362 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the competency of the Legislature, and in the afternoon just before he sat down he said that he……………………….
Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava : I never questioned the competence of this Legislature.
Shrimati Renuka Ray : So, I suppose what he said last is what goes. He spoke a good deal about the eleven notes of dissent. But as he knows and as the House knows, many of these notes of dissent were on minor issues and such notes of dissent are usually attached to all Bills and it does not mean therefore that a Bill should be recirculated. This morning Pandit Bhargava said that two wrongs do not make a right when he said that this Constituent Assembly obviously is not fitted to draw up the Constitution of India. I wonder, considering that it is such a wrong thing, how he remains in that wrong Assembly. I am not going to contradict him or speak again on all that he has said this afternoon, because I think it was very ably answered before he ever spoke by the Honourable the Law Minister and Pandit Bhargava contradicted some of them himself.
There is one last point that I would like to make. The cry has been raised that Hindu society is in danger because of this mild, halting measure of reform. I too think that Hindu society is in danger. It is in very grave danger—danger from those who would bind and fetter it; danger from those who would not allow out-worn customs to be changed but would allow them to choke up the life-blood of our society. If those who today appear to be so concerned about Hindu society would give a little thought, they would agree with what the Honourable the Law Minister said, namely, that you must repair if you want to survive. I do not know who has given a prerogative to some people to stand up for Hindu society. I do not consider those who wish to bind and fetter Hindu law which has been changing with changing times throughout the centuries to be the exponents of Hindu society and Hindu law and those who wish to improve it and bring it back once again to the culture and heritage of our forefathers as people against it. I think it is those who would bind and better it who are not the friends but the enemies of Hindu society. If Hindu society is to regain all that it has lost during the many years and the many centuries of decadence when Hindus were slaves, it has to come in line with the atmosphere of freedom that prevails in this country today. Men and women have to come forward equally to work for the country and there cannot be equality if there is no equality in the social laws