Vol. 14, Part I · pages 426–430

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES408 law got gradually crystallised. They did not dare to touch the personal law of the people of the country. Babu Ramnarayan Singh: They brought in limited estate for women. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : I am coming to that straightaway. If I forget to reply to that point, kindly remind me. Hindu Law is such a vast subject that I can talk for hours on it, if the Chair permits me to do so. I assure you, Sir, I am not going to do that. I protest in the first place against the manner in which this Bill has been sought to be smuggled into this House and through this House. It is an extraordinary procedure, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Shrimati Renuka Ray : I object, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to this insult to the House. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : It is not a point of order, Shrimati Renuka Ray : This is a point of order, Sir. I object to the remarks made against the house. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: ‘Smuggling” I have never understood to be an unparliamentary word. If the honourable member thinks that there is any stigma attaching to it. I would use another word in substitution thereof. I would say that the haste with this Bill sought to be passed in the House is extraordinary. Is that also an unparliamentary word ? If so, give a parliamentary expression for that. You cannot find a substitute for it. ( An Honourable Member: ‘Commendable speed'). It is a most extraordinary procedure that has been adopted in this House. I have some little experience of parliamentary activity in this House. I have never known an occasion when a Bill of this importance and magnitude has been sought to be passed in the way it is done now. Shri Brajeshwar Prasad (Bihar : General): It will never be passed. (Interruption ). Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: I like interruptions but I could not catch what he said. If the honourable-members think that by constantly interrupting me in this way the effectiveness of my speech will be marred they are mistaken. The Bill was introduced on the last day of the last Budget session. Babu Ramnarayan Singh : Last hour. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : You know very well how a Bill of this importance and magnitude, a Bill which seeks to regulate the life and conduct of Hindu society was introduced on the last day of

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 409 the last session ; how at the end of the day’s work we sat beyond 5 o’clock for two hours and the honourable the Minister for Law was allowed to make a speech committing it to a Select Committee, only three or four speakers, under a rigid time limit were allowed to speak and at 7 O’clock after a short session the motion was carried. Thereafter what happened ? It went to the Select Committee. The Select Committee reported on it and on the motion for consideration of that report points of order were raised in this House. I am not going to enter into the merits of those vital points of order. They were disposed of. So great was the impatience that in the last session the honourable the Law Minister wanted to simply say that the Bill be taken into consideration and there was no speech. It was somehow got into the agenda. Very well it was done. Points of order were ruled out and it was found that it was within the competence of the House to go on with the measure as reported by the Select Committee. Now look at the way in which it is being dealt with now. In the short indulge between the Railway Budget and the General Budget this is sought to be pushed through. There is no seriousness about it. Nobody feels its importance. The country at large is bewildered by the way in which we are dealing with a piece of legislation of this far reaching importance. If you attach real importance to it, if you really mean business, if you want that something should be done by way of revising the Hindu law as it is today, this is certainly not the way to do it. Keep the Bill for a special session. For small Banking Bills and the like you are devoting days and days. That being the case, do you mean to say that a Bill which seeks to regulate the life and conduct of the Hindu community should be dealt with in the haphazard way in which it is sought to be done ? I enter my emphatic protest against the way in which this important legislation is being considered. You know how at 3 o’clock yesterday there was the Supplementary Demand for Railways and later in the day the General Budget came in. I wish to submit, Mr. Deputy Speaker that I have not been accustomed to this kind of procedure with regard to Bills of this nature. I ask the old Members of the Legislature to recall a single precedent for this. Babu Ramnarayan Singh : There is none. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : Sir, the question is, is there any real necessity for codification. I see absolutely none, because, as my learned friend Shrimati Dorgabai said, the Hindu law is well settled and it has held the field for about hundred years. The ancient Hindu

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES410 law, when the britishers came here, was interpreted with the help of Indian Pandits. They used to call them Judge Pandits who ransacked all the Smrities and Dharma Shastras and interpreted the law. This process continued till they succeeded in evolving from the rest mass of Smrities and Nibhandhanas and usages, a system of judicial principles constituting the Hindu Law which now hold the field. Sir, it is well known that the Hindu Law has the oldest pedigree of all the known systems of jurisprudence in the world. Dr. Mono Mohan Das (West Bengal: General): It is unjust. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : Yes, the Hindu law is unjust ! Hindu society is unjust! Hindus are unjust! It is not possible for anybody to reply to an interruption that the Hindu law is unjust. It took only three words to compose that interruption. I do not know if I have the capacity to reply to a sweeping charge like that made in three words ‘It is unjust’, Whether a system is good or bad, it is for the society to judge ; it is not for disappointed or disgrauntled persons to judge. But I may say that the one surest proof of its soundness is that it has been able to stand the test of centuries. No system which is intrinsically bad, unsound or unjust can endure for a long time. Hindu law and the Hindu social system governed by it have been able to withstand the shocks and revolutions which have swept over the country during the ages past. Historic cataclysms have swept off the feet of ancient civilisation of countries like Greece, Rome, Assyria, Babylonia—which have all crumbled down—whereas Hindu culture or community, which cannot date its origin, still continues to function with all the vigor and vitality, and I am sure, Providence will allow it to function, till we set about to undermine its very foundations, by legislating in these reckless and lighthearted ways. If there was anything essentially weak in the foundations of Hinduism it would not have been able to survive the upheavals that overwhelmed it throughout its long and chequered history. This country has been subjected to foreign rule for over a thousand years. History will tell you how she has shown her wonderful adaptability, reflection will reveal to you that the Hindu law has had in it the germs of flexibility and adaptability which have enabled it to adjust itself at all times to the changing needs and to meet the challenges of the times. Shrimati G. Durgabai: Hear, hear. Shrimati Renuka Ray: There is a change now. (Interruption ). Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: I am glad that I get a spate of interruption, which gives me breathing time. Please do that singly. Mr. Deputy

