DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 269
is called moppu. That property becomes her absolute property so that if after her consent the husband marries and ill-treats her, she has a certain amount of economic competence in her own hands to lead an independent life. I cite that as an illustration to show that there has not been an unqualified right for polygamy.
A second illustration wliich I would like to give would be from the Arthashastra of Kautilya. I do not know how many Members of the House have perused that book, I suppose many of them have. If they have, they will realise that the right to marry a second wife has been considerably limited by Kautilya. In the first place, no man can marry for the first ten or twelve years because he must be satisfied that the woman is not capable of producing children. That was one limitation. The second limitation imposed by Kautilya on the right of second marriage was that the husband was to return to the woman all the stridhan that she had acquired at the time of marriage. It is only under these two conditions that Kautilya’s Arthashastra permitted a Hindu husband to marry a second time.
Thirdly, in our own country, in the ligislation that has been passed in various Provinces, monogamy has been prescribed. For instance in the marumakkathayam and the aliyasanthanam law both of them prescribe monogamy as a rule of marital life. Similarly, with regard to the recent legislation that has been passed in Bombay or in Madras, similarly in Baroda, the law is the law of monogamy.
I hope the House will see from the instances I have given that we are not making any very radical or revolutionary change. We have precedent for what we are doing, both in the laws that have been passed by various States in India, also in the ancient shastras such as Kautilya’s Arthashastra. If I may go further, we have got the precedent of the whole world which recognises monogamy as the most salutary principle so far as marital relations are concerned.
Shri Deshbandhu Gupta (Delhi) : What about the Mohammadan Law?
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : We shall come to Mohammadan law when we discuss the Mohammadan law.
Coming to the question of divorce, there again I should like to submit to the House that this is in no way an innovation. Everybody in this House knows that communities wliich are called shudra have customary divorce and what is the total of what we call shudra ? Nobody has ever probably made any calculation as to the total number of shudras who go to compose the Hindu society, but I have not the