The Common Law in India - College of Social Sciences and ...

170 The Common Law in Indiastatutory rule-making power by the Governor-Generalin Council. We are faced therefore with the necessityof creating autonomous units and combining theminto a federation by one and the same act."This artificial federal scheme was devised mainlyin order to provide and maintain conditions whichwould, notwithstanding the transfer of political powerinto Indian hands, enable Britain to maintain its holdover India. Though the autonomous units createdby the Act of 1935 began to function from 1987, asevents shaped the federation envisaged by the Actnever came into existence.The year 1947 witnessed the fruition of the Indianstruggle for freedom; a bloodless revolution whichbrought about the transfer of power from British toIndian hands. The manner in which this transfer waseffected was in some respects unique. The BritishParliament which had governed the country for abouta century abdicated; and by the very statute bywhich it abdicated—the Indian Independence Act—it created a new dominion, the Dominion of India.The Act also contained a machinery for the framingof a new Constitution for India. The ConstituentAssembly formed under the Act was to prepare it.The Assembly evolved the present Constitution of thecountry after debates spread over three years. Thus,in a sense, the Indian Constitution of 1950 springsout of the parliamentary statute of 1947.The Assembly had to make a difficult decision. Onone side was the history of a centralised governmentin India for over a hundred years under the British.The experience of internecine divisions and centrifugal