Vol. 14, Part II · pages 366–370

1146 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Mr. Chairman : The hon. Member need not jump to any conclusion, that because a lady is in the Chair, therefore, she may not be fair to the House. I would like to respect the religious susceptibilities of the House as much as anybody else. The Deputy Speaker has told the House that half an hour would be taken for the amendments. It is true that the Hon. Minister will be called upon to reply at 11-30. There is also another traditional procedure, namely the closure motion. In view of these two facts I would like the debate to be concluded by 11-30 and not later. Shri V. J. Gupta (Madras) : What about the closure motion ? Mr. Chairman : Now that the House has agreed that the Hon. Law Minister is to be called upon to reply to the debate at 11-30, there is no necessity for the motion. Agreement is always better than closure and its acceptance. *Khwaja Inait Ullah (Bihar) : ( English translation of the Urdu speech) After deliberating long, I had decided not to say anything about this Bill. I stick to this very decision of not speaking on the matter even today, whether or not Hindu Code Bill be passed. Well, it is a different thing altogether... An Hon. Member : Do speak. Khwaja Inait Ullah : I should say, but I do not want to. It is a different thing that our brethren also should treat their sisters and daughters in the same way as I personally do. But, as the name ‘Hindu Code Bill’ is attached to this Bill and it is said that this legislation is being formulated particularly for those following the Hindu religion, I feel that from the viewpoint of Religion, it is not proper for me as a Muslim to interfere in the social law of Hindus wherein they want to make, or are making changes. An Hon. Member : It should be done as a human being. Khwaja Inait Ullah : Yes, I am doing it as a human being, but while being a human being, I am an Indian and a Muslim also. It is, therefore, that I want to give out my impressions just in accordance with my own religion. All the amendments at hand now have compelled me to express my views, There is an amendment that all those, viz., Muslims, Christians and others, who have been exempted from the operation of this law, be also included. * P.D., Vol. XV, Part II, 20th September 1951, pp. 2926-29.

1147 DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL Shri J.R. Kapoor (Uttar Pradesh) : Only if they so desire. Khwaja Inait Ullah : If they so desire, and also those who do not. Amendment No. 90 runs : “This Code applies to all Indians irrespective of their religion, caste or creed.” Likewise, it is also in 91, 92 and 93. Some members—my hon. friend Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, especially while moving this amendment said at the very outset that “secularism” was spreading like a disease in India. I regret to say that my friend, who is so very capable, thinks secularism, which is not a disease but a cure, to be a disease and wants that all the laws under it be made uniform, i.e., the laws that are made for Hindus be also made applicable to the Muslims. This is quite correct if it (the law) is a law of economy, a political law, influencing somebody’s character or the social life of India ; it should then definitely be one ; but secularism never means that such laws and personal laws be formulated as may be same for a Hindu and a Muslim. It means that the same will be said about Hindus as about Muslims, though it is not necessary so for a personal law as we have several laws which ‘differ from those of Hindus. Just yesterday a Sikh colleague of mine, said that their laws also differed from those of Hindus. I do not intend discussing that aspect of the matter, but I only submit about its application to Muslims. Our Hon. Minister Gadgil said in his speech yesterday that he wanted to change the social law of the Hindus, and for changing this he advanced the argument, which I think he did successfully, that since this law has been seeing changes’, we are also entitled to change it. But he said furthermore that they would try in this way so that in the days to come the Muslims may be included. To him I would ‘like to submit humbly that they can change that law only because of the fact that the Hindu Law, as he proved, has been seeing changes. But here I want to tell him that Muslim law has neither been changed for the last 1350 years, nor shall it be changed in the days to come, since Muslims believe that their laws for marriage and division of property are not made by them but made by God and as they appear in the Holy Quran so nobody on the surface of this earth has the right to change them. Sardar B. S. Man (Punjab) : Do the Muslims of the Punjab abide by the law of Shariat or the law of Custom, which is entirely different from Shariat ? Khwaja Inait Ullah : If somebody says that the Muslims of the Punjab drink, does it mean that all Muslims will be allowed to take

