems as we
are facing today in East Bengal.
I will now refer to the Fourth matter which has a good
deal to do with my resignation. The Cabinet has become a merely recording and
registration office of decisions already arrived at by Committees. As I have
said, the Cabinet now works by Committees.
There is a Defence Committee. There is a Foreign Committee. All important
matters relating to Foreign affairs are dealt with by it. All matters relating
to Defence are disposed of by the Defence Committee. The same members of the
Cabinet are appointed by them. I am not a member of either of these Committees.
They work behind an iron curtain. Others who are not members have only to take
joint responsibility without any opportunity of taking part in the shaping of policy. This is an impossible position.
I will now deal with a matter which has led me finally
to come to the decision that I should resign. It is the treatment which was
accorded to the Hindu Code. The Bill was introduced in this House on the 11th
April 1947. After a life of four years, it was killed and died unwept and
unsung, after 4 clauses of it were passed. While it was before the House, it
lived by fits and starts. For full one year the
Government did not feel it necessary to refer it to a Select Committee. It was
referred to the Select Committee on 9th April
1948. The Report was presented to the House on 12th
August 1948. The motion for the consideration of the Report was made by me on
31st August 1948. It was merely for making the motion that the Bill was kept on
the Agenda. The discussion of the motion was not allowed to take place until
the February Session of the year
1949. Even then it was not allowed to have a continuous
discussion. It was distributed over 10 months, 4 days in February, I day in
March and 2 days in April 1949. After this, one day was given to the Bill in
December 1949, namely the 19th December on which day the House adopted my
motion that the Bill as reported by the Select Committee be taken into
consideration. No time was given to the Bill in the year 1950. Next time the
Bill came before the House was on 5th February 1951 when the clause by clause
consideration of the Bill was taken. Only three days 5th, 6th and 7th of
February were given to the Bill and left there to rot.
This being the last Session of the present Parliament,
Cabinet had to consider whether the Hindu Code Bill should be got through
before this Parliament ended or whether it should be left over to the new
Parliament. The Cabinet unanimously decided that it should be put through in
this Parliament. So the Bill was put on the Agenda and was taken up on the 17th
September 1951 for further clause by clause
consideration. As the discussion was going on the Prime Minister put forth a
new proposal, namely, that the Bill as a whole may not be got through within
the time available and that it was desirable to get a part of it enacted into
law rather than allow the whole of it to go to waste. It was a great wrench to me. But I agreed, for, as the proverb says " it is better to save a part when the whole is
likely to be lost". The Prime Minister suggested that we should select the
Marriage and Divorce part. The Bill in its truncated "form
went on. After two or three days of discussion of the Bill the Prime Minister
came up with another proposal. This time his proposal was to drop the whole
Bill even the Marriage and Divorce portion. This came to me as a great shock—a
bolt from the blue. I was stunned and could not say anything. I am not prepared
to accept that the dropping of this truncated Bill was due to want of time. I
am sure that the truncated Bill was dropped because other and more powerful
members of the Cabinet wanted precedence for their Bills. I am unable to
understand how the Benaras and Aligarh University Bills, how the Press Bill could
have been given precedence over the Hindu Code even in its attenuated form? It
is not that there was no law on the Statute Book to govern the Aligarh
University or the Benaras University. It is not that these Universities would
have gone to wreck and ruins if the Bills had not been passed in this session.
It is not that the Press Bill was urgent. There is already a law on the Statute
Book and the Bill could have waited. I got the impression that the Prime
Minister, although sincere, had not the earnestness and determination required
to get the Hindu Code Bill through.
In regard to this Bill I have been made to go through
the greatest mental torture. The aid of Party Machinery was denied to me. The
Prime Minister gave freedom of Vote, an unusual thing in the history of the
Party. I did not mind it. But I expected two things. I expected a party whip as
to time limit on speeches and instruction to the Chief Whip to move closure
when sufficient debate had taken place. A whip on
time limit on speeches would have got the Bill
through. When freedom of voting was given there could have been no objection to
have given a whip for time limit on speeches. But such a whip was never issued.
The conduct of the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs,
who is also the Chief Whip of the Party in connection with the Hindu Code, to
say the least, has been most extraordinary. He has been the deadliest opponent
of the Code and has never been present to aid me by moving a closure motion.
For days and hours filibustering has gone on a single clause. But the Chief
Whip, whose duty it is to economise Government time and push on Government Business, has been
systematically absent when the Hindu Code has been under consideration in the
House. I have never seen a case of a Chief Whip so disloyal to the Prime
Minister and a Prime Minister so loyal to a disloyal Whip.
