DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 583
take the Hindus out of their Indian moorings and to launch them on foreign waters of Arabia and Jerusalem. Where is the necessity for this Hindu Code ? Why don’t you extend the provisions of the Indian Succession Act of 1925 by a stroke of the pen to the entire Hindu community ? By this very convenient and simplified method—and we are very much enamoured of simple legislation—it will be very easy to provide for the entire Hindu society.
Before I conclude, I think it is my duty, and an honest duty, to sound a note of warning. You very well know that the Hindu law is a law not piloted from outside. It is not an imposition from above, it is not the creation of a sovereign power, it is not the result of a ukase of any king or of any legislature. That is the greatest merit about it. It is a spontaneous development from centuries past. The texts of the Smritis and The Nibhandhaka have not created the laws; they have only explained and elucidated the accepted principles of Hindu Law, but those principles as readable from the texts have never been the governing force of the Hindu society. The governing force of the Hindu society has been a consistently developing usage and custom governing the different sections of the society. That development was spontaneous. In fact, looking at it from a realistic point of view, the Hindu society is a working legislature in continuous session not of the few selected persons as this House is but a legislature of the entire community, that modifies and moulds its law according to its requirements. That is the supreme beauty of Hindu Law. And that you are distorting, that you are deforming by this piece of legisaltion by taking from it vitality, elasticity, mobility, spontaniety and adaptability to the everchanging circumstances of the society. Sir, I, as an humble Member of this House, have a duty to say that you must be very careful before you tamper with it. It is a law that has come into existence as a result of centuries of development and before you tamper with its time-honoured institutions, customs and usages, you should keep one thing in mind. The India of ours does not reside in urban towns like Allahabad and Delhi. The real India lives in the five lakhs of villages. The life of the villagers is so intimately interwoven with the texture of their society that whatever modifications you might make by this piece of legislation, they will resist to the limit of their might before you take away from them the time-honoured usage and customs to which they have been submitting as a matter of course for centuries. Without doing any benefit to the Hindu Society,