1148 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES wine ? If any Musalman does something bad, does it mean that all others will be allowed to do the same ? If any Muslim does not abide by the law of Islam, I am not prepared to make him do so, forcibly. He is at liberty ; he may go against his conscience, against his religion and against his society. But so long as his actions are not harmful to society, neither myself nor any Government can interfere in it. Sardar B. S. Man : According to Islamic law a thief should be buried alive, or his hands should be cut off. Is this law observed in any Islamic country ? Khwaja Inait Ullah : My friend Mr. Man has raised a reasonable question. If he sees me outside, I shall explain to him in a convincing way. Here I do not want to take any more time of the House. In Islam there is a permission for some laws, as to what extent they can be brought in line with the laws of the country. I can say to what extent Islam has allowed its laws to be brought in line with the laws of the country, and also the limit which should not be transgressed. I would like to submit to him that, if a thief in an Islamic country is not punished according to the Islamic law, there is a permission that we can change it; but some laws are such that we cannot change. I would, therefore, like to submit to these friends... Most of my time was taken by my friends in their interruptions. I should also get that amount of time. Mr. Chairman : That will not be made good. Khwaja Inait Ullah : I was submitting that it is not a right course for this House to make for Muslims as well the law which to any extent goes against their religious commandments. This Bill can be passed with majority, but I do want to submit humbly that nobody perforce can be asked to follow a certain law. Majority should not compel us. I want that Muslims should not be compelled to agree to this law. Nobody will refuse to agree to the other laws of the majority. Some of my friends said that all those who reside in India are Hindus. I take pride in calling myself a Hindu. I, too, say that all the inhabitants of India are Hindus. I am positively a political Hindu. Not from today but for the last twenty to twenty-five years I have been calling myself a political Hindu. Here I also want to say that apart from being a Hindu politically, I am and shall continue to be a Muslim by religion. An Hon. Member : What are you racially ? Khwaja Inait Ullah : I am Hindu. My forefathers were Brahmins and Brahmin blood is flowing in my veins—that pure blood which has not been mixed up so far.

1149 DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL Well, the sum and substance of my speech is that no such law as is against the Commandments of our religion and of God, be thrust on us, but as an Indian I shall have no objections to agree to any social or economic legislations. *Kumari Padmaja Naidu (Hyderabad) : I welcome this opportunity of expressing my unqualified support for the Bill. I would like at the very outset to congratulate the Government on its courage in bringing forward this measure in spite of the widespread and fierce hostility towards it that has been so sedulously instigated by the forces of reaction that still, alas ! today dominate certain sections of this country. The author of this Bill does not stand in need of any words of praise from me. For, with this measure, whether this House chooses to accept or reject it, Dr. Ambedkar takes his place in the long line of social legislators who throughout the ages have laboured diligently, always in the face of opposition, often in the face of persecution, to eradicate social injustice and to enhance the sum total of human happiness. For many years men and women throughout the length and breadth of this vast country have eagerly awaited the enactment of this Bill. They have watched with increasing alarm its decline from its original forcefulness because it was considered expedient for compromise after compromise to be made in order to win the maximum support for it. But even in its present and mutilated form this Bill is only comprehensive measure that has ever been shaped for the liberation of Hindu women from the age-old bondage of the unequal laws to which they are still subject. I do not ignore, neither do I make the mistake of over-estimating, the volume of protest from the poor deluded women whose ignorance and superstition has been exploited with subtle insidiousness by the vested interests of bigotry determined to defend their last bastions to the bitter end. What a tragic spectacle it is that we witness in India today of Hindu women allowing themselves to be hypnotised into denouncing the very measure that has been so carefully devised to secure for them the equality of laws to which they are entitled under the Constitution. But today it is neither as a woman nor as a Hindu that I plead for support to this Bill. I speak as an Indian, passionately jealous of the honour of India which is pledged not only to this measure but to every other form of social legislation necessary to redress grievous wrongs and to alleviate human *P.D. Vol. XV, Part II, 20th September 1951, pp. 2929-33.

1150 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES suffering arising out of unjust laws. So long as any section of the people of this country continue to be debarred, on the grounds of sex or caste or creed, from the full enjoyment of equal rights, so long will our Constitution continue to be a hollow mockery. And what of the freedom for which a long and gallant fight was waged, a fight that was shared by thousands of sensitive Hindu women who, for the first time in their lives, left the precious sanctuary of their sheltering homes. They came to the battlefield and stood besides their brothers and faced jail and lathi charges and often enough, humiliation, worse than death. If today those thousands of Hindu women who fought for the independence of India are to be denied their just rights, then our hard-earned freedom is no more than a handful of dust. I have studied with some care the numerous speeches and statements that have been made by various Hon. Members of this House, far better qualified than I can ever aspire to be, to judge the technical legal implications of this Bill. I must confess that I have been a little surprised to find that with all their forensic skill and expert dialectic they have not been able to forge many weapons with which to bludgeon this Bill and none of them with sufficient validity of sanction to be lethal. We have all grown a little tired of having it proclaimed in every language, in every conceivable permutation and combination of phraseology of bearing it shouted day after day from the house stops and the market place and highways and bylanes that this Bill threatens to destroy the very stuff and texture of the fabric of Hindu society. In a statement that unfortunately received nationwide publicity in America, a very distinguished hon. Member of this House has declared that this Bill is an attack on an ancient and gentle religion that has survived for five thousnad years. He announced that because now the very structure of Hindu society was threatened, he intended “to fight and fight and fight against it”. It passes my comprehension that anybody who is proud of calling himself a Hindu can talk or even think in such terms without realsing that he is dishonouring the very religion that he claims to defend, as though any of the great religions of the world that have survived through centuries of human history could be endangered by social legislation or by any speeches or writings or other form of human endeavour. If there is any religion in the world that can be imperilled by these trivial things, then it deserves to be allowed to perish.