546 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
abstract, but what is good in the circumstances, and that depends on local conditions. There are certain practices which are considered to be good and there are others which are not and you make every body uniform; you are trying to make all the people uniform. The Honourable Minister for Law should try to make everybody as intelligent and as forceful as he is. Why should you stop at inequality; inequality is not bad. It is nature that there should be inequality in diversity. India is a big continental countries and it has developed according to its own genius and each province has a distinct culture of its own and why should you by one stroke of the pen remove all this and make the law the same? In fact, the great Hindu law-givers, they were extremely...
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : This is only a peroration and not an argument.
Mr. Naziruddin Ahmad: They had tolerance and they did not enforce their law by force. A study of Manu Smriti will show that he never enforced his law. He said that the law should be enforced subject to the custom of the locality. That will be found by any one who has read it and therefore, the Hindu law givers did not like the law should be uniform. Their method of propagation of their law and their civilization was not by force, but rather by persuasion and they allowed free scope— I speak with authority, having read the whole thing; they allowed their law to spread on their own merit, not by their force. Local custom plays not only an important part now, but played an important part in the time of Manu and that is the reason why law is different today. It is an organic method according to local circumstances that leads to this difference of opinion. In fact differences are not bad. It is not a small country; it is a big country with all the attributes of a continent and this diversity as a matter of fact should not be done away with without adequate and careful thought.
Sir, Mr. Kamath compared the present Bill to a new Smriti, Dr. Ambedkar’s 138th Smriti. I think this is not a Smriti at all, the Smriti proceeds from the srutis. There is a pretence to agree with the principles of these srutis. This is a Bill which is not a smriti but a new Veda, ( Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra : ‘It is vismriti !’). It is Vismriti i.e., forgetfulness of the past. All sacred laws and customs, rules, laws, decisions, principles of the Privy Council are brushed aside by one stroke of the pen by Dr. Ambedkar himself in defiance of the report of the Rau Committee. Everthing is gone. It is Vismriti