Vol. 14, Part I · pages 391–395

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 373 Shri H. V. Kamath : I hope my friend will give us his interpretation when he has to speak. Shri Raja Bahadur: It means that a Shudra who is like a Dhol or is uncivil and a “ nari” (i.e. woman) who is like a pashu (beast) deserve admonition. It means that Dhol, (hollow) Shudra pasu, (beastly woman) deserve chastisement. Shri H. V. Kamath : But our law-giver Manu says : yatra naryastu pujyante ramante tatra devatah. It means that where women are respected, there the gods are happy. Leaving aside the various Smritis and the Shastras, what does our own— the greatest Shastra to the Hindu—says? At the time when the Gita was preached by Srikrishna to Arjuna, there were so many customs among the Hindus which were derogatory to certain sections of the people that Srikrishna categorically told Arjuna in one of the well known texts on the highest goal of any human being : Mr. Chairman : The honourable member can continue his speech on Monday. The Assembly then adjourned till a Quarter to Eleven of the Clock on Monday the 28th February, 1949.

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES374 *HINDU MARRIAGES VALIDITY BILL EXTENSION OF TIME FOR PRESENTATION OF R EPORT OF S ELECT C OMMITTEE Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava (East Punjab : General): I move: “That the time appointed for the presentation of the Report of the Select Committee on the Bill to provide that marriages between Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and their different castes and sub-castes are valid, be extended upto the 25th March, 1949.” The date given here on the order paper is 11th March, but with your permission I would like to amend it to 25th March as the honourable the Law Minister will be out of Delhi and he will not be able to devote much time to it. Therefore I move the motion with this amendment. I want to say that I am very anxious that this Bill may be put before this House this session and therefore I request the honourable the Law Minister and the authorities in charge of this Bill to kindly see that the Select Committee makes its Report by the 25th March. I also beg the House to supplement my request to the authorities so that, as the Bill is a very important one, it may be passed this session. Shri R. K. Sidhva (C. P. and Berar : General): The matter is entirely in the hands of the Select Committee. What has the House to do in this ? My honourable Friend should request the Select Committee to expedite the Report and I think they will be pleased to do it. Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava : I want an extension of the date. I want to urge that it is my anxiety that the Law Minister should see that the report is made in time and the House should support me in this. Mr. Chairman : The question is : “That the time appointed for the presentation of the Report of the Select Committee on the Bill to provide that marriages between Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and their different castes and sub-castes are valid, be extended upto the 25th March, 1949.” The motion was adopted. * HINDU CODE— contd. Mr. Chairman : The House will now proceed with the further consideration of the Hindu Code. †Shri H. V. Kamath (C. P. and Berar : General): Mr. Chairman, when this House adjourned on Friday afternoon the name of Shri Krishna was on my lips. I was saying that even so far as the highest goal of human existance is concerned man and woman have been placed on an absolute footing of equality by Shri Krishna in the Gita. The Gita to the Hindus is the sacred smriti, the supreme shastra, the * C.A. (Leg.) D., Vol. II, Part II, 28th February 1949, pp. 940-56 †Ibid, pp. 941-50.

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 375 quintessence of all philosophy and all religion. In that, very well-known verse, Shri Krishna says— “Streeyo vaishyastatha sudrastepi yanti paramgatim.” Women, Vaishyas and the Shudras who were apparently the down trodden and the suppressed classes or castes of that age, even they— Krishna says— are on a par, on a footing of equality, with Brahmana and the others. Shri L. Krishnaswami Bharati (Madras : General): You are right, Mr. Kamath. Shri H. V. Kamath : So far as moksha and the paragati are concerned, there is absolutely no bar to the attainment of the same by women. I am sorry that at the present day there are some men, and even certain swamis— so called religious or spiritual heads—who believe that man and woman should be placed on an unequal footing. I agree that they are not identical in all respects…………. Maulana Hasrat Mohani (U. P.: General): How are they equal ? Shri H. V. Kamath : But to say that they are unequal and to buttress that argument by fantastic reasons is to my mind shocking. The other day I had the good-luck—or the ill-luck—of listening to a swami saying that man and woman are unequal. And, pray, what were the reasons for that statement ? He said fantastic, the House will agree—he said that man grows a moustache and woman does not. I am not joking, Sir, many of my friends were present at the meeting which the swami addresed, and he said it in all earnestness, in all seriousness, that man grows a moustache, woman cannot grow a moustache, and the woman at most can bear three, four or five children in a year. An Honourable Member: In a year? Shri H. V. Kamath : Depending upon whether she produces triplets, quadruplets or quintuplets. Sir, he went on to say that man, however is potentially capable of being the father of a hundred or more children. This, Sir, to my mind is a fantastic argument. When we talk of equality of man and woman, we regard that on a spiritual basis which has been envisaged again by Shri Krishna in the Gita. He says: “Sarvabhutasthamatmanam sarvabhutani chatmani” That is the basis, that is the yardstick, that is the measuring rod for equality of human beings or between man and woman. “Yo mam pashyati sarvatra sarvam cha mayi pashyati.”

