Vol. 14, Part I · pages 736–740

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES718 The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I have not said anything like that at all. I do not think my friend is entitled to use a conversation. Dr. Bakhshi Tek Chand : No conversation, but what you have said now on the floor of the House. The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : These are matters which I alone cannot decide. I have to take the consent of my colleagues. Mr. Deputy speaker : The Hon. Member may go on with the Bill as it is, saying that the Bill as it is does not provide for agricultural land. He need not refer to private conversations. Dr. Bakhshi Tek Chand : Take the Bill as it is. Whether the change will be made now or later with the consent of the Cabinet or other parties is a different matter. But what is the position now. Agricultural land is being excluded. Agricultural land forms more than 80 per cent of the property of Hindus in any part of the country. Therefore our sisters, daughters and other female relations are excluded under this Bill from succession to a very large portion of property. That is another reason for which it is necessary to reconsider the Bill and not to proceed with it in its present form. Whatever law you may have, you should apply it to all property—agricultural, urban, movable or immovable. Pandit Balkrishna Sharma (U. P. : General): If my Hon. friend will give away for a minute I would like to know, whether, if this law is applied to agricultural property also, it will not lead to veritable fragmentation of land. (Interruption.) Mr. Deputy Speaker : Let there be no interruptions. The closure may come in at any time and I am giving a warning to the House in advance. The less the interruptions the greater is the chance for a larger number of speakers to take part. Dr. Bakhshi Tek Chand : With regard to fragmentation I am not afraid of it. It is bound to come about if you have a larger number of heirs. If a man has five sons, there is bound to be fragmentation and if he has two daughters also there will be more fragmentation. I am not afraid of fragmentation whether with regard to immovable or urban property also. If you have one or two houses, two sons and five daughters and they decide to divide the property, there is bound to be fragmentation. Therefore, with great deference to both parties this argument is wholly extraneous and should be left out of consideration.

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 719 Under this Bill more than 80 per cent of the property is being excluded. That is one serious drawback from the point of view of reform. One of the objections raised is this. A man may have a house and a small bit of land. Some of the villagers have a kutcha shop also. There will be so many divisions and the son-in-law will be introduced into the family. Some supporters of the Bill say that it is a reasonable objection and therefore we must introduce a clause at the third reading by which the dwelling house of the family will be excluded from succession. That is to say, the daughter though she will be entitled to succession, will not get a share in the dwelling house. If that is so that will reduce the urban property still more. Out of the 30 crores of Hindus, except a few rich people, how many possess more than one dwelling house in which the whole family lives? Normally in the villages it is one house and a piece of land. If a trader he has a small kutcha shop also. If you exclude the dwelling house from the inheritance of the daughter, you take out another slice from the property. Another objection is that the sons-in-law will be introduced, and what might happen in most cases is that they will create trouble and since they could not manage the property in another village, they will arrange to sell it to some local person. That will lead to the disruption of the family. To meet that, suggestions are being made that the daughter will no doubt get a share but only its money value. You must then give to the brothers a right of pre-emption within one or two years of the marriage; the brothers will be entitled to pay to the sister or her husband the money value of the share and keep the property. That again, I submit, will lead to great trouble. It will be difficult to ascertain the market value of the property and this will lead to endless litigation and confer little on the daughter. Agricultural land is excluded, dwelling houses are excluded and various other things will come in. It may be said that the whole share is too much, give her a half or a quarter share, I ask why not give her a full share? If you analyse the Bill calmly and quietly and not take as smriti which has come down from the Heavens, it will be found that it does not give the minimum of benefit to the female heirs. This Bill will destroy the Hindu joint family. Whether, it is good or bad, people still cling to it. Yesterday our revered brother Mr. Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar pointed out that in the villages in Madras it is

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES720 still in force. My friend Mr. Santhanam may take another view. But it is there. Yet it is there and has a hold on some people, whatever might their proportion. All other principles of Hindu law such as survivorship, succession, the son having a share you are abolishing. What is the necessity? The necessity is to enable the daughter to get a share. I therefore submit that parts 5, 6 and 7 of the Bill introduce drastic changes in the Hindu family system and give the minimum benefit in its present from to the females. I would therefore ask the supporters of the Bill whether it is necessary to push the Bill to a final vote at this stage either tomorrow or in the next session. Is it not desirable to give the matter more consideration and to see whether there is any other way of securing full benefit to the female members of a joint Hindu family, whether they are governed by Mitakshara or Dayabhaga and at the same time causing the least disturbance to the systems that prevail in various parts of the country. I have made my submissions both to the orthodox and reformer friends. I have to make only one suggestion. I have not worked out the scheme in my mind, it will take a lot of time. But I shall place before the House the broad outlines of it. And I will ask Dr. Ambedkar, I will ask the other legal Members, I will ask the reforming Members, I will ask the orthodox Members to see whether that is not an alternative worth considering. In fact, up to this morning I was hesitating to speak on the subject and my view was to place it before the Committee which, it has been promised, will be meeting shortly and I had intended if I am a member of that Committee to place it there. But when I was called upon to speak to day I thought the best course was to place it before the House. My suggestion is this. What is our objective? Our objective is to give to the female members of our family full right in the property. What we should do therefore is this. Do not disturb the joint family. Do not overrule the law of survivorship. Let them continue as they are as long as they can. But a woman, as soon as she is married, should in the Mitakshara family become a full co-parcener in that property. At present she is a member of a joint family but not a member of the co-parcenary. I will ask hon. Members to permit me for three minutes just to place my proposal before them and then to consider it. Any interruption on that point will not help. It is only a proposal for your consideration, for the consideration of the Committee and for the

DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 721 consideration of the Law Minister and the Prime Minister and others who may be interested in this matter. At present every woman after her marriage passes into the gotra of the husband, and she becomes a member of the joint family but with very limited rights. Up till 1937, her rights as given by the British Indian courts were those of maintenance only. She had no legal right in the property, she could only stay and enjoy it. That was the position. In 1937 came the Deshmukh Act that on the husband’s death she will be entitled to a share of the property—the same share as the husband—and also entitled to have her share separated if she could not pull on with the brothers-in-law or other members of the family. What I am suggesting is this. Add to that, only one thing namely that she will become a full co-parcener. Just as in the Mitakshara family, the moment a son is born he acquires the right in the father’s ancestral property and from the moment of this birth becomes a co-sharer or co-parcener, similarly let a woman from the moment of her marriage become a co-parcener, with full rights. There may be her own sons and others. They will all continue to live together without any necessity to separate, But if she thinks that it is not possible to live together with them she can separate her share and take it way—separate it in the same manner as she can do under the 1937 Act after the death of her husband. That is one change. If you do that you will not disturb the father’s property and you will not disturb the joint family. Let the joint family continue as long as it can. Somebody said it was crumbling. Somebody said it was Cruimbling only for the purpose of Income-tax. Others asked as to how many people pay Income-tax and said that 99.5 per cent. of the Hindu population does not pay Income-tax still they have the joint family system. These arguments mean nothing. If these are the circumstances under which the joint family is crumbling, let it crumble. But let it continue for as long as it can. What I am suggesting is not something new or something which is against the spirit of Hindu Law. If I may say so, it is in accordance with the spirit of the original law—the law of the Veda, the law as given in the early Shastra by Jaimini and others. I do not want to prolong my speech. But I would like to state what the position was in Vedic times and in times which shortly followed. You please read certain portions in Dwarkanath Mitter’s book published in 1913 on “the position of women in Hindu Law”. You also please read

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES722 in Volume XI of the Allahabad Law Journal a very learned article by the late Dr. Satish Chandra Banerjee of Allahabad, one of the most promising and most eminent lawyers that this country had produced but whose career was unfortunately cut short by his death at a very early age. It is a very elaborate article. Also the book of Dr. K. Biswas of Patna. All these contain quotations from the Vedas and other persons who came in before Manu as to what the position of women at that time was. The position of the women at that time was that, she was a full owner of the property of the husband. Maharishi Jaimni says, commenting on the Vedic texts, that “the wife is entitled to the wealth from the moment of her marriage and whatever is acquired by the husband also belongs to her.” That is to say she becomes a full co-parcener. Then, dealing with another text, he says “Not only is the woman possessed of the same religious and civil rights as man but all wealth which he (that is the husband) acquires is at her disposal. She is entitled to control even the disposition of acquired property by the husband”—his own acquired property. That is the conception of a co-parcener which we had. Just as a son from the moment of his birth gets a share and can control the father’s alienations, unless they are for family necessities or for just purposes, similarly should the woman have the right from the time of her marriage. My submission is, let us go back to these old Vedic texts and all our Hindu law and its glory before the period of degradation began and the rights of women came to be curtailed, and let us make her a co-parcener. That is one branch of my suggestion. The other branch of my suggestion is the one which Sir Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar made yesterday that a woman should have full right to alienate her property and this fiction of a Hindu widow’s status must be done away with. With regard to that I would ask the indulgence of the House for two minutes. All my friends who are opposing the Bill say “we want to go to the Shastra ”. We don’t want to go beyond the Shastras, particularly the Mitakshara which was followed by the country. With the exception of Bengal the whole country has followed it. What was the law of Mitakshara on this point ? I would ask you to look to Vijnaneshwar, Chapter II, Section 11 verses 2 and 4 of his commentary on Yagnavalkya as to what is a woman’s stridhan. After quoting certain things, that is whatever is given by way of presents to the woman at the time of marriage—which is not important—he says: “And in addition to that, the stridhan consists