Vol. 14, Part I · pages 436–440

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES418 I come from a province which is not in the South. It is a backward province, educationally, culturally—call whatever you like that benighted backward province of Bengal. I know of the domestic conditions of the families inhabiting there. Go to any Hindu household in Bengal you will find that besides the sons, daughters, and other natural heirs, all manner of relations, sisters’ sons, nephews, nieces, maternal uncles’ sons, uncles’ daughters, all knit together and maintained in the joint family system. They are all regulated and restrained by moral and religious influences. You will find it in almost every household. The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (Minister of Law) : What is the difficulty ? Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: I shall tell you where the difficulty is. There is no difficulty for those who have no family of their own. The difficulty happens in this way. For dividing trouble here I shall illustrate with reference to myself. If in my family my sons, daughters, father’s sisters’ daughters and sons, mother’s daughter’s sons and daughters etc. sister’s daughters were to live together and if one of my sons contracts intimacy with his first cousin even when he is a minor or an adolescent, knowing human nature being what it is, do you eliminate the possibility of this attachment growing up and culminating in marriage ? If you do, you are poor students of history, poor students of sociology and poor students of psychology. After all, the call of human flesh is there and no legislation, however omnipotent can root out this natural and powerful impulse in mankind. If you sanction matrimonial unions between blood relations—between closest relations in the household, I shudder to think what would happen to society ? The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Nothing. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : Nothing of course, if you do not care for society ; nothing, of course, if you believe in a kind of society only where there are only social butterflies sucking honey here and there and making merry ; but I am for a society which has attained or will attain for India the position which is her own, the position for which she is respected all the world over. If you throw away all these things, if you put up a sort of Vademecum, a Hindu Code, where you find all sorts of marriages, between first cousins and blood-relations sanctioned, if you legalise all these incestuous marriages the society will be a sink of moral degradation.

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 419 Shri L. Krishnaswami Bharathi: We protest the use of the word ‘incestuous’. It is very wrong to condemn outright a system which is prevailing in large parts of the country. It is a reflection on a whole province. Mr. Chairman : Order, order. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : Therefore, I cannot but raise my voice of protest against such a system, because I believe that marriage between first cousins is not conducive to the well being of society from the biological and engenic points of view and is opposed to the notions of Hindu Law. L. Krishnaswami Bharathi: No, no. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: Thus, not only from the point of view of society, but also for the peace and purity of family life, I want that this should be condemned. It is immoral and outrageous. . Sir, my honourable sister, Durgabai, said quite rightly, that monogamy should not be opposed. I do not know of any honourable Member in this House who really does not want monogamy. Monogamy everyone of us want, not for our mere likes ; circumstances have forced us to accept this monogamous marriage. It is a fact. Polygamy has passed away completely from the upper classes of this country not by legislation. That is my main contention. If you want to eradicate a social evil you should work up from within, not from above. If my honourable friends look to the history of this country, they will find my position amply proved. We all know the miseries and sufferings of Hindu widows. There are so many cases of child and young widows which break our hearts or at any rate it ought to break our hearts. In fact, in the past generation, the late Pandit Vidyasagar of hallowed memory was so much moved by it that he got passed the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act. But the country was not prepared for it and what was the result ? The Act virtually became a dead letter and has remained so till now. That is bound to be the fate of all social legislation which have not originated from a demand from within the society. I was telling the house that polygamy has virtually disappeared from the country for a variety of reasons such as a growing sense of responsibility in conjugal life, Growing consciousness among womanhood and above all the interplay of all manner of forces, most important of which is economic, which makes it impossible to indulge in the luxury of having many wives at the same time. Therefore, I

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES420 say, there is no necessity for any legislation for it. It has automatically died out: the custom has fallen into disuse. It may be argued that there are some strata of society where it prevails. There also I want to sound a note of warning. You cannot stop it by force or compulsion. You have got to create public opinion and when these unfortunate breathren of ours come to realise the evils of this system they will discard it. If, on the other hand, without bringing up their standard, without creating a consciousness in them by education and public opinion you try to thrust your legislation down their throats, I would request you to realise the effect that it will have on them. Just as my honourable sister was telling us they will say : This is our society ; it is such a cast-iron mould and they would not allow us to have another wife. We will go to another form of society, embrace another religion where this is permissible. Any sociologist, any man interested in social reform will have to pay heed to that as well. The fear is not altogether an unfounded one. Anyway I feel that if you codified the Hindu law, all that should have been done was to prescribe the essentials of marriage, the requirements on the part of the contracting parties, their ages, their mental and physical capacity, prohibited degrees of relationship and things like that. Those who believe in social ceremonies and functions, may go through the form of ceremonial marriage but the essentials of marriage should not be allowed to vary between civil marriage and sacramental marriage. If there is a demand in the country for inter-caste marriages I will not stand in its way. If people want to marry outside their castes, let them by all means invoke the provisions of the Civil Marriage Act of 1874. There is nothing at present to stand in the way of people who are anxious to marry outside their castes. If there are bona fide attachments among intercaste boys and girls, it is not that we want to stop or prevent them. They have got the facilities open to them even under the existing law, the law to which I referred earlier. You can change that law. You can repeal or modify certain provisions so that people marrying under that Act will have their children governed not by the Indian Succession Act as at present but by the Hindu Law. I have no objection to that but I fail to understand why in a Hindu Code side by side with the sacramental marriage you are allowing civil marriage. This must be completely taken out of the Code which should have nothing to do with it. There may be a separate civil marriage law for all. Sir, I personally feel that if you insist on having the question of divorce in it, then you will have to face the music of it everywhere

