DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 25
India, but it has been pointed out that the effect of uniformity will not be attained in view of the shortness of time. It is well known that agricultural land is beyond the purview of this House. It is a provincial subject. Whatever law we may pass will affect only non-agricultural land, whatever that expression may mean. That expression is also vague. It has been defined in the Income Tax Act for the purpose of taxation and this Bill as well as many other Acts have taken that as the basis. There may be lands which lie midway between agricultural and non-agricultural lands. In fact, apart from this distinction, a large proportion of our property—about 80 per cent—consists of culturable land. Thus it is perfectly clear that the Provinces will have to deal with them and they may deal with them in a different manner and some provinces may not deal with them at all. And then again we have the acceded States. Though Hindu Law is to be the same—and it is attempted to make it uniform—the States people may legislate or may not legislate, and in case they legislate they may make different provisions. In fact the Provincial Governments and the States will be largely guided by local custom and local opinion and I believe it will be extremely difficult for the West Bengal Legislature to pass a law which is so much against the opinion of that Province. It will therefore come to this that if we pass this law the result would be that in the case of a man having two classes of properties—a house or building and certain agricultural land—one set of law will apply to non-agricultural land and another set of law will apply to agricultural land. Whatever law you pass, it should be uniform and it would be far better to collect opinions from the Provincial Governments and to ask for their consent to give jurisdiction to this House to pass a comprehensive legislation as we have done in some cases. If comprehensiveness and completeness is the objective, it is better that the Central Legislature should be armed with their consent and deal with it on an all-India basis, and it would also be a proper tiling to ask the States to co-operate in this matter. These are some of the difficulties. As we are working against time, it is impossible, as the Honourable the Law Minister has pointed out, to deal with even some of the salient features of the Bill. It is also impossible to deal with some of the objections except from the border point of view. One thing that strikes me is that the opinions have not been very carefully