z:\ ambedkar\vol 08\vol8 04.indd MK SJ+DK 1 10 2013/YS 13 11 2013 242
242 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
....... In addition to this Act, as regards other communities we can have an idea of the effect of conversion on marriage tie from the Native Converts’ Marriage Dissolution Act, Act XXI of 1886 ........It applies to all the communities of India, and this legislation recognises the fact that mere conversion of an Indian to Christianity would not dissolve the marriage but he will have the right of going to a law court and saying that the other party, who is not converted, must perform the marital duties in respect of him......then they are given a year’s time and the judge directs that they shall have an interview with each other in the presence of certain other persons to induce them to resume their conjugal relationship, and if they do not agree, then on the ground of desecrtion the marriage is dissolved. The marriage is dissolved no doubt, but not on the ground of change of faith......So, every community in India has got this accepted principle that conversion to another religion cannot amount to a dissolution of marriage.”
Syed Gulam Bikh Nairang, another Muslim member of the Assembly and a protagonist of the Bill, was brutally frank. In support of the principle of the Bill he said* :—
“ For a very long time the courts in British India have held without reservation and qualification that under all circumstances apostasy automatically and immediately puts an end to the married state without any judicial proceedings, any decree of court, or any other ceremony. That has been the position which was taken up by the Courts. Now, there are three distinct views of Hanafi jurists on the point One view which is attributed to the Bokhara jurists was adopted and even that not in its entirety but in what I may call a mutilated and maimed condition. What that Bokhara view is has been already stated by Mr. Kazmi and some other speakers. The Bokhara jurists say that marriage is dissolved by apostasy. In fact, I should be more accurate in saying—I have got authority for that—that it is, according to the Bokhara view, not dissolved but suspended. The marriage is suspended but the wife is then kept in custody or confinement till she repents and embraces Islam again, and then she is induced to marry the husband, whose marriage was only suspended and not put an end to or cancelled. The second view is that on apostasy a married Muslim woman ceases to be the wife of her husband but becomes his bond woman. One view, which is a sort of corollary to this view, is that she is not necessarily the bond woman of her ex-husband but she becomes the bond woman of the entire Muslim community and anybody can employ her as a bond woman. The third view, that of the Ulema of Samarkand and Balkh, is that the marriage tie is not affected by such apostasy and that the woman still continues to be the wife of the husband. These are the three views. A portion of the first view, the Bokhara view, was taken hold of by the
Courts and rulings after rulings were based on that portion.
- Legislative Assembly Debates, 1938, Vol. V. pp. 1953-55.