DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 337
When I read the speech of Dr. Ambedkar himself which he was pleased to deliver at the time when the Motion was referred to Select Committee, I found that his attitude was very reasonable and he made certain statements in regard to custom which are very much opposite to the provisions of the Bill. Sir, I doubt very much whether this Law Department Committee had on its personnel our Law Member himself. I do not know who those persons were who tampered with the Bill, but at the same time I can certainly say that I very strongly suspect—though I do not know it—that Dr. Ambedkar must not have been there because he is very anxious to see that the customs of the ninety per cent of the people are not affected—as I am anxious to see. Either this thing missed him—he may not have appreciated it—or some other persons might have been there who were not Members of the Select Committee. They entirely changed the face of the Bill, which they had not the right to do; then it was the other Bill which was considered—it is a fiction that the original Bill was there and considered. Sir, I would refer you to page 3652 of the proceedings (9th April 1948) in which Dr. Ambedkar said:
“His second comment was that the Bill had not taken into consideration the customary law. He cited some ruling of the Privy Council. I should have thought that at this hour of the day it was unnecessary to cite the authority of the Privy Council because it has been well established by a long course of decisions, that so far as the Hindus are concerned custom would override the text of the “ Smriti ”. We all know this. But what are we doing ? What are we doing is this. We are shutting down the growth of new customs. We are not destroying existing customs. The existing customs we are recognising because the rules and law which are prevalent in Hindu society are the result of customs. They are born out of customs and we feel that they have now grown so sturdy that we can indeed give them flech and life in the body politic by one legislation.
Dr. Ambedkar was referring to the speech of Srijut Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri: He also said :
“that we had not taken into consideration the question of the tribal people, whose life is undoubtedly governed in a large measure by customary law. If my friend had read the definition in this code as to who is a Hindu and who is not and to whom this Code applied, he would have seen that there is a clause which merely said that persons who are not Muslims, Parsis, or Christians, shall be presumed to be Hindus : not that they are Hindus. The result is that if a tribal individual chooses to say that he is not a Hindu it would be perfectly open to him under this Code to give evidence in support of his contention that he is not a Hindu, and if that conclusion is accepted by the Court he certainly would not be obliged by anything contained in this Bill.
The position is this : if I accept my institutions as good, if I appoint my heirs according to the custom which governs me, then according to Dr. Ambedkar I am not a Hindu. That is my difficulty. Either you must provide for these one crore of people and accept their customs or. . . .