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 421 in the country and unless as public men you have your ears stuffed with cotton, as most public men among us have, you will have to pay very very dearly for it. In any case, as a Hindu, I emphatically protest against the introduction of this heterodox concept of divorce into the scheme of Hindu marriage. Now let us come to the question of inheritance. There has also been an innovation in this regard though I do not want to go into very great details. But there also I would like to tell my honourable sister, Shrimati Durgabai, that we are firm believers in the judgement of the Hindu lawgivers of old : we are firm believers in the equality of the sexes, though not in the sense in which she talks or her friends talk. Equality must be in the sense of equality of opportunity. You cannot make physically man and woman the same. Equality must therefore have some other meaning. There is no feeling of inferiority attached to women, there is no discrimination with regard to the education of daughters or their marriage. Our shastras have provided : “Kanyapyevam Palaniya, Shikshaniyatigatant Deya Boraya Vidusha, Dhana Ratna Samanvita.” It means that the daughter also should be educated in the same way as boys, and in the fullness of time, given over in marriage to a proper groom with dowry including rich jewellery. And in my society, in the Hindu society it is enjoined : “Yatra naryastu Pujyante, Ramante Tatra Devata. ” It means that Gods bless the households where women are honoured. Women folk has been accorded such a high and exalted place in Hindu society. I do not deny that there may be hard cases: there are hard cases, where women are not treated in the way they ought to be. But if you have fallen off the ideal of your sages, your saints, your lawgivers or your leaders, they are not to blame for they have not let you down. The blame attaches to us. If you cannot approximate to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi in your conduct but preach them in season and out of season or take his name in everything but not follow in his footsteps, the fault is not Mahatmaji’s, the fault is ours. Similarly you cannot impugn your Hindu Shastras or law-givers. They have set the standards quite high and it is for you to act up to them. Notwithstanding our best efforts it is not possible to eliminate every case of injustice or hardship. Human institutions are imperfect. No human ingenuity can devise any procedure, any machinery or any agency by which all possibilities of social injustice can be completely eliminated. Let us be frank about that and let us try to realise that.

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES422 My honourable friend said in connection with the management of property that she knows of women who are better managers of property ... , The Honourable Shri N. V. Gadgil (Minister of Works, Mines and Power): Of men also ! Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : Exactly, of men also. I do not think there is any single married man in this House who will dispute that proposition. In the household she is the ruler: she is all in all. The tallest of us. The Law Minister or his honourable colleague will have to crouch before her however much he may thunder here. There you are ruled not by the rod, but by a strange sort of a whip, a soft, sweet silken cord made up of filaments of love which takes off all harshness and roughness, and menfolk have cheerfully submitted to her rule. She is the queen of the household. Many married people, I think most married people, would frankly admit that. Shri L. Krishnaswami Bharathi: That is how we have cheated them. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: We are now going to cheat them by this Code. Do you think the greatest justice will be done to them if you simply give them right to property. Mr. Chairman, according to the Hindu notions, a girl has a distinct position, a role entirely different from that of a son. Any honourable member who has read Sanskrit literature or has any knowledge of it—I cannot make any presumption either way, whether most people know it or no one knows it . . . An Honourable Member: The Law Member knows it. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : He may know it, he is a scholar. Well, in Sakuntala of our immortal poet, after the marriage of Sakuntala and her departure to her husband’s place, there occurs a Sloka which is classical and which gives you in a nutshell how the Hindu lawgivers and the Hindu society look upon their girlhood. Immediately after Sakuntala left the hermitage for her husband’s place, sage Kanwa said, “Today I feel relieved” : “Artho Hi Kanya Parakiya Eva Tarn Adya Sampreshya Pratigrahita. Jati mamayang Bishadah Prakamam Pratyarpit Nyasa Ivantaratma." “This my heart, my inner self today has been relieved of a heavy burden and I get that inner pleasure of relief.” What was that burden ? A daughter in the family is like a trust deposit of somebody else’s