40 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
one has its special laws and merely because the State desired to assume a secular character it should withdraw itself from regulating the lives of the various communities, undoubtedly would result in nothing but chaos and anarchy. I certainly myself am not prepared to subscribe to that sort of a proposition.
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 of law which are prevalent in Hindu society are the result of customs. They are born out of custom and we feel that they have now grown so sturdy that we can indeed give them flesh and life in the body politic by our legislation.
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.
Shri Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri : My point is that he did not like to be called a Hindu and still wanted to retain all the customs of the Hindu !
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : The position taken is this : that once a person chooses to call himself a Hindu, he must accept the generality of law which is prescribed for the Hindu. We do not want this anarchy. A Hindu is a Hindu for all purposes. If a tribal