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES376 This is the test, this is the criterion, this is the standard, this is the yardstick for equality of human beings, whether high or low, rich or poor, man or woman. Well, Sir, I do not subscribe to that notion of inequality propounded by the Swami On the other hand, I also do not believe that woman— as some of them do today—attain equality with men by taking to smoking and drinking. That again. Sir, is something which is to be deprecated if by that they seek equality with man. Nor do I subscribe to the progressive conception of woman—progressive in the Western sense—who, perhaps in imitation of the West and so trying to be progrsssive, take to ball-room dancing and other Western habits. This, Sir, is also to my mind no way of securing equality with man. Shrimati Purnima Banerjee (U. P.: General): It is not included in the Hindu Code. Does she dance alone without a partner? Shri H. V. Kumuth : I know that but we are talking of the equality of man and woman. And here, Sir, our great savant and philosopher, Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan who is an authority on Hindu dharma and Hindu way of life, says : “The modern woman, if I may say so, is losing her self-re sped. She does not respect her own individuality and uniqueness, but is paying an unconscious tribute to man by trying to imitate him. She is fast becoming masculine and mechanical. Shri R. K. Sidhva (C. P. and Derar: General): What about the modern man ? Shri H. V. Kamath : I hope, Sir, our women will take this to heart and will not undertake such attempts at equality with man. Shreemati Annie Masearene (Travancore State): May I ask the question whether modern man is in any way better than that ? Shri H. V. Kamath : That is for women to answer. Well, Sir, when I therefore talk of equality between men and women I have before me the historical examples of Sita, Savitri, Damayanti, Gargi, Maitreyi and Ubhayabharati. Will you permit me to read from our own ancient hisiory about these women and the place these women occupied in our ancient Vedic times and even later, on which so many of our opponents to the Hindu Code depend today ? It is said that in the Vedic and Upanishadic age, women occupied a very high place in society. Among the exceptional women of Upanishadic times the name of Maitreyi stands out in bold relief. The lustre of her spiritual mind illumines the world even today. For sheer intelectual acumen two women stand out in singular brilliance. An All-India religious

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 377 conference took place—it has been the tradition in this country to have conferences of all sorts and religious conferences were not an exception— an all-India religious conference took place in the prehistoric age and another in the post-Buddhistic age. They had been summoned not for mere academic debate but for the establishment of principles that should govern the spiritual life of the nation. The former was championed by the sage Yagnavalkya, the same as our law-giver and the latter by the great Shankaraeharya. The first conference, Yagnavalkya’s conference, was convened by King Janaka, the great Janaka, the karma yogi, when the sages assembled from all quarters of India, from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari and I suppose from Kliyber to Chcrapunji, are silenced, Gargi boldly rises on behalf of the women, championing the cause of the humiliated. That, Sir, is the ideal towards which our women ought to be progressing and which they will, I hope, attain. Ere long, Gargi is defeated, but only after putting up a tough fight. In a second Conference, Sankara Acharya’s conference, the task of presiding over this momentous meeting falls upon Mandanamishra’s wife, Ubhayabharati. Now, it is very important—and I would like my women friends to mark this— that in the history of the world there is not a single instance of a woman being chosen as a judge of an important meeting and making such an exceptional demand on her intellectual ability as well as integrity. She gives—Ubhaya Bharathi— gives the verdict in favour of Shankaracharya. ( Honourable Members: Hear, hear,.) With the result that her husband becomes a monk and a disciplie of his opponent, whose view henceforward becomes acknowledged as the paramount creed of the country. “In fact”, the author says—I am reading from the” Cultural Heritage of India “published by the Ramakrishna Mission—”It is not the original authors”— mark these words ‘it is not the original authors’—“with the emancipated mind of creative thinkers but the mechanically minded commentators”— Tikakars, not the smritikars, but those who wrote tikas—”who worked for the suppression of the rights of women, whom they bluntly assumed to be in league with ignorance and illusion.” Now, Sir, many of our friends who are opposing this measure,— I do not mean in the House but those who are outside-they take their stand on Dharma. The other day I posed this question, “What is Dharma?”. One of the pamphlets issued by the Anti-Hindu Code Committee presumes to give us some advice, and what is that ? They