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Constitutional Adviser to Bikaner continues........
On my arrival in Bikaner I was charged with the duty of going through the draft Constitution of India and to give my comments on it so that the Bikaner Government could send its reactions to it before it was finally introduced in the Constituent Assembly.
I made a thorough study of the Constitution and gave my comments to the Government which were duly sent to Sir B. N. Rao who was constitutional adviser to the Assembly. I felt that an elaborate constitution drafted on the model of foreign constitutions was not suitable for India.
I wrote in the Hindustan Times that this Constitution was a slavish copy of the Constitution Act of 1935 and of some other foreign Constitutions and should not be adopted.
The Government of India Act 1935 had been enacted by the British Parliament in order to keep India divided for all time to come, so that it may not slip out of their hands. I suggested that the Constitution of India should have been framed according to the genuis of its own people on original lines and keeping in view the tradition and culture of the past.
A simple Constitution giving the country a unitary form of government with the legislature elected by indirect franchise would, in my view, be more suitable for the country. I suggested that the roots of the Constitution should be laid on village panchayats which should elect district panchayats and they in their turn could elect provincial panchayats and the provincial panchayats could then elect members of Parliament, the supreme governing body of the country.
To be continued....