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 411 Speaker, I am not so big a fool as to hope that many will be convinced by what I say, but I do hope that someone of us at least, may give some little thought to what 1 say. I earnestly plead that Hinduism, the Hindu Law; the Hindu culture have got immemorial traditions, agelongmoorings, which it would not perhaps be wise for us to sweep away by one stroke of the pen. I make this appeal to my friends to the right and to the left. Sir, I am apprehensive tills is just what the present Hindu Code Bill is going to do for us. I do not find anything Hindu about it. It can be more properly called an ‘un-Hindu’ or ‘Anti-Hindu’ Code. Mr. Nazruddin Ahmad (West Bengal: Muslim): Muslim Code. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: Whatever else it may be, it is not a Hindu Code. It does not breathe the spirit of Hinduism : it reeks of un-Hindu ideas : a spirit of supreme contempt for anything Hindu permutes the whole Bill from the beginning to end. Shri H. V. Kamath : What is the Hindu spirit ? Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : Sir, do you call that Hinduism ? You please think over your system of marriage and inheritance which form the cornerstones of Hindu system or Hindu society ; are you going to undermine it in the way in which you are going to do ? That is the question that you will have to answer not only to us here but to our countrymen outside and to the posterity. Sir, I do feel that if we codify the law in the way it is sought to be done, as a simple intellectual pastime, codification for the sake of codification, I will plead with my honourable friends that it is unwise to do that. It is not necessary. No need for it has been felt by anybody. Look at the opinions of the judges of the different High Courts and the District Courts. They are the people who have to administer the Hindu law. Has the Government got a vast volume of opinion embodying the demands from the judiciary that Hindu law require codification and that also in the way in which it is sought to be done ? No. Has there been such a general demand from the people who have to guide themselves, guide their lives and conduct by the provisions of this law ? Have they demanded it ? Has there been that kind of demand ? My honourable friend to the right says : No. It is perfectly correct. Shri L. Krishnaswami Bharathi: He supports you. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: My honourable friend says : he supports me. He supports truth. The country will be taken by surprise

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES412 at what we are doing. Let us not lay the flattering unction to our souls that we are doing a wise thing. I know I cannot deceive myself in the way in which you are doing. Even if it were wise, I would not have thought it necessary to attempt that codification, because of the reasons I have given. You cannot give any uniformity to it whatsoever; and if Hinduism is anything, it is because of its fundamental unity in the midst of diversity. That constitutes the essence of Hinduism. Hindu law and Hindu culture. In a vast country like this you cannot expect a uniformity standardized sort of life ignoring the natural variety. If you did it, it is no wonder that you would come to grief. You may not realize it just now, but realization would come when the time comes. After all even after this codification, is it going to serve your end ? I say : no. The honourable member from Mysore yesterday made a speech. He said, now the work has been made so simple that by buying a publication worth four annas or six annas you could know exactly what the Hindu law stood for. So many friends shout ‘quite right’ ‘quite right’, but do these enthusiasts realize that even the sponsor of the Bill does not pretend that he is going to codify the whole law of the Hindus ? In the preamble he makes a modest claim, not that kind of preposterous claim ; He says : “Whereas it is expedient to amend and codify certain branches of the Hindu law now in force in the Province of India.” Therefore what is proposed to be done is to codify certain branches, such as the law of marriage, law of inheritance and law of adoption. Broadly speaking these are the main things. Shri L. Krishnaswami Bharathi: What is left. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : My honourable friend asks what is left in the Hindu Law. Does my honourable friend think that this is all that the Hindu Law stands for ? These three branches cover the entire field of Hindu life and activity in this country? I can only sympathise with his ignorance. What about joint family property, partition, joint family business, religious and charitable trusts, gifts, transfer inter vivos, and other things ? They constitute a much vaster field which is left uncovered. Shri L. Krishnaswami Bharathi: Wills is also referred to. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : A mere reference to Wills does not mean that it has received a full and comprehensive treatment. In any case, I am grateful to Dr. Ambedkar. He is modest; he never claims to have brought forward an exhaustive Code. If my honourable friends