DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 15
regard to personal freedom. And I hope, as time advances we shall have more and more of reforms in this direction to which this measure points today.
Let us start with the full rights that have been conferred upon the woman after the death of her husband. In our Shastras it has been briefly described that the woman is the bond slave of her father when she is young, to her husband when she is middle aged and to her son when she is a mother. Of course all epigrams, aphorisms, proverbs, platitubes and truisms are half truths. There is a core of truth about them. We sometimes find it useful to quote these things but there is a core of untruth also about them and we should try to understand the full significance of all these.
According to the measures before us, a woman will have property in her own right and be able to dispose of her property. I have been trying to see whether the Law Minister would explain when these rights would come into force. Suppossing after the passing of this measure a man dies and his widow inherits his property: what are her rights compared with the rights of a widow whose husband died one year ago? The latter possesses limited estates. What is the change sought to be introduced? Can widows with only limited estates convert those limited estates into full right estates with the right to give away, to mortgage, to sell and so on, irrespective of whether there is legal necessity in the interests of the family or not? That is a point which I have been trying to understand by turning up the pages of the measure before me but I have not been able to understand it. I dare say, in his reply the Mover of the Bill will be so good as to elucidate the point.
The ‘rights’ of the daughter is a matter on which I have been feeling very keenly. When speaking to English people or when discussing Indian conditions and society with savants and scholars coming from abroad, I have never been tired of praising my own system. If you wish to understand the basis of a system, or appraise any of its social customs or practices, you must not lake it in its present degenerate condition. But you must take it in all its pristine purity and glory. I look upon child marriage as a splendid institution as our ancients conceived it because they conceived it good for the average man and the average woman to be married. And this marriage is a