274 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
in his hand and is separate property and does not belong to the coparcenary. Secondly, property inherited by him from his maternal grand father, thirdly gift of ancestral moveables made to him by his father and fourthly property granted by government to an individual who is a member of the co-parcenary becomes his personal property and not the property of the co-parcenary. Then fifthly we have ancestral property lost to the family and recovered without the aid of the family property. That also, although originally co-parcenary property, becomes his private property. Then sixthly, there is the income from separate property and purchases made from the income of such property. They are also private property. 7, share of a co-parcener by partition if he has not male issue. 8, property held by a sole surviving coparcener when there is no widow with the power to adopt. 9, separate earning of a member of a joint family co-parcenary and 10, gains of learning. Such vast amount of property included in these 10 categories is today under the Mithakshara law the private property of a co-parcener. It does not become the property of the co-parcenary.
Let me illustrate this by one plain illustration. There are hundreds and hundreds of clerks in our Secretariat, some drawing small salaries, some drawing huge salaries more than the salaries of the Members of the Cabinet—Rs. 4,000 (Honourable Members : “Clerks ? Are they clerks ?”) I mean officers. In a certain sense they are glorified clerks.
The point I want to put to the house is this : that such large income as gains of learning, which come up in individual cases to Rs. 4,000, if there was a joint family in the true sense of the word, ought to go to the joint family for the joint maintenance of that family. What happens ? Under the Gains of Learning Act passed only a few years ago, this very Assembly, not I mean the Members, passed a law that such gains of learning, which form, as I say, the principal part of the income of a joint family and which a member is enabled to earn by reason of the education that was given to him out of the family income, have now been made his personal and private income. My submission to the House is this : when so large a property, as I have mentioned, included in these ten different categories have already been made in modification of the original laws of Mitakshara private property, what is the balance of property that is left which can be said to comprise the co-parcenary property ? My submission is that really very, very small volume of property is left to comprise within