564 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra: The joint family is also there.
Pandit Mukut Bihari Lal Bhargava: You are dealing with a population of 300 millions—of 30 crores—and a population that is extending from Kashmir to Cape Comorin, a population that extends from Gujarat to the farthest end of the country. And you want to disrupt the status of the joint family system, and that will affect overwhelmingly vast population. Therefore, you must think thrice before doing such a thing as will disrupt such a vast population. In this legislation you want to disrupt the family. If it is decrepit, if it is dilapidated, if it is, as one of the Members said, in such a condition that we need not even shed tears about it, let it die a natural death. Why should you apply the axe of destruction and bring about its end ?
Then Sir, I proceed to the question of inheritance. Now, here I have got the greatest grievance. As my friend Mr. Naziruddin Ahmad said, the Rau Committee Bill was substituted by a departmental committee Bill and in this departmental Bill innovations were introduced. Clause
94 lays down that property will be excluded from the rules of succession laid down in this Bill. It is in the original Rau Bill it was that every piece of Agricultural property will not be governed by the rules of Succession laid down there, because under the Government of India Act it is not within the purview and jurisdiction of the Central Government. The Rau Bill did not say that there will be any exception in the case of the Centrally Administrated Areas, which are under the direct control and supervision of the Government of India
Now, Sir, in the departmental Bill the words “in the Governors provinces” were introduced with the result that every agriculturist in my province of Ajmer-Merwara as also in the provinces of Delhi and Coorg, which are the Centrally Administrated areas and even the agricultural property situated in these provinces will be governed by the rules of succession laid down here. Look at the anomaly that is sought to be perpetrated by this piece of legislation. The law that will govern the bulk of property will be absolutely different in the Governors Provinces, while it will be just the contrary in the Centrally Administrated areas. Is it the uniformity which is aimed at by this unique piece of legilsation ? Whether this will be in consonance with the ideal of uniformity or it is the opposite of it. May I respectfully ask ? My submission is that all the rules of Succession that you have laid down in the provisions of the Bill if they are applied to the