ABSTRACT
The third Indian Parliament to complete a full five-year term since Indian independence accomplished many of the things typical of representative legislatures everywhere. But Parliament had been transplanted from Westminster to Delhi to enact laws, to oversee administration, and later to evoke public opinion and air grievances. It had not been intended to integrate the nation. In order to make a valid comparison in time, we need a theory which can conceive of present Indian developments of national unity-disunity as well as of historic British developments as stages and variations of a single set of processes. The most relevant of the British experiences can distill into propositions, pointing to the functions of the Indian Parliament in nation-building and perhaps to some of their conditions of success. The function of choosing a prime minister, now regarded as latent in the British House of Commons, has indeed been a crucial, though infrequent, function of the majority party in Parliament in India.
