314 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
IX. 17. (When creating them) Manu allotted to women (a love of their) bed, (of their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct.
The laws of Manu against women are of a piece with this view. Women are not to be free under any circumstances. In the opinion of Manu :—
IX. 2. Day and night women must be kept in dependence by the males (of) their (families), and, if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control.
IX. 3. Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never fit for independence.
IX. 5. Women must particularly be gurded against evil inclinations, however trifling (they may appear); for, if they are not guarded, they will bring sorrow on two families.
IX. 6. Considering that the highest duty of all castes, even weak husbands (must) strive to guard their wives.
V. 147. By a girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house.
V. 148. In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.
V. 149. She must not seek to separate herself from her father, husband, or sons; by leaving them she would make both (her own and her husband’s) families contemptible. Woman is not to have a right to divorce.
IX. 45. The husband is declared to be one with the wife, which means that there could be no separation once a woman is married. Many Hindus stop here as though this is the whole story regarding Manu’s law of divorce and keep on idolizing it by comforting their conscience by holding out the view that Manu regarded marriage as sacrament and therefore did not allow divorce. This of course is far from the truth. His law against divorce had a very different motive. It was not to tie up a man to a woman but it was to tie up the woman to a man and to leave the man free. For Manu does not prevent a man for giving up his wife. Indeed he not only allows him to abandon his wife but he also permits him to sell her. But what he does is to prevent the wife from becoming free. See what Manu Says :
IX. 46. Neither by sale nor by repudiation is a wife released from her husband.