Notwithstanding this unconstitutional behaviour, the
Chief Whip is really a darling of the Prime Minister. For notwithstanding his
disloyalty he got a promotion in the Party organisation. It is impossible to
carry on in such circumstances.
It has been said that the Bill had to be dropped because
the opposition was strong. How strong was the opposition? This Bill has been
discussed several times in the Party and was carried to division by the
opponents. Every time the opponents were routed. The last time when the Bill
was taken up in the Party Meeting, out of 120 only 20 were found to be against
it. When the Bill was taken in the Party for discussion, 44 clauses were passed
in about 3 1/2 hours time. This shows how much opposition there was to the Bill
within the Party. In the House itself there have
been divisions on three clauses of the Bill—2, 3 and 4. Every time there has
been a overwhelming majority in favour even on clause 4 which is the soul of
the Hindu Code.
I was therefore, quite unable to accept the Prime
Minister's decision to abandon the Bill on the ground of time. I have been
obliged to give this elaborate explanation for my resignation because some
people have suggested that I am going because of my illness. I wish to
repudiate any such suggestion. I am the last man to abandon my duty because of
illness.
It may be said that my resignation is out of time and
that if I was dissatisfied with the Foreign Policy
of the Government and the treatment accorded to Backward Classes and the
Scheduled Castes I should have gone earlier. The charge may sound as true. But
I had reasons which held me back. In the first place, most of the time I have
been a member of the Cabinet, I have been busy with the framing of the Constitution.
It absorbed all my attention till 26th January 1950 and thereafter I was
concerned with the Peoples' Representation Bill and the Delimitation Orders. I
had hardly any time to attend to our Foreign Affairs. I did not think it right
to go away leaving this work unfinished.
In the second place, I thought it necessary to stay on,
for the sake of the Hindu Code. In the opinion of some it may be wrong for me
to have held on for the sake of the Hindu Code. I took a different view. The
Hindu Code was the greatest social reform measure ever undertaken by the
Legislature in this country. No law passed by the Indian Legislature in the
past or likely to be passed in the future can be compared to it in point of its
significance.
To leave inequality between
class and class, between sex and sex which is the soul of Hindu Society
untouched and to go on passing legislation relating to economic problems is to
make a farce of our Constitution and to build a palace on a dung heap. This is
the significance I attached to the Hindu Code. It is for its sake that I stayed
on notwithstanding my differences. So if I have committed a wrong it is in the
hope of doing some good. Had I no ground for such a hope connection to refer only to three of the statements made by the Prime Minister
on the floor of the House, for overcoming the obstructionist tactics of the
opponents? I would like in this n 28th November, 1949 the Prime Minister gave
the following assurance. He said:
" What is more, the Government is committed to this thing (Hindu Code). It
is going through with it."
" Government would proceed with that. It is for this House to accept a
measure, but if a Government takes an important measure and the House rejects
it, the House rejects that Government and the Government goes and another
Government comes in its place. It should be clearly understood that this is one
of the important measures to which the Government attaches importance and on
which it will stand or fall."
Again on 19th December 1949, the Prime Minister said :
" I do not wish the House to think in the slightest degree that we
consider that this Hindu Code Bill is not of importance, because we do attach
the greatest importance to it, as I said, not because of any particular clause
or anything, but because of the basic approach to this vast problem in
problems, economic and social. We have achieved political freedom in this
country, political independence. That is a stage in
the' journey, and there are other stages, economic,
social and other and if society is to advance, there must be this integrated
advance on all fronts."
On the 26th September 1951 the Prime Minister said:
It is not necessary for me to assure the House of the
desire of Government to proceed with this measure in so far as we can proceed
with it within possibilities, and so far as we are concerned we consider this
matter as adjourned till such time as the next opportunity—1 hope it will be in
this Parliaments—offers
itself.
This was after the Prime Minister had announced the
dropping of the Bill. Who could not have believed in these pronouncements of
the Prime Minster? If I did not think that there could be a difference between
the promises and performances of the Prime Minister the fault is certainly not
mine. My exit from the Cabinet may not be a matter of much concern to anybody
in this country. But I must be true to myself and that I can be only by going
out. Before I do so I wish to thank my colleagues for the kindness and courtesy
they have shown to me during my membership of the Cabinet. While I am not
resigning my membership of Parliament I also wish to express my gratitude to
Members of Parliament for having shown great tolerance towards me.
New Delhi,
P.D., Vol. XV, Part II, 21st September 1951, pp.
2974